“Our body is like a large bucket, a health and life container, if you will. Health is like the contents of the bucket. By eating properly, getting the proper rest, exercising regularly, maintaining a positive mental attitude, and attending to the other health-promoting measures, we are adding to the contents of the bucket. Reduce any one of them and you diminish the level of health. They all add to the level. No single one of them assures health. But together they combine to fill our body (the bucket) with health.” —Joe Strauss, DC

Imagine your body like a bucket of water and the contents that make up health or vitality being the water that fills the bucket up. When the bucket is full of water, wellbeing is flourishing due to a biochemical balance of the chemicals and physiological processes that make up our quality of life. 

When the bucket is low on water, dysfunction and disharmony are present creating an environment for breakdown in the biochemical processes that make up normal function within the body.

Most of us are born with a bucket full of water in a balanced state. You are full of health and vitality from the day you are born. Your body stays full of wellbeing with no help from the outside through an inborn recuperative healing power to keep the bucket full of water through the faucet of healing, restoration and creation of more water or contents to the bucket of wellbeing. 

This innate intelligence that all living breathing bodies are equipped with has the inner potential to keep the body in a balanced state. Your body strives to stay full of wellbeing from Above-Down-Inside-Out through an inborn recuperative power to keep the bucket full of water. This ADIO process of restoration of balance and harmony is accomplished through a faucet of creation of more water or contents to the bucket of wellbeing. 

The inner process of your bucket of wellbeing naturally filling up and you aiding to it does have it’s limitations on how full it can be. Eating an apple a day or walking around the block are both excellent choices to add to your quality of life, but eating apples all day and walking around the block all day will inevitability turn into a stressor on your body. The bucket of wellbeing wants to be full, but when filled pasts its limits of capacity due to forcing the faucet too open can create stress on the bucket or body. The excess of good, can turn into a negative force. 

This balance of wellbeing is different for everyone and striving for greater awareness of how full your bucket of wellbeing is the journey and challenge we all should take to living towards an optimal quality of life.

There’s also a problem with our bucket of wellbeing though-it leaks! Your bucket of wellbeing can leak at the rate stressors exceed the replenishing drip from the faucet. The more stress you put on your bucket before the bucket can refill-the more your contents of wellbeing will leak out from stress holes at the bottom.

Too much stress or not enough rest can create a leaky bucket. Doing less than what’s necessary to keep the bucket full, the contents or water within may lower or become less balanced due to life’s demands and stressors creating leaky holes at the bottom of the bucket. Our faucet may still be refilling wellbeing molecules of life, but the level of the water within the bucket is not staying full or balanced due to the demands and stress outweighing the recuperative power to keep the bucket full. Stress outweighing the powerful innate healing that replenishes through the faucet can create a leaky bucket. 

The key to keeping the bucket full of water is to keep the handles on open for the faucet to replenish the bucket before signs that the water level is low. For example, when you feel thirsty, it may be a sign that you’re already dehydrated.  Similarly, don’t wait for your bucket to be low on wellbeing before you ensure the faucet is refilling to its capacity.

When the levels of wellbeing are low or dysfunctional in the bucket, it lowers the body’s ability to adapt to life’s demands or stress, creating more dysfunction and a lower level of water within the bucket or lower quality of life. Keeping your bucket full of wellbeing full is a wise investment to keep your body functioning well.

Wellbeing can be considered a fundamental principle rather than a fundamental pursuit. The potential for optimal wellbeing is within all of us due to this vitalistic aspect of life — removing interference to the expression of it is one option to enhance the potential for self-healing.