« Eating Right | Home | Homeopathic Medicine »
Holistic Healing
By peace | March 25, 2007
Holistic health is a term used by alternative medicine advocates to describe medical care that views physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of life as closely interconnected and balanced. Holistic health care attends to the entire person, including the mind and body, as a whole, not as parts or segments. It attempts to maximize the body’s own natural healing resources to combat and prevent disease.
Holistic medicine is the art and science of healing that addresses the whole person – body, mind, and spirit. Holistic medicine emphasizes the need to look at the whole person, including analysis of physical, nutritional, environmental, emotional, social, spiritual and lifestyle values. Holistic medicine encompasses all stated modalities of diagnosis and treatment including drugs and surgery if no safe alternative exists.
The practice of holistic medicine integrates conventional and alternative therapies to prevent and treat disease, and most importantly, to promote optimal health. Holistic medicine focuses on patient education and responsibility for personal efforts to achieve balance and well being, that is participation in the healing process. This condition of holistic health is defined as the unlimited and unimpeded free flow of life force energy through body, mind, and spirit. Advocates of the holistic health philosophy typically seek or use a wide variety of alternative practices, the most common of which include acupuncture, ayurveda, Siddha, chiropractic, naturopathy, yoga, aromatherapy, homeopathy, massage, Tai Chi, Chinese herbology, Medical cannabis, medicinal herbs, and Prolotherapy.
Holistic Medicine has been used by millions of people around the world to:
- Heal chronic diseases (including serious chronic illnesses)
- Treat psychological disorders
- Successfully treat childhood illnesses
- Treat acute illnesses
- Normalize weight
- Prevent disease
- Improve overall health and increase energy level
- Transform one’s outlook upon life
Applying the term holistic to concepts of health and fitness means that achieving and maintaining good health involves much more than just taking care of all the various components that make up the physical body. In Holistic Health, people are motivated by how good it feels to have lots of energy and enthusiasm for life, knowing that what they are doing that day will allow them to continue to feel this great for years to come.
When disease and chronic conditions do occur, the Holistic Health principles can also be applied. The term is usually changed to holistic medicine, and additional factors are added. The healthcare professionals using the holistic approach work in partnership with their patients. They recommend treatments that support the body’s natural healing system and consider the whole person and the whole situation.
A holistic approach to healing goes beyond just eliminating symptoms. For example, taking an aspirin for a headache would be like disconnecting the oil light on the dash of a car when it flashes. The irritation is eliminated, but the real problem still exists. In holistic medicine, a symptom is considered a message that something needs attention. So, the symptom is used as a guide to look below the surface for the root cause. Then what really needs attention can be addressed.
The Benefits of Holistic Health: Holistic Health supports reaching higher levels of wellness as well as preventing illness. People enjoy the vitality and well-being that results from their positive lifestyle changes, and are motivated to continue this process throughout their lives.
In alternative medicine, a holistic approach to healing recognizes that the emotional, mental, spiritual and physical elements of each person comprise a system, and attempts to treat the whole person in its context, concentrating on the cause of the illness as well as symptoms. Examples of such holistic therapies include Acupuncture, Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, Indian Head Massage, Naturopathic medicine, Qi Gong, Reiki, and Reflexology.
Topics: All Posts, Mental Health | No Comments »
