Wellness and well-being are modern fab words to mention nowadays when people concern about their health and happiness. Even in business sector, employers have put more focus on employees well-being. So what exactly is wellness and well-being referring to? Are these two concepts mutually inclusive to each other? And where “Health” fits into these two concepts?

Let’s examine the concept of “Health”, what we understand in general is to get healthy when we are being sick! Traditionally the healthcare system is much like a sick care system! As life evolves with advance technology, life is getting stable in basic essentials, people started to live a healthy approach to prevent getting sick! So, we shift the awareness from health to actively engage in wellness activities to balance life.

From sick care or healthcare to wellness life balance awareness; however, that’s not all, when we gain awareness to thrive to achieve a balanced life, we want happiness too! This happiness of well-being that can last longer than just a sensory pleasure kind of happiness.

This kind of happiness aligns with WHO definition of Health. It says ‘Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.’

From this modern concept of health, it can be concluded that health traditionally was just meant managing sickness, then wellness has came to mean living well; and living well evolves to well-being, which means living well and enjoying happiness.

In order to understand this kind of happiness, we go back to 2,500 years ago with the Sanskrit word of “Health” – “Swastha”. Swa means self; stha means to develop. It suggests that to be healthy means to develop the self!

An inner self that requires an understanding of the concept of the self. This understanding associates with our consciousness, which is the level of understanding how things works, how’s life work on personal, social, and spiritual levels.

To understand how things works clearly requires knowledge. Therefore, in a deeper sense, to be healthy is to develop the self with the right knowledge!

In essence, on a deeper level of the concept of health, wellness and well-being respectively are to develop an inner self, live well and be happy! And to attain all these states, acquiring the right knowledge of understanding is the fundamental of all!