Joy of Health: A Spiritual Concept of Integration and the Practicalities of Living

The Joy of Health deals with the body as physical matter and the inter- relationship of the body and mind. We cannot separate the spirit from the body and mind, since we are born as integrated beings and it is our soul and spirit that instill our motivation for life and living. But the important place to begin in understanding ourself is in the part of self that we relate to in this moment of our existence. Putting the physical self in perspective is the goal of Kathy Oddenino's first book. This is not a technical book about health but a spiritual concept of integration and its influences on the practicality of living. The contents will not necessarily agree with scientific material but it is truth from a higher level of understanding. If you are ready for it, it will automatically read as truth to you. The focus of The Joy of Health is to trigger awareness in our minds about what health is and the joy that is found in understanding what health truly means as human beings on earth. Health is not simply one issue but many issues with individual impact on the three integrates of the human body, which are spirit, soul mind, and physical body. It is impossible to maintain health of one integral without maintaining health of the other two.

Kathy Oddenino is a philosopher for our time. She has been intimately involved in understanding the "science of living" ever since she was born in Salem, Illinois in 1930. As the second of five children, Kathy came into life sick to present her parents with an additional challenge during the Depression years. At six months old she had the whooping cough, which went into double pneumonia, and gave her parents the shock of their lives by dying. The family physician declared Kathy dead and the blankets were pulled over her face. While the physician sat at the dining room table signing the death certificate, she began to cry under her shroud.

Kathy's mother told her this story after Kathy was an adult and a mother and very sick with another disease. Kathy always thought her mother told her about dying because her mother was still trying very hard to understand why her daughter was still living and why she had spent her life with a passion and a mission to overcome any disease that had the audacity to challenge her. To Kathy, this experience is a normal part of her life as an evolving consciousness. Her passion and mission of personal healing are the same passion and mission she feels to teach the simple truth of who we are as spirits learning to be human.

Kathy is a "real-life" philosopher for our time because in sharing her own wisdom, in the Metaphysical tradition of Pythagoras, Socrates, Hippocrates, Hypatia, and other great philosophers of old, she defines our dual soul and spirit consciousness in relationship to the miracle of our body. To Kathy, every question about the nature of our human life is important. If you feel stimulated by the knowledge of what it means to be human and the power of our creation in everyday life, then you are a Seeker of Knowledge in the same tradition which drew great crowds of thinking people in ancient times. We are all equal as teachers and students, yet at this time in our world philosophers in the Metaphysical tradition of practical wisdom are few.

Annapolis has been Kathy's home for nearly 20 years. Kathy's great-grandfather was married in St. Anne's Church in 1728, so choosing to live in Annapolis is for her a "coming home." Just as Metaphysical Philosophy teaches, the generations of life fulfill their cycles. Since 1984 Kathy Oddenino has been teaching classes, seminars, and retreats in Annapolis and around the country with a focus on understanding our human consciousness. She has written six books published by Joy Publications entitled, The Joy of Health: A Spiritual Concept of Integration and the Practicalities of Living; Bridges of Consciousness; Sharing: Self-Discovery in Relationships; Love, Truth & Perception; Healing Ourself: Growing Beyond the True Cause of Disease; and Depression: Our Normal Transitional Emotions. Her seventh book, The Journey Home: Our Evolving Consciousness, will be published in 1999. Joy Publications has also audiotaped for distribution over 150 of Kathy's self-actualization seminars. Kathy is a noted speaker on a diverse range of humanistic topics and has been a frequent guest on radio and TV talk shows.

Kathy's 40 years' experience as a registered nurse include 12 years of medical research in transplant and immunology, 16 years of health care administration and management, and 12 years of emergency health care. She speaks with an honesty and depth of understanding seldom found in the medical arena, since we have not been taught about the power of our internal spirit because the belief system of our culture has focused upon an external God and an external physician as being responsible for saving our soul and our body. Kathy's life experiences taught her that our belief systems must change for us to become healthy of body and soul and as a society and world. Her interaction with personnel, families, patients, and with individual clients as a Metaphysical consultant has created an expansive understanding of the personal power of healing within each of us and is a living example of the reality of her Metaphysical philosophy.

Using our power of healing is not a miracle for any of us, Kathy says, but it is our inherent gift of balance. Kathy's experiences with disease and healing have continued throughout her life, and each one has expanded her understanding of our personal power of healing. When we focus our attention only upon the physical aspects of healing our body, we miss the most important issue of all, which is our inherent power to balance our body with our mind and lifestyle. Metaphysics takes us beyond the physical into the invisible energy of Being, God, Truth, Knowledge, Energy, Creation, and our Human and Divine Relationships, and it is this relationship of knowledge to our human life that is missing from most of what we are taught today. True knowledge is food for the soul, just as the richness of nature's food is food for our body which is our tool of evolving consciousness.