What is Holistic Health?
Many people are confused about the meaning of “Holistic“? Does Holistic Healing sound like a foreign off-beat path of therapies and remedies like physic readings or tarot cards? Does it sound too New Age? This is the feeling I get whenever I mention a “Holistic” approach to a person. They discount it before I begin to explain the benefits this approach to health has to offer along with alternative and complementary medicines available. Let’s put any pre-judgments aside and explore the true meaning of “Holistic Health“.
Holistic by definition standards simply means “Whole“. Concerning Health it’s an approach that encompasses the whole body, not individual parts. Our body is made up of several parts (head, arms, legs, etc.) but all these parts make up one whole person. When treating a patient in a “Holistic” manner we are not looking to treat specific symptoms.
For example: Jane comes in to see a Holistic Health Practitioner (HHP) complaining about reoccurring headaches. A Holistic approach to this problem is not about treating the headache itself because the head is only one part of the body. An HHP will ask for information regarding Jane’s lifestyle, background, job, and so forth. This information is important to solving something as small as a headache because all of these issues play a very important part in this problem. Jane’s symptom is treated in a whole encompassing manner. A headache can be easily solved by taking a choice of medications available at any drug store but this will only solve the problem temporarily. It’s treating a part, not the whole. It’s about getting at the root of the issue. Headaches are occurring because another part of Jane’s life is out of balance, it may be work, stress, or lifestyle.
Diseases, Illness, Injury are all components of imbalance in the body and can be effectively be treated with an Holistic approach. Many issues are solved with Nutrition & Herbal Medicine alone. The array of complementary therapies available that work with a Holistic approach help encourage the balance our body strives to achieve to stay healthy.
I agree. A lot of people don’t take into account the body as a whole when solving health issues. They usually are looking for a quick way to relieve the issue (which is usually temporary) instead of getting to the root of the issue.