Dr. Weil stresses in the introduction of this book, that he works with “the whole picture of health,” rather with just one area. He is interested in improving our health from through our minds, our bodies and our spirits. These three things really do make up the whole person. Take a minute to think about how you feel when each one of those things is out of whack individually. When seperating them, you can really see how very important each of them are to your wellbeing.

Dr. Weil takes issue with the way western medicine seems to treat one problem at a time, instead of an overall wellness problem. Each function in our bodies rely on another function to perform, which does seem to make it nearly impossible to treat just one thing and repair it.

One more thing to think about. We have all been affected by “stress” in our lives. Stress initiates outside of our bodies, but we do not eat or drink stress. We don’t take stress in an illicit substance, nor do we breathe in stress. The effect of stress comes through our mind and spirit, but just look at the toll that it can take on our body in physical form. Nearly all of our bodies systems can be affected by stress–I bet if you try, you can come up with 10 people that you know that have been affected physically by stress in their lives–all manifesting the stress differently.

What do you think about treating “the big picture” of your health?