The Systems View Of Health

— Once we recognize the relative and subjective nature of the concept of health, we can begin to explore how the systems view of life can help us develop a corresponding systems view of health. Systems thinking is process thinking, and hence the systems view sees health as an ongoing process. Rather than defining health as a static state of perfect well-being, the systemic conception of health implies continual activity and change, reflecting the organism's creative response to environmental challenges. Since a person's condition will always depend on the natural and social environment, there can be no absolute level of health independent of this environment. The continual changes of one's organism in relation to the changing environment will naturally include temporary phases of ill health, and it will often be impossible to draw a sharp line between health and illness. Moreover, health is a multidimensional process. From the systems point of view, the experience of illness results from patterns of disorder that may become manifest at various levels of the organism — biological as well as psychological — and also in the various interactions between the organism and the larger systems in which it is embedded. This means that life's biological, cognitive, social, and ecological dimensions, which are integrated in the systems view of life, correspond to similar dimensions of health.  Valeria Teles interviews Fritjof Capra — the author of "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision" Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and systems theorist, was a founding director (1995-2020) of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. He is a Fellow of Schumacher College (UK) and serves on the Council of Earth Charter International. Capra is the author of several international bestsellers, including The Tao of Physics, The Web of Life, and The Science of Leonardo. He is coauthor, with Pier Luigi Luisi, of the multidisciplinary textbook, The Systems View of Life. Capra's online course is based on his textbook. To learn more about Fritjof Capra and his work, please visit: capracourse.net and fritjofcapra.net       — This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.