What is Whole Health?
Whole Health is an alternative health care philosophy. In a broader context, this phrase also describes a lifestyle and way of being. In both cases, Whole Health indicates the working towards and ultimately achieving a sustainable healthy balance in all aspects (mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual) of a person’s life.
In this way, Whole Health methods do not just treat physical or emotional symptoms. Instead, these techniques use pain, suffering, and other indicators of imbalance as clues to issues that need to be addressed in order to achieve equilibrium. Recognizing, learning from, letting go, and healing these issues or root causes frees up the natural flow of energy in the body. This, in turn, allows an individual to make healthier (content filled) choices in their life.
The Four Aspects of Whole Health
Essentially, Whole Health recognizes that as humans, we are more than the sum of our parts. At all times, the four aspects of our being are interacting and working together. Our physical being collects sense data about the world around us. Our mental aspects process this raw data using our spiritual aspects as filters. The result is experienced as emotional aspects. When all of these parts have a healthy balance, the days have a distinct flow. Life’s little bumps don’t bother us so much. We simply look at the problem, come up with a solution, and follow through.
However, when even one aspect of our lives is off balance, life can become a constant battle. Very quickly, problems in one part of our life spill over into other areas. For instance, something as simple as a sleepless night caused by job stress can quickly morph into a day where our patience runs short and we need an extra cup or two of coffee just to survive. Our lack of attention causes mistakes at work and the day just seems to get worse from there.
The same thing happens at a deeper level. Imbalance in one aspect of our lives tends to carry over to another. Thus, limiting or unhealthy interpretational programs (spiritual aspects) colour the raw data our mental aspects are trying to process. We react (emotional aspects) by pushing down difficult emotions which eventually cause symptoms such as pain and fatigue. Our physical condition further deteriorates as we attempt to compensate with quick fixes such as sugar and caffeine (drugs, alcohol, sex, or codependent relationships). Before long, an unhealthy cycle begins, often getting more pronounced with each go around.
Whole Health Healing
Whole Health seeks to break that unhealthy chain of events. Using physical and emotional symptoms, Whole Health methods first identify the area or areas of greatest dysfunction. From here, other techniques are used to look deeper into that specific problem in order to determine the best course of action (or inaction). Sometimes healing is as simple as accepting a situation as reality and being willing to move on. Other times, it requires more complexity or finesse such as learning how to make healthier choices or opening up to previously ignored possibilities.