Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘health’ resists reduction to any single framework, occupying instead a contested terrain between ancient harmony theories, modern psychophysiology, and experiential therapeutics. Classical voices — Plato’s Timaeus, mediated by Cornford, and Bruno Snell’s reconstruction of Greek thought — ground health in the doctrine of balanced opposites: the ‘right mixture’ of elemental constituents, Heraclitean tension, the norm that is easier to violate than to define. Hillman, characteristically adversarial toward the medical-scientific model, warns that quantifying health (blood-counts, metabolic rates) reduces qualitative distinctions to mere quantity, collapsing the good life into the prolonged life. The psychophysiological tradition, represented by Porges, re-anchors health in vagal tone and autonomic homeostasis — a dynamic internal stability Claude Bernard identified as life’s primary requirement. Trauma theorists such as Felitti and Lanius foreground health’s fragility under adverse developmental conditions, tracing chronic disease and psychiatric disorder to childhood experience. Meanwhile, empirical environmental researchers (White, Annerstedt, Bettmann, Keltner) converge on nature exposure and awe as measurable health-promoting forces. Across these positions, a recurrent tension appears: health as measurable norm versus health as irreducible qualitative state — a distinction the corpus never fully resolves.
But what is health? We have already stated that it is difficult to say, unless we follow Plato’s Eryximachus in defining it as a harmony of the various tendencies in the body.
Snell traces the Greek definition of health to Empedoclean-Heraclitean harmony of opposites, establishing that health as norm is constitutively harder to define than its infraction.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953thesis
Health and disease can be expressed in formulae: blood-count, basal metabolism, etc. Unhappily, this approach tends to reduce qualitative differences to differences of quantity.
Hillman argues that medicalizing and quantifying health collapses essential qualitative distinctions, linking the pathological bias of natural-science psychology to a reductive philosophy in which the good life means merely more life.
, Suicide and the Soul, 1964thesis
The fundamental notion of nearly all Greek medicine was that health depends on a due balance or proportioned mixture of the ultimate constituents of the body.
Cornford’s commentary on the Timaeus establishes the classical Greek medical ontology in which health is constituted by proportioned mixture of elemental constituents, divergent schools differing only on what those constituents are.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997thesis
Homeostasis may be defined as the autonomic state that fosters visceral needs in the absence of external challenge. This state would be defined by a high degree of PNS tone.
Porges re-frames health as the psychophysiological condition of high parasympathetic tone and stable homeostasis, with its disruption constituting measurable stress and vulnerability.
, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation, 2011thesis
The physiological profile of awe documented thus far — elevated vagal tone, reduced sympathetic activation, increased oxytocin, and reduced inflammation — is associated with enhanced mental health.
Keltner proposes awe as a distinct neurophysiological pathway to health, documenting its profile in terms of vagal tone, inflammation, and prosocial outcomes that collectively constitute enhanced mental and physical wellbeing.
, Awe: A Pathway to Health, 2023thesis
Insofar as abuse and other potentially damaging childhood experiences contribute to the development of these risk factors, then these childhood exposures should be recognized as the basic causes of morbidity and mortality in adult life.
Felitti’s ACE Study reframes the origins of adult health outcomes, arguing that adverse childhood experiences constitute the fundamental causal substrate beneath leading causes of morbidity and mortality.
The long-lasting, strongly proportionate and often profound relationship between adverse childhood experiences and important categories of emotional state, health risks, disease burden, sexual behavior, disability, and healthcare costs — decades later.
Lanius’s editorial compilation of ACE Study findings demonstrates that health is cumulatively determined by early developmental adversity, with a dose-response relationship persisting across decades into chronic disease and psychiatric disorder.
, The impact of early life trauma on health and disease the, 2010supporting
A similar process was used to support development of guidelines on the amount of recommended weekly physical activity needed for health promotion and disease prevention.
White positions nature-exposure research within the tradition of public health guideline-setting, developing a weekly dose metric for nature contact analogous to established physical activity recommendations for health promotion.
, Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing, 2019supporting
120–179mins vs. 0mins of nature contact per week was associated with: a similar likelihood of reporting good health as living in an area of low vs. high deprivation; meeting vs. not meeting physical activity guidelines.
White’s epidemiological analysis demonstrates that 120 minutes per week of nature contact produces health benefits comparable in magnitude to meeting physical activity guidelines or residing in a low-deprivation area.
, Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing, 2019supporting
Three main kinds of public health effects have been identified: short-term recovery from stress or mental fatigue, faster physical recovery from illness, and long-term overall improvement on people’s health and well being.
Annerstedt’s systematic review consolidates the evidence for nature’s health-promoting effects into three distinct temporal registers, from acute stress recovery to long-term wellbeing improvement.
, Nature-assisted therapy: Systematic review of controlled and observational studies, 2011supporting
The concept of health has more and more become an issue of adapting, the individual’s capacity to adjust oneself to his/her environment.
Annerstedt identifies a conceptual shift in health discourse toward adaptive capacity and person-environment fit, framing nature-assisted therapy as a response to the insufficiency of conventional healthcare for stress-related illness.
, Nature-assisted therapy: Systematic review of controlled and observational studies, 2011supporting
Most participants reported health improvements that transcended a physical health/mental health distinction.
Harper’s qualitative data from wilderness therapy clients reveals that participants themselves experience health as an integrated whole exceeding the physical/mental binary imposed by clinical taxonomies.
, Client perspectives on wilderness therapy as a component of adolescent residential treatment for problematic substance use and mental health issues, 2019supporting
Nature exposure has a significant positive impact on individual mental health.
Bettmann’s meta-analysis establishes robust evidence for a positive dose-response relationship between nature exposure and mental health in adults with diagnosed mental illness, refining prior findings on optimal exposure duration.
, A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis on the Effect of Nature Exposure Dose on Adults with Mental Illness, 2025supporting
Adverse childhood experiences may affect attitudes and behaviors toward health and health care, sensitivity to internal sensations, or physiologic functioning in brain centers and neurotransmitter systems.
Felitti identifies multiple mediating pathways — attitudinal, interoceptive, and neurobiological — through which adverse childhood experiences translate into compromised adult health status.
, Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, 1998supporting
Traditionally, people have looked as much to religion in their search for health as they have to medicine.
Pargament situates religious healing within the deep history of health-seeking behavior, arguing that shamanic, pilgrimage, and faith-healing practices represent persistent alternatives to biomedical conceptions of health restoration.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Happiness can undo the arousal activated by negative emotions… protect the body and mind from harmful effects of stress. Thus, happiness could have both short- and long-term consequences for health.
Lench relays Fredrickson’s ‘undo hypothesis,’ positioning positive emotion as a functional buffer against the physiological costs of negative affect, with direct implications for health across short and long time horizons.
, The Function of Emotions: When and Why Emotions Help Us, 2018supporting
The primary requirement of all life is the maintenance of a stable internal environment… without this dynamic internal stability in the face of an ever-changing external environment, we would all perish.
Levine invokes Claude Bernard’s foundational principle of internal milieu stability, grounding his somatic trauma model in a physiological conception of health as dynamic homeostatic regulation by the brain stem.
, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010aside
Signs and planets in this house colour the energies we bring (or should bring) into everyday tasks and how we approach the rituals of mundane existence.
Sasportas situates health within the symbolism of the astrological sixth house, treating it as inseparable from daily routine, service, and the quality of attention brought to embodied mundane life.
, The Twelve Houses: An Introduction to the Houses in Astrological Interpretation, 1985aside