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Nine Levels of Health For Women Professionals and Executives



195 As another new year is approaching, it is a perfect time to do an overall health & success checkup on yourself. The Nine Levels of Health is a simple system that can help you to keep track of all the significant aspects of life. Because of the busy lifestyle of most women professionals and leaders, we seldom get a chance to sit down and reflect on our life as a whole. And yet the whole is what truly matters, because that’s the bottom line, the sum total. In these fast changing times, it is easy to forget that life (and work) is like a big garden with many plants and flowers, which, if neglected, will perish. Once the damage has occurred, the repairing process is going to be much more costly than preventive measures.

That is why I’ve designed the Nine Levels of Health self-test. Just like an annual physical checkup, this system can reveal early signs of any weak area so that you can take action to avoid grave consequences in the future.

The nine levels of health consist of three triads:

The Core Triad
  1. Spiritual Health
  2. Mental-Emotional Health
  3. Physical Health
The Flesh Triad:
  1. Family Relationships<.li>
  2. Workplace Relationships
  3. Interest Group Communities
The Shell Triad:
  1. Education & Professional Skills
  2. Status Success
  3. Financial Success
The Core is the center of a person. Even when all the outer layers have collapsed for some reason, as long as the core is still intact, you will bounce back. The more energy you have stored in your core, the easier the bounce-back will be. The outer layer, the shell, is what is visible and easily recognizable in our society. It is the part of you that most people can see. It is also the part that many people strive to perfect. The middle layer consists of relationships that enable a person to learn from and share with others. It gives life the richness that one cannot get otherwise.

Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten to see how you are doing on all the nine levels. In an ideal healthy situation, all the nine levels are interconnected in a dynamic feedback loop, constantly nourishing, strengthening and expanding each other. In an unhealthy situation, many patterns of blockages can occur which interrupt or restrict the dynamic flow of the system. For example a harmonious family relationship is a source of energy that can propel you to a higher level of professional achievement. And material success can also help make a family happier in many ways. But this is not always the case. As we all know, many women these days sacrifice their relationships or even their health and spirit for the sake of success. Is that kind of sacrifice necessary, or is it a limiting belief due to the blockages in the nine levels?

When you are doing this checkup, you might have to confront all the sacrifices you’ve made as well as the blockages in your system. But keep in mind: no matter what happens, nothing is capable of fully blocking the spirit of a person. Eventually the blocked innermost core of a person will rebel and try to find its way to grow, expand and shine. When this happens, many people refer to it as a life time crisis. But that is not necessarily a bad thing: it all depends on how you look at it.

A “crisis” in Chinese has two meanings:
  1. Danger
  2. Opportunity
If a person takes hold of the opportunity, it can be a time of rapid learning and regeneration. It is a time of re-birth. The more intense the critical situation, the more thorough the regeneration.

In short, no matter what happens, detecting and facing any challenge life has brought you is always better than sweeping it under the carpet. If your physical annual checkup reveals some potential health problem, would you ignore it? No trouble will go away unless you take action.


Liping Feng, Ph.D. has been practicing different kinds of meditation for more than 20 years. She is the founder and director of Sunlight Leadership Institute which provides training and coaching for women professionals. She is currently working on her new book: Mini Meditations For Busy Women (Focus and Productivity). Email: Info@SunlightleadershipInstitute.com