What state might wholeness represent for an athlete versus someone with rheumatoid arthritis?
For the athlete, it might be performing without pain and with deep body confidence; for the patient, acceptance and kinder self-treatment.
The necessary level of wholeness is intensely personal and context-dependent. For an individual involved in sports, like an athlete, wholeness is achieved through physical capability, specifically being able to perform their chosen sport without experiencing pain and possessing profound confidence in their body. However, for someone dealing with a long-term, incurable condition such as rheumatoid arthritis, wholeness takes a different form. It involves recognizing and accepting the reality of the ongoing pain while simultaneously developing compassionate strategies for self-treatment that still permit engagement with life and movement. The emphasis shifts from eradicating the condition to finding a state of being sound or whole despite unavoidable limitations.
