Sense of Coherence - TOWARDS LIFE-KNOWLEDGE

Contemporary health science has largely operated within the paradigm of pathogenesis, focusing on the mechanisms of disease. This paper proposes a comprehensive alternative that integrates three emerging frameworks: salutogenesis, John McMurtry’s life‑value onto‑axiology, and Robert K. Naviaux’s theory of salugenesis. Salutogenesis emphasises psychosocial resources and a sense‑of‑coherence that enables individuals to perceive life as comprehensible, manageable and meaningful. Life‑value onto‑axiology supplies a universal ethical criterion, asserting that a value is whatever expands the range of thought, felt‑being and action, and critiques life‑blind rationality that equates reason with self‑maximisation. Salugenesis describes the bottom‑up, energy‑intensive sequence of molecular, cellular and behavioural changes that constitute healing, highlighting the role of mitochondrial phenotypes and the cell danger response. Through comparative analysis, this paper identifies complementarities and gaps among these frameworks and synthesises them into a regenerative health model. The integrated model emphasises multi‑level interventions — supporting cellular healing, cultivating psychosocial coherence and grounding policy in life‑value ethics — and underscores the necessity of environmental stewardship for health. It concludes with practical implications for assessment, therapy and research, advocating for a paradigm that enables life across all domains.

This white paper introduces GRACE — Grand Regenerative Actualization Coherent Emergent — a systemic framework for restoring life coherence across personal, social, and ecological domains. Grounded in the principles of salutogenesis, it reframes today’s polycrisis (noncommunicable diseases, mental fragmentation, ecological collapse, and cultural disintegration) as the outcome of a meta-crisis of coherence.

Rather than viewing these crises as separate, GRACE maps their shared origins to five interwoven misalignments: ontological, epistemological, relational, metabolic, and ecological. These fractures have seeded recursive feedback loops of allostatic overload, locking individuals, communities, and institutions into states of chronic stress and systemic dysfunction.

At the heart of the GRACE response lies the revival of Sense of Coherence (SOC) and Generalized Resistance Resources (GRRs) — two salutogenic constructs pioneered by Aaron Antonovsky — as design principles for regenerating vitality, trust, meaning, and resilience at every level of system. SOC becomes not only a health construct but a civilizational compass for regenerative transformation.

The paper articulates seven strategic fields of regeneration — Root Repair, Mythos & Meaning, Bioculture, Coherence Commons, Systemic Inversion, Re-Storied Time, and Cosmic Coherence — each designed to heal specific systemic fractures and reestablish flow, rhythm, and belonging.

GRACE further proposes a multi-scalar implementation strategy rooted in bioregional governance, commons-based care, and regenerative public finance, supported by coherence-based metrics, narrative rituals, and participatory learning systems. A Living Document architecture ensures that GRACE evolves with feedback, cultural adaptation, and co-creative stewardship.

Ultimately, GRACE is not a fixed model or blueprint — it is a living pattern, a pulse of regenerative coherence capable of guiding the emergence of a new civilization aligned with the sacred continuity of life.