Health is wholeness--wholeness in its most profound sense, with nothing left out and everything in just the right order to manifest the mystery of balance. Far from being simply the absence of disease, health is a dynamic and harmonious equilibrium of all the elements and forces making up and surrounding a human being.

Andrew Weil

Categorized in : Order Profound Balance

Among other things, neuroplasticity means that emotions such as happiness and compassion can be cultivated in much the same way that a person can learn through repetition to play golf and basketball or master a musical instrument, and that such practice changes the activity and physical aspects of specific brain areas.

Andrew Weil

basketball golf mean

I have argued for years that we do not have a health care system in America. We have a disease-management system - one that depends on ruinously expensive drugs and surgeries that treat health conditions after they manifest rather than giving our citizens simple diet, lifestyle and therapeutic tools to keep them healthy.

Andrew Weil

health simple years

If I had to limit my advice on healthier living to just one tip, it would be simply to learn how to breathe correctly.

Andrew Weil

breathing would-be advice

Imagine a world in which medicine was oriented toward healing rather than disease, where doctors believed in the natural healing capacity of human beings and emphasized prevention above treatment. In such a world, doctors and patients would be partners working toward the same ends.

Andrew Weil

doctors medicine healing

Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.

Andrew Weil

effort-and-time effort skills

Practicing regular, mindful breathing can be calming and energizing and can even help with stress-related health problems ranging from panic attacks to digestive disorders.

Andrew Weil

panic-attacks breathing stress

You can't afford to get sick, and you can't depend on the present health care system to keep you well. It's up to you to protect and maintain your body's innate capacity for health and healing by making the right choices in how you live.

Andrew Weil

sick choices healing

Human beings and plants have co-evolved for millions of years, so it makes perfect sense that our complex bodies would be adapted to absorb needed, beneficial compounds from complex plants and ignore the rest.

Andrew Weil

would-be perfect years

Technology has a shadow side. It accounts for real progress in medicine, but has also hurt it in many ways, making it more impersonal, expensive and dangerous. The false belief that a safety net of sophisticated drugs and machines stretches below us, permitting risky or lazy lifestyle choices, has undermined our spirit of self-reliance.

Andrew Weil

technology real hurt

Please keep in mind the distinction between healing and treatment: treatment originates from outside, whereas healing comes from within.

Andrew Weil

treatment healing mind

Healing is making whole, restoring a state of perfection and balance that has been lost.

Andrew Weil

balance perfection healing

Health is wholeness and balance, an inner resilience that allows you to meet the demands of living without being overwhelmed.

Andrew Weil

resilience demand balance

Get people back into the kitchen and combat the trend toward processed food and fast food.

Andrew Weil

health food people

Improper breathing is a common cause of ill health. If I had to limit my advice on healthier living to just one tip, it would be simply to learn how to breathe correctly. There is no single more powerful -or more simple- daily practice to further your health and well being than breathwork.

Andrew Weil

ill-health powerful simple

Whenever the immune system deals successfully with an infection, it emerges from the experience stronger and better able to confront similar threats in the future. Our immune system develops in combat. If, at the first sign of infection, you always jump in with antibiotics, you do not give the immune system a chance to grow stronger.

Andrew Weil

antibiotics stronger giving

Most disease is lifestyle related and preventable

Andrew Weil

related lifestyle disease

I am a particular fan of integrative exercise - that is, exercise that occurs in the course of doing some productive activity such as gardening, bicycling to work, doing home improvement projects and so on.

Andrew Weil

gardening exercise home

The best way to detoxify is to stop putting toxic things into the body and depend upon it's own mechanisms.

Andrew Weil

toxic body way

Treatment originates outside you; healing comes from within.

Andrew Weil

treatment healing

Your body can heal itself. It can do so because it has a healing system. If you are in good health, you will want to know about this system, because it is what keeps you in good health and because you can enhance that condition. If you or people you love are sick, you will want to know about this system, because it is the best hope for recovery.

Andrew Weil

heal-itself recovery healing