Fundamentally, the word health itself comes from the root word “whole”. What we call, ‘feeling healthy’, is that we have a sense of wholeness within us. If we are free of diseases medically, that is not health. If we feel like a complete human being in our body, mind and spirit, that is when we are really healthy. There are any number of people who are medically healthy, but not healthy in the real sense because they do not experience a sense of wellness within themselves.

If one has to experience this sense of wholeness and oneness, it’s important that one’s body, mind, and above all, one’s energy functions at a certain level of intensity within themselves. Now, physically, as per medical terms, one may be healthy, but energies may be lethargic. One doesn’t know why things don’t happen in life the way they should, both inside and outside; this is simply because one is not taking care of the well-being of his energy.

For every physical or psychological situation that you go through in life, there is an energy basis, which in turn has a chemical basis. In a way, modern allopathic medicines have become just chemistry. For every problem that arises in your body, you are just trying to take in some medicine, a chemical, and come to some kind of balance. If you use one chemical to bring down one aspect or enhance another, there is also a side effect to this. For this side-effect, there is an antidote; for the antidote, there is another antidote, it’s an endless chain. Whatever is happening on the chemistry level in your body is only controlled by the way your energies function. Because a man has got excess acids within him, you ingest some alkaline medicine into him. But why does he have excessive acids? Because of the way his mind, his body, and above all, his energy, functions.

So, in yoga, when we say “health,” we don’t look at the body; we don’t look at the mind; we only look at the energy – the way it is. 

                                          - Sadhguru