A positive feeling of wellbeing
Friday 30 January 2026
There are many definitions of what healthy means. Losing weight, for example, can be seen as a healthy thing to do. But that depends on several factors. Firstly, losing weight simply by not eating would hardly be considered healthy. What about taking a drug? The jury’s certainly out on that one. If it cuts down an excessive appetite, for example, it’s what you eat with that reduced appetite which matters. Drugs, remember, deceive the body, they don’t cure. As a temporary respite, they’re best defined as ‘useful’. You have a bad headache, you take an aspirin. This kills the pain, but not the cause. Hopefully, by the time the aspirin wears off, the cause has disappeared. So, have you got away with it? Impossible to tell. The headache’s gone, but aspirin can sometimes adversely affect the stomach. There’s always a price.
So, a good diet could help you lose weight. Of course, you have to define a good diet, and there are a lot of definitions, including quack ones! The ‘safest’ route is probably to eat fresh – avoid the packaged, the processed, the preserved, the canned and the refined – many have additives, which frequently and deliberately stimulate your appetite to eat more than you need.
Then, of course, there’s exercise. Within ‘doctors’ limits’, it’s generally agreed that exercise is good for you. Will it lose weight? Not really. In the end, you are what you eat. But exercise will get you breathing better, firm up your muscles and, usually, make you feel good about yourself. So will achievement of your next belt in grading. Which brings us more generally to the psychological side of things. Your mental state, how you see the world and your part in it, contributes greatly to your health. Athletes and professional sports people sometimes get bouts of depression. Top of their game they may be, but when in that mental state, it is questionable whether they are healthy.
In some ways, you can ‘measure’ your health. Not just with weighing scales but different devices some people strap to their wrists, arms and other parts of their body, measuring heart rate, oxygen, blood sugar, all kinds of things to tell them they’re still alive! Nothing wrong with any of that, but remember that no amount of instrumentation will calibrate your inner health, simply give you some useful indications at times.
The term ‘A positive feeling of wellbeing’ isn’t referring to just a state of mind. Nor is it simply an acknowledgement of your bodily health or fitness. Ironically, it’s a measurement best or most accurately observed when you’re at rest. And it is as much physical as it is psychological. It’s when you can actually sense a positive energy exuding from your body of its own volition, almost like electricity. In fact, some say it IS a form of electricity, others that it is your aura ‘shining invisibly’. And there’s a smile on your face. At Meiji, our ethos is focused on everyone achieving that positive feeling of wellbeing, arriving and leaving the Dojo with a smile on their faces.
Perhaps your teen could benefit from sharpening both their body and mind through Krav Maga. There’s no better way to see what it’s really about than experiencing a session first-hand.
Book them into a free trial lesson at Meiji Martial Arts and let them discover the power of Krav Maga for themselves.