The Model of Occupational Wholeness

Where what you do meets who you are.

Occupational therapist, researcher and author Dr Farzaneh Yazdani built a model that explains why a full life can still feel empty, and how to re-think and re-plan it around four forces.

24 questions 6 minutes Confidential Published by Routledge

The Model of Occupational Wholeness Being, Belonging and Becoming sit at the three points of a triangle. Doing sits at its centre, joined to all three, as the intermediate need through which they are met. Thinking and Feeling hang below Doing as the two things interrelated with it. Context encircles the whole figure. C O N T E X T BeingBelongingBecomingDoingsFeelingThinking

Three needs, met through what you do

The model, one piece at a time

Occupational Wholeness is not about doing more. Select any part of the figure, whether a need, a relationship between two needs, or the Context around them, to see what it means.

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A diagram of the Model of Occupational Wholeness. Being, Belonging and Becoming sit at the three points of a triangle. Doings sits at its centre, joined to each of the three, as the intermediate need through which the other three are met. Each pair of needs is joined by a named relationship, and the whole model sits inside Context. Select any element to read about it.

Intermediate need

Doings: the intermediate need

Everything a person occupies themselves with (work, care, study, rest, worship, play) and, equally, what they deliberately do not do. Doings sit at the centre as the intermediate need: not an end in themselves, but the means through which the needs of Being, Belonging and Becoming are formed and met. To count as a Doing an act has to be voluntary and intentional rather than reflexive, and it has to have a purpose; the meaning a person assigns to it may be positive or negative, and either can motivate.

The Model of Occupational Wholeness. Figure adapted, with the relationships between needs made selectable, from Yazdani, F. (2023). Occupational Wholeness for Health and Wellbeing: A Guide to Re-thinking and Re-planning Life. Routledge. View the book

About

Thirty years of asking one question: what makes a life feel whole?

Occupational therapist, academic and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. MSc Occupational Therapy Programme Leader at the University of Roehampton, Associate Researcher at Oxford Brookes, and Research Interest Groups Lead on the board of the ROTOS Foundation.

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Years in occupational therapy practice and education
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Peer-reviewed publications and book chapters
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Countries where the model has been taught
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Books, including the Routledge guide

Work together

Consultancy, training and speaking

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Organisational consultancy

Applying Occupational Wholeness to how teams work: workload design, meaning at work, and the gap between what a role demands and who people are.

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Practitioner training & supervision

Small-cohort training for occupational therapists and allied health professionals, supervised directly by Dr Yazdani.

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Workshops & seminars

Interactive sessions built around the questionnaire and real re-planning exercises, for students, clinical teams and community groups.

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Keynote speaking

Conference talks on occupational wholeness, migration and enterprise, and the cultural dimensions of wellbeing.

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Cover of Occupational Wholeness for Health and Wellbeing by Farzaneh Yazdani, published by Routledge

The book

Occupational Wholeness for Health and Wellbeing

A guide to re-thinking and re-planning life. Published by Routledge, it sets out the model in full: the theory, the assessment, and the practical work of bringing Doing back into balance.

Chartreuse Deep navy Teal Warm paper

Every colour on this site is sampled from this cover.

Free self-assessment

How whole does your life feel right now?

Six minutes, 24 questions. You get a score across Being, Belonging and Becoming, plus a plain-language reading of where your Doing is out of balance. Nothing is published, and nothing is shared.

Question 1 of 24: try it, nothing is scored

Thinking about your life over the last four weeks

What I do helps me be myself

1 — Far below my expectation for satisfaction 6 — Far above my expectation for satisfaction

Research & writing

Latest from the work

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