Welcome to All Eight Flavours
If we only ever washed one armpit, no matter how well we washed that armpit, sooner or later, the smell from the rest of our body would take over. And just as total cleanliness requires the regular soaping of multiple separate body parts, Total Health, is made up of a number of entirely separate, but equally valuable components, that also require regular care and attention.
Physical
Our Physical Health refers to our body, but its impact and influence on all eight flavours is profound.
Mental
The meat computer is a marvellous thing, it can be programmed, updated; but close some windows.
Emotional
Emotions occur somewhere so deep inside, sharing them makes us feel very exposed. Embrace naked.
Social
The digital world is an amazing world, but it's not the actual world. We need actual world actual social.
Nutritional
Food & water is essential, and joyful. Not a helpful combination as it goes. Thought is required.
Medical
It can be hard to seek medical help, harder still to accept it, but the best choice is informed choice.
Environmental
The chip bathed in ketchup doesn't taste the same as the chip dipped in mayonnaise. Science.
Spiritual
Day will follow night, love doesn't come with rules, dogs will lick stuff. Believe in people and things.
Maya Angelou
"You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there."
How Round is your Wheel?
A great way to think about Total Health, is to visualize each of the 8 components as being a spoke on a wheel. Life is more an unpredictable remote mountain track with bumps and lumps and climbs and descents, than a smooth flat and freshly laid million mile long piece of asphalt. The best wheels for the job of helping us traverse such terrain will be big and round. Embracing all eight flavours won’t change the nature of the terrain, but it can give you the wheels to keep rolling through it.
Chuck Norris
"The key to the future in an aging society is not found in increasing just our life span; we need to increase our health span at the same time."
Health Span
Life Span is pretty easy to understand and measure, essentially denoting the time between our first and last breath. To a large degree, we don’t have much influence over our Life Span, but we do carry significant clout when it comes to our Health Span – how long we are able to participate in life. My good friend Bob once said “I want to die as young as possible, as late as possible“, and really in that one statement he’s sort of nailed the goal we all have, to be younger for longer, to continue to join in, to stay in the game. Addressing all 8 flavours could help us achieve this goal.
Confucious
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
4 Pages
This website is made up of 4 pages – OK 5, but you’ve already found this one – below is a description of and a link to each of them:
Flavours
This page will describe each of the 8 flavours, outline their value, and offer practical strategies and ideas to keep them topped up.
Support
This page is a big one, and we hope to make it bigger, as we aim to create an accessible directory of organisations that exist to help.
Thoughts
This page is were you will find the posted thoughts from the mind of someone who wants to better understand and end suffering.
Resources
This page is a work in progress, the whole website is a work in progress, but this page in particular, so keep checking.
Who Am I?
I’m not a doctor, I’m just a man who knows some stuff about some stuff, through lived and learned experience, and wants to help you survive the darkness, and thrive when the sun shines. I know I can’t do a lot, but I want to do something. Health is the foundation upon which all things are built, it will enable us to sustain the good things but also endure the difficult moments that each of us will face. Part of me feels like I’m drowning, but a bigger part wants to build a boat, and pull as many people as I can into that boat with me.