Holistic Healing: How It Supports Modern Western Medicine

Holistic healing comes from the idea of “holism” or the idea that our health is much more complex than simply viewing the symptoms of our physical bodies as “sickness”. Health stems from focusing on the whole self. This includes the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical aspects of health as well. A healer who uses holistic healing understands this and helps individuals achieve complete or whole health.

The holistic movement can be viewed as a reaction to the cold, symptom-focused world of modern conventional medicine. According to practitioners of holistic healing, medicine for most of history was holistic, especially within the Chinese and Ayurvedic traditions. Over the last hundred and fifty years, after the discovery of pathogens, medicine has moved away from holistic approaches. Since most disease is believed by doctors to be caused by microscopic things from outside that can be killed with medications, modern health practitioners spend most of their time searching for pathogenic causes of disease, treating most sicknesses with drugs.

At some point, the patient stopped being the focus of healing. Instead, doctors merely searched for symptoms that could be controlled with medication. Holistic healing looks to return medicine to its traditional basis with a focus on the patient and use the advances of modern science in concert with other methods to achieve “whole health.”

Using conventional medicine, when one comes into the doctor with complaints of migraine headaches, the most typical treatment is to be given a painkiller. Naturally, only the most irresponsible of doctors would fail to investigate if there were further physical causes of the illness such as a brain tumor of chronic stress, but the cure is often the same: medication. A holistic approach would look at the treatment in a different way.

It is important to emphasize that holistic health care is not a standalone system; rather, it is an integrated approach that draws upon the expertise of a collective team of medical professionals, including doctors, mental health practitioners, nutritionists, and spiritual healers. By incorporating traditions such as Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, and indigenous healing, holistic health care offers a more comprehensive and nuanced approach to cultural and spiritual renewal, fostering a deeper sense of connection to the community.

A healer with a holistic healing focus would begin a consultation and begin to work with the patient to find the true cause of the headaches. In holistic healing, the therapist, doctor, or healer believes that there should be a dialogue between the client and the medicine practitioner. Instead of telling the patient what needs to be done or forcing a treatment upon them, the holistic healer will help encourage the patient to heal themselves from within.

The consultation will involve a series of questions in order to find the deeper underlying cause of the headaches instead of merely looking at the symptom itself. Many practitioners of holistic healing philosophy see many of our ailments as a manifestation of imbalances. These imbalances could be mental, emotional, or spiritual, so it is best for the healer to address all these areas to find the root cause.

The holistic healing therapist will look at physical causes such as diet, physical activity (or lack thereof), or environment and recommend an appropriate solution. This could be a recommended yoga or exercise program to reduce stress and encourage blood flow. They could work out a diet plan with the patient to find the healthiest foods to eat. They can maybe find out this way if the headaches are caused by a food intolerance, allergy, or general unhealthy lifestyle. This will address a possible physical cause.

Science seems to widely accept that health is a multi-faceted concept. For example, one famous model of health comes from Maslow’s pyramid of needs. According to his theories, in order to reach true health and self-actualization, it is necessary to meet a hierarchy of needs, each level meant to be fulfilled before you can reach the next point.

At the bottom are physiological needs such as a healthy diet, sleep, water, food, air. Next, is safety, both in from actual physical threats and emotional ones. This is followed by a sense of love and belonging. Built on this is self-esteem or love for oneself, which can be helped by affirmations or psychotherapy. Finally, people can reach self-actualization, which can be viewed as a total health.

His theories have been criticized, stating that different cultures may have different hierarchies and ratings of needs, though few seem to deny that all parts of the pyramid are important. In the end, whether Maslow is right or not, his theory addresses all the needs we have as human beings, which is worth considering, even if we don’t need them in the same order.

Many studies show that our physical health is influenced by a wide range of factors and thus a holistic healing approach to medicine may be the most effective method of healing. Studies have shown that there is a connection between our mental and physical health, so ignoring one of the two may be a bad idea.

Granted, there are specific psychologists who are actual experts on our mental health. Therefore, it is not recommended to forgo actual treatment from a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, but to have one physician who is looking at other areas of health can be beneficial.