Holistic health, or holism, means your whole (wholistic) body. The parts are intimately interconnected, they cannot exist without the whole, which is greater than the sum of the parts. Your big toe is attached to your head. As far as holistic health care goes this means that, for example, your gout should be considered in conjunction with your headache, which should be considered alongside your emotions - one of the intangible parts of you.
Interestingly, the opposite of holism is atomism. Humans have become very good at splitting the atom, but most remain ignorant of holism.
Holism is not the medical way, where everything is reduced to ever smaller minutiae. This reductionist way of thinking has dominated the human world for a few centuries. And it does have some advantages. You can isolate nutrients and discover what the effect on the body is without them.
The results are then written up in a specific way, with references back to other learned authors, and published as scientific. The holy (no pun intended) grail of the modern day.
However, what this lacks is the overall feeling, the bigger picture, the whole.
And I’m not sure you have to be very wise to make the same connection, without research. Common sense tells us that nutrients come from good food. The emphasis is on good. If you don’t eat proper food, how can your health ever be good?
This means that YOU are responsible for your health. You can’t blame anyone else for the food you are currently eating. You can try to justify why you eat badly. You can complain about the price of food, or the lack of good cafes close to work, or your lack of time to make good food. But all that does is to reflect the onus away from the culprit - you.
You have choices. You need to take responsibility for those, because you are the only one who can.
Some weeks ago, I wrote about how the medical model is based on the concept that ill health comes from outside you, according to Pasteur’s germ theory. This meant that you could bask in the (in)security that anything you did would not affect your health. Although the thread remains, no thinking person still believes this to be true. But the thread does remain. And the automatic response of most is to accept this.
By taking responsibility for your health (and your life), you are able to learn and grow. Once you start down the path of taking ownership for your life, new senses develop. You become aware of what your body has always tried to tell you. You start to listen to your intuition, your inner wisdom. You instinctively crave healthy foods, healthy actions. You instinctively know, and start to avoid, those people who do not support you.
Current human thinking, the reductionist way, the “I’m not responsible” concept has made slaves out of everyone. By blaming our parents, the government, our school, it keeps us firmly routed in the past, recreating the exact same scenario over and over again.
If you are brave enough to jump off the wheel, to be different from everyone else, to take responsibility for you, then your life can be transformed. This is also the only way to transform the world. One of my biggest passions is to change the world. But I know this has to start with me.
Bad news of a health disorder can inspire one person to take positive action to change direction, to find healthier choices, new alternatives. It can leave another feeling powerless and sad. It is up to you to seek out and support the means that empower and informs you, and to say no to those ways that drains your energy and your hope.
Homeopathic treatment is a true holistic medicine and probably the one with the deepest and broadest action. Everything is considered before a prescription is made - your gout, your headaches, your fears and anxieties, your reason to live. Get you treated, not the parts of you.
Interestingly, the opposite of holism is atomism. Humans have become very good at splitting the atom, but most remain ignorant of holism.
Holism is not the medical way, where everything is reduced to ever smaller minutiae. This reductionist way of thinking has dominated the human world for a few centuries. And it does have some advantages. You can isolate nutrients and discover what the effect on the body is without them.
The results are then written up in a specific way, with references back to other learned authors, and published as scientific. The holy (no pun intended) grail of the modern day.
However, what this lacks is the overall feeling, the bigger picture, the whole.
And I’m not sure you have to be very wise to make the same connection, without research. Common sense tells us that nutrients come from good food. The emphasis is on good. If you don’t eat proper food, how can your health ever be good?
This means that YOU are responsible for your health. You can’t blame anyone else for the food you are currently eating. You can try to justify why you eat badly. You can complain about the price of food, or the lack of good cafes close to work, or your lack of time to make good food. But all that does is to reflect the onus away from the culprit - you.
You have choices. You need to take responsibility for those, because you are the only one who can.
Some weeks ago, I wrote about how the medical model is based on the concept that ill health comes from outside you, according to Pasteur’s germ theory. This meant that you could bask in the (in)security that anything you did would not affect your health. Although the thread remains, no thinking person still believes this to be true. But the thread does remain. And the automatic response of most is to accept this.
By taking responsibility for your health (and your life), you are able to learn and grow. Once you start down the path of taking ownership for your life, new senses develop. You become aware of what your body has always tried to tell you. You start to listen to your intuition, your inner wisdom. You instinctively crave healthy foods, healthy actions. You instinctively know, and start to avoid, those people who do not support you.
Current human thinking, the reductionist way, the “I’m not responsible” concept has made slaves out of everyone. By blaming our parents, the government, our school, it keeps us firmly routed in the past, recreating the exact same scenario over and over again.
If you are brave enough to jump off the wheel, to be different from everyone else, to take responsibility for you, then your life can be transformed. This is also the only way to transform the world. One of my biggest passions is to change the world. But I know this has to start with me.
Bad news of a health disorder can inspire one person to take positive action to change direction, to find healthier choices, new alternatives. It can leave another feeling powerless and sad. It is up to you to seek out and support the means that empower and informs you, and to say no to those ways that drains your energy and your hope.
Homeopathic treatment is a true holistic medicine and probably the one with the deepest and broadest action. Everything is considered before a prescription is made - your gout, your headaches, your fears and anxieties, your reason to live. Get you treated, not the parts of you.
Hi Madeleine, so agree with what you say. The victim mentality is so disempowering, I can't understand why some people seem to like to be at the mercy of other people, situations, circumstances, whatever.
ReplyDeleteI've taken my children abroad since they were only months old, and because none of us expect to get ill guess what, we don't. (I read years ago, from an allopathic doc, that most of those who get Delhi belly expect to.)
Perhaps I am very fortunate, but I haven't been to a conventional doc in over 20 years. It amazes me how people talk up their ailments, carry round headache / indigestion / goodness knows what packets of poison, and how popular magazines tell what you should have in the medicine cupboard to see you through the holidays, Christmas, beginning of winter etc etc.
I hope you change the world, even a little bit.
WHAT a different place it would be for all if everyone's first recourse was to homeopathy or other energy med. No more big pharma with their vested interest in ill health and their mega-bucks. But most important, better health for all, physical, mental and spiritual, at tiny cost.
So keep up the great work!
Ann UK