Healthy Living
An assembly from the Culham St Gabriel archive
Suitable for Whole School (Sec)
Aims
To encourage an appreciation of healthy living.
Preparation and materials
- You may wish to link this assembly to World Health Day on 7 April. Extra information is available at: http://tinyurl.com/zvxq7zj and http://tinyurl.com/h84czgc
- You may wish to display the following list, in which case you will also need the means to do so.
- The body: food and exercise
- The mind
- The spirit
- You may wish to consider the topic of healthy eating in more detail. Extra information is available at: www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/Healthyeating.aspx
Assembly
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Explain that when people think about healthy living, they often think about healthy eating and exercise. However, there is more to being a healthy person than this. It has been suggested that healthy living involves three main areas.
- The body: food and exercise
- The mind
- The spirit
Display this list if you would like to. -
There are many magazines, television series and even satellite channels that are solely devoted to food. They mainly cover eating more healthily and being more adventurous with recipes. However, there is a problem with obesity in many parts of the western world. It has been argued that it is a global epidemic in the making. At the same time, many people in the world are hungry and in desperate need of nourishment.
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As well as eating being a key ingredient of healthy living, physical exercise is important for all of us. We need to exercise to stimulate the body’s maintenance and repair systems. Coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, breathlessness, flabbiness, low energy, stiff joints, osteoporosis, poor posture and weight problems are often the results of a lack of exercise. By exercising, we can help to protect ourselves from these conditions.
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However, healthy living is not just about eating the right food and exercising. It is also about having a healthy mind.
World Health Day occurs on 7 April every year to mark the anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organization (WHO). It provides people around the world with a unique opportunity to mobilize action around a specific health topic of concern. The theme for the 2017 World Health Day is depression.
This highlights the fact that our state of mind has a huge effect on our bodies. If we feel sad or worried, we should always seek someone to talk to. -
There is another part of us that is often neglected, but is needed for a healthy lifestyle. It’s difficult to describe, but its effect is clear to see when we are living healthily. It’s the part we call ‘spirit’, something that affects our attitudes and our sense of well-being. It also affects our relationships and is regarded by many as ‘the breath of life’. Christians believe that our spirit can only be fulfilled by God being in us and working with and through us to give us purpose, well-being and strength. It’s a part of us that is worth paying attention to when we want to be and feel at our best.
Time for reflection
Read the following quote from Martin Luther King.
‘The richer we have become materially, the poorer we become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly in the air like birds and swim in the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.’
Ask the students to consider these words carefully while you read them again. The words put a different emphasis on the things that matter most if we are to live healthy lives.
