How to Assess Your Health: Mind, Body and Spirit
We know that your body isn’t separate from your thoughts, and your mind isn’t separate from your spirit. At Nova Wellness, we believe healing begins with an awareness of all parts of your health, and awareness starts with asking the right questions.
If you’re feeling “off” but can’t pinpoint exactly why, it may be time to pause and reflect across the full spectrum of your well-being: mind, body, and spirit. Our holistic doctor in San Francisco shares how we assess your health through a whole-person lens.
Why a Holistic Health Assessment Matters
In conventional medicine, symptoms are often treated in isolation: fatigue is met with a basic blood test, anxiety with a prescription, and gut issues with a referral to a gastroenterologist. More often than not, physical health is the main focus, with minor consideration given to the mind and hardly any thought given to spiritual health. But at Nova Wellness, we look deeper. We ask why your symptoms are showing up and how they may be connected across the physical, emotional, and spiritual layers of your life.
The Body: What Is Your Physical Health Telling You?
Your body often speaks the loudest, especially when it's been ignored for too long. Physical symptoms can be messages from deeper imbalances, whether in your lifestyle, environment, or unresolved emotions.
When we work together, we begin with an assessment of your physical health. We use advanced lab testing, nutritional assessments, and lifestyle support to understand what your body needs and how to support it towards balance.
Toxins: We look at your lifestyle and environment and learn what’s in your air, food, water, and products, and how those exposures may be impacting your body’s ability to detoxify and regulate. Toxins can accumulate over time, dysregulating the immune system, disrupting hormones, and contributing to inflammation or fatigue. We also assess your lifestyle for hidden sources of toxic load, including chronic stress.
Genetics: Your family history offers important clues about potential predispositions, but genes are not your destiny. We explore how your genetic makeup may influence your detox pathways, methylation, inflammation response, and nutrient needs.
Infections: Chronic or hidden infections (like Epstein-Barr virus, Lyme, parasites, or mold) can manifest as long-term fatigue, brain fog, autoimmune issues, or mysterious symptoms that don’t resolve.
Gut function: Your gut is central to almost every aspect of your health. We assess digestive function, food intolerances, microbiome balance, and gut lining integrity to uncover the causes of an unhealthy gut. These are common causes of bloating, constipation, diarrhea, and reflux. Cravings, brain fog, and skin issues often trace back to imbalances in the gut as well.
Hormones: Hormones govern everything from energy and mood to sleep and metabolism. We examine patterns related to your menstrual cycle (if applicable), libido, thyroid function, stress hormones and blood sugar regulation.
Nutrient levels: We understand your diet and study whether your body is absorbing what it needs. Are deficiencies contributing to fatigue, anxiety, or hair loss? Are your meals consistent, balanced, and aligned with your current energy demands? We’ll explore both your dietary patterns and lab results to identify where targeted support or supplementation is needed.
The Mind: How Are Your Thoughts, Emotions, and Beliefs Impacting You?
Mental and emotional health are deeply intertwined with physical symptoms. Stress, anxiety, and limiting beliefs don’t just live in your head; they also live in your body and can manifest as a variety of health conditions.
We conduct an assessment of:
Somatic Responses: We pay attention to how your body holds your emotions. Do you clench your jaw? Hold tension in your shoulders? Feel a pit in your stomach during stress? These physical responses are often unconscious, but they reveal messages about you and your life, and what you need.
Emotional Health: We look at your relationship with emotions: Are you able to feel and express them, or do they get suppressed, numbed, or stored? Are certain emotions like anger, sadness, or grief uncomfortable or unfamiliar?
Stress: Many of our patients live in a near-constant state of stress, especially in a fast-paced city like San Francisco. We assess how chronic stress is affecting your sleep, digestion, hormones, and mood. More importantly, we examine how your nervous system is wired: Are you stuck in fight-or-flight? Do you know how to come down after being activated? How do you nourish yourself?
Relationship Dynamics: Our mental health is deeply shaped by the people around us. We explore your relationship landscape including family patterns, attachment styles, and communication habits. How do you show up in relationship? Are you able to keep healthy boundaries and express your needs? Understanding these dynamics helps us unravel the emotional loops that may be keeping you stuck or stressed.
The Spirit: Are You Living in Alignment With Your Inner Truth?
The spiritual layer of health is often the most quietly powerful. While the spiritual layer of health may feel more abstract, it is just as essential to your overall vitality. This doesn’t have to be religious, it’s simply about your connection to something greater, to a deeper level of meaning, and to yourself. Here’s what we examine in a spirit assessment:
Soul Alignment: We begin by asking: Are you living in alignment with who you truly are? Are your choices reflecting your values, your desires, and your inner truth? Often, burnout, fatigue, or even illness can be signs that your soul is calling for a course correction. Together, we explore where your life may have drifted out of alignment and how to gently return to yourself.
Energetics: Everything holds energy, including your thoughts, your habits, your environment. We assess how you’re running your own energy. We look at the subtle layers of your energy body to understand where it may be blocked, drained, or stagnant. You may also be holding energy that’s not yours. This might show up as a heaviness you can’t explain, fatigue, or infections that won’t go away.
Family Constellation: You don’t just carry your own experiences - you carry the stories, beliefs, and patterns of those who came before you. Family Constellation work helps us uncover inherited dynamics that may be shaping your relationships, behaviors, or health. By bringing these unconscious patterns to light, we open space for healing across generations.
Spiritual Practice: You don’t need to follow a specific religion or belief system to have a spiritual practice. We explore what helps you feel grounded, connected, and resourced and that can include spending time in nature, meditation, prayer, movement, or creative expression. We learn your current spiritual practice, and support you in developing a daily practice that can resource you, and connect you to a sense of peace and meaning.
View the Nova Wellness Natropathic Health Assessment Visual below:
Ready to Begin Your Assessment?
You don’t need to have all the answers to start; that’s why we are here - to support you every step of the way. You deserve to be cared for completely. At Nova Wellness, we’re not here to fix you. We’re here to walk with you as you return to wholeness.
Book a discovery call today to explore how we can support your healing across mind, body, and spirit.