What Is Holistic Medicine: Understanding Mind and Body

If your medical practitioners work to understand the whole you—your mind, body, spirit, emotions, and even your social self—you’re very fortunate, and your chances of a long, healthy life are strong. When a health team comes together with interest in all of those aspects of your self, they are practicing holistic medicine, and that’s becoming more common even among traditional Western practitioners.

If we hopped into a “wayback” machine a la Mr. Peabody of cartoon fame (ask your mother, she’ll remember), we’d travel back in time to when all doctors, shamans, and practitioners looked at people as integrated whole entities. It’s only in quite modern times that medical specialization got so out of control that some who practiced forgot that there’s a whole person in every patient.

Now, we’re coming full circle, and even health insurance companies recognize the whole is the sum of its parts and you can’t fix one without tending to the others. When you break a leg, the bone must be set. True enough. But you’ll have an emotional reaction to the event. Your mind and emotions can cause physical pain. Treating the pain without treating the root is as pointless as trying to light a candle in a hurricane.

The Canadian Holistic Medical Association says:

[Holistic treatment] emphasizes…analysis of physical, nutritional, environmental, emotional, social, spiritual and lifestyle values. It encompasses all modalities of diagnosis and treatment including drugs and surgery, if no safe alternative exists. Holistic medicine focuses on education and responsibility…to achieve balance and well being.

You can benefit from this pendulum swing in modern medicine. Put your health on project status and find your own team of practitioners willing to see you as an entirety. Ask friends, family, and practitioners you trust for referrals. Build your team. Get to know them, allowing them to know you, too. Seek and follow their advice when you need balance or assistance.

Find a spiritual advisor who can interpret your past lives, look at your future potential, and help find your center. Choose a great doctor. Seek a soulmate, even if that person isn’t a lover, and support each other socially. Talk openly about how you feel and about what you need.

In your everyday life, feed and fuel your body, mind, spirit, emotions, and social needs as if your life depends on it. Make healthy, balanced choices in all that you do. Apparently, we’re all discovering the benefit of that lifestyle to be a holistic truth.