50 Shades of Healing
What does “holistic” even mean and is it better than just taking some ibuprofen?
In my years of studying different modalities and teachings for my work as a holistic healing practitioner as well as in my own healing journey I encountered many different interpretations of the concept “holistic”.
Sometimes, holistic is associated with alternative medicine. But in fact, there is a big part of the alternative medicine field that treats people in a very similar way as classical western medicine. Symptom oriented and within the narrative of something in need to be fixed in a person in order for them to be able to pick their life back up and re-integrate into the spaces where they got sick in the first place.
Holistic means whole, so what are all the components that need to be taken into consideration for a healing to touch the whole?
As the universe is limitless, so is our consciousness and everything is interconnected, the answer to this question can only have eternally unfolding layers. And still, for those of us confronted with the practical minutiae of providing or receiving healing, even knowing that it is impossible to answer this question, it is still worth it to take a snapshot in time and explore what it could mean for us.
The most common approach to holistic healing modalities might be to regard both the mind and the body, (accounting for the whole of a person).
Obviously here we are still engaging in dualistic notions: It’s like finding things probably relating to the same issue in two separate boxes: irritated gut and dysbiosis in the body box and related anxiety and abandonment trauma in the mind box for instance. Still, we are one step further from just treating the body as if it were a machine. Let’s create a sort of crude map of different healing archetypes based on our example of gut disturbance/anxiety:
Different healing archetypes from Dinosaur Physician to Luna Lovegood:
“Gut dysbiosis is a hoax. I only believe in what I learned 30 years ago in university. If you don’t have cancer or colitis, please leave my office. Wait..here, some ibuprofen and SSRIs for good measure.”
“We need to clean up the gut! we ran a lab test and found bad dysbiosis. Not to scare you but…There might be heavy metals involved as well…Here are your herbal remedies and probiotics. 1500 Euros, done. Next patient please.”
“We need to treat both: good old medicine for the belly and a bit of therapy for the mind. My name is Beige, my favorite food is potato puree and I could also fix your bike later.”
“We need to heal the trauma and regulate the nervous system to deal with the anxiety and the gut will repair itself. Let’s build nervous system regulation churches…”
“There is no gut. Local realism was disproven. Just don’t identify with your symptoms, with your body, visualize yourself healthy and raise your vibe vibe vibe. Is it already working? No? You’re ruining my vibe. You must have not gotten the 5 D memo.”
“Let me speak to you in light language and thou shall be healed.”
Picture by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash
Even though this list was obviously satirical, all of those approaches have their sacred place and most importantly, all of them can work, because they serve people with different belief systems, different filters in their auras, different glasses on their third eyes.
If for example we tell a heavily materialistic thinking person to acknowledge and heal their trauma in order to rid them of their digestive problems usually it simply won’t work — leaving them with even more fodder for the materialism gun. Maybe this persons soul is deeply interested in exploring the simplicity of “all is what is seems” and so they will produce one perfect healing after the next (of course within the boundaries of scientific expectations for what healing looks like).
Sometimes though, it wouldn’t work in such a case, especially when there is a preincarnational contract to awaken them to the energetic nature of the body through the experience of healing — And this is were we keep tripping up.
Some things work for some people some times.
This is a huge amount of ambiguity to hold for a human mind that wants to be told what to do and chill out already.
Fortunately we are not completely blind. We all have a wonder weapon. It is called discernment. It can be sharpened with practice. It can serve us the right thing at the right time which would be fatal at another time or for another person.
For me this is what holistic means: Taking into account the individual person, their environment, their belief system and letting them figure out what brings wholeness to their experience at this moment. Even though homeopathy might be more holistic than taking an ibuprofen, I wouldn’t recommend prescribing globuli to someone who has a ton of conditioning around “non-scientific” methods doing harm. Any healing effect will be blocked from entering the experience of that person anyways.
In the tradition that I work in we operate on the premise that we create our personal reality based on our beliefs. Within this narrative though, beliefs happen to be a bit more complex than “I believe …” or “I think…”. They are an amalgam of different mental-emotional energies hardened into a cluster, collecting foreign energy dust and still generating life in a different time (usually a past experience that instilled or reenforced a belief).
Often times the objective of the work is to support people in repairing their own discernment system and connecting them organically with what is right for them at the time in the right amount. It’s definitely not about telling people what they should do, think or how they should feel.
As A Course in Miracles says: “Miracles are everyone’s right, but purification is necessary first.” Healing can be aiding in the purification, holding space for people while they un-gaslight themselves from inauthentic notions of themselves and all aspects of their life.
Maybe feeling sick and depressed is the medicine for the moment and everything that would take someone out of that state would be a forceful interference … to the disconnect.
Maybe after clearing some blocks, conditioning and resistance the patient wakes up the next day and the perfect diet finds them organically with a flashy sign that is flashy only to the right person.
So to sum it up, holistic healing means meeting a person exactly where they are and seeing them for them.
And of course the mindbody/bodymind can heal itself. We can heal ourselves. But fortunately in this interdependent universe we don’t have to do everything alone.
Also, (holistically) healing each other is a fun game to explore.
