What Does It Mean to Be a Whole Person?
Lately I've been thinking about what it means when we talk about someone being a "whole" person. In the past I have imagined wholeness as being in a pretty regulated, positive feeling state--calm, curious, open, etc. But recently someone described wholeness to me a little differently and I love this way of thinking about it. Instead of being in a certain kind of regulated nervous system state, wholeness is simply having access to a wide range of feeling states within. It's being able to weep with true sorrow, and then move from that to more resourced, positive feelings; and share with another person; laugh; dream; in essence, live the whole arc of human experience and be able to tolerate and express it all as it arises within. It makes me think of something that Francis Weller talks about in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow : I'm paraphrasing, but he tells the story of being in an African village and meeting a local woman who was very joyful and laughed a lot. H...
