Why do you need to be healthy to be wealthy?

My definition of sustainable prosperity is that we can pass our prosperity on to seven generations into the future. Unfortunately, with the ways many people are building their wealth, we won’t be able to pass our wealth even on to the next generation.

John Lennon once said that the world is run by insane people. I don’t know whether insane is the right word, but when you look at the top 1 % still trying to build more wealth after having enough money to buy one or two countries, you might wonder whether they have the right state of mind.

The reason why they don’t have the right mentality is probably they are not healthy. Their physical and mental condition isn’t healthy.

Health is an important element of sustainable prosperity. We need to work on our health if we want to have the right state of mind. If we are physically and mentally healthy, we are connected to the source and we don’t want to do anything to harm the earth. We don’t desire something like a mansion with a swimming pool when we think of our wishes because we aren’t influenced by a stereotyped image, instead, we desire things based on how we feel in our gut. 

According to the oriental understanding of health, body and mind are related. Our physical condition affects our mental state and vice versa. Therefore it is good to work on both.

Being healthy is a new status symbol for success. Masters of oriental medicine or martial arts can tell right away what your physical and mental conditions are, even though you are dressed in an Armani suit with a Rolex watch on your wrist, by just looking at your face.

Now, some of you might say you are healthy because you go to the gym regularly and you work out. That is fine if you like working out, but health I am talking about here is not so much about how you look outside. I don’t care if you have a lot of muscles or if you managed to slim down so much. The important elements to look at here are your internal organs. The conditions of your stomach, intestines, lung, liver, and so on.

If you have had any acupuncture or shiatsu treatments before, you probably have heard about meridians. They are lines of energy in our body, and each meridian corresponds to each organ. In acupuncture or shiatsu, they basically work on your meridians to adjust the conditions of your internal organs.

The organs are very important in oriental medicine. They correspond to certain emotions. By working on meridians you can improve your mental state. In Japanese traditional medicine, intestines are particularly considered to be vital. They are regarded as the second brain. They are located in belly area which is called “hara” in Japanese, and “hara” is central to all martial arts like Aikido or Karate. Even modern medicine recognizes the values of intestines since there are many bacteria in the intestines which are essential to our health. Some athletes are working on intestines to improve their performances. 

In the book I wrote about sustainable prosperity, health is crucial, and I recommend you to train your intestines to stay healthy.