Peta Kelly (@petajean_) is a mother, author, investor, and the creator of Body Luxury — both a European wellness philosophy and the title of her latest book, out now.
#88: Peta Kelly
Leo/Cancer/Gemini
Australia
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
When I think of the word “health” I think of the old food pyramid or outdated government advice. The world has “health” all topsy turvy. We’re taught to suppress our symptoms and “fight” illness. People go to the doctor for a five-minute consult and the symptom is treated in isolation without connecting the dots between the person’s psyche, their lives, their emotional burdens. I understand health differently. Symptoms are our bodies adapting and resolving. So, I don’t believe health is a total absence of symptoms.
For me, true vitality is living with vibrancy and energy most of the time, and not freaking out when the body needs to rest, or when a symptom is trying to tell us something. It’s knowing that our bodies are designed for life, and have inbuilt mechanisms to always restore life. I believe this faith and connection with the way we were created is important for health.
I always ask, what comes first, the vibrant body or the vibrant life? Our life, our minds, our emotional patterns — they are just as important to our vitality as what we eat and how we move.
In sum, being vital is having the internal resources to live how you are called to live, to create without exhaustion, to be there for the people we love, and to be well enough to notice beauty.
There’s that old proverb, “When you have your health you have 1000 dreams, when you don’t have your health, you only have one.”
