What is Holistic Health?
What do you think of when you hear someone talk about holistic health? Do you start to think of alternative medicine like massage, naturopathy, herbal supplements, and energy healing? If the words “holistic health” provoke any of these things, you’re on the right track — but lets think a little more broadly.
Holistic health honors the mind-spirit-body connection and utilizes a variety of holistic practices and clinically proven therapies and modalities to do so. Holistic health is focused on prevention and wellness finding and eliminating the root cause and not just addressing the symptoms. Holistic health is more comprehensive in approach and facilitating wellness for every part of the person. It encompasses physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness.
“Rather than focusing on illness or specific parts of the body, this ancient approach to health considers the whole person and how he or she interacts with his or her environment. It emphasizes the connection of mind, body, and spirit. The goal is to achieve maximum well-being, where everything is functioning the very best that is possible.” (American Holistic Health Association AHHA))
Holistic Means Whole You
Understanding that the areas of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health affect your overall health and wellness. This is the basic foundation of holistic health, Each of these areas individually affect all four areas collectively.
A great example of how one area may affect the others is stress. The feeling of stress is a psychological response to what is going on in your life, but stress may cause real physical symptoms, like insomnia, gastrointestinal symptoms (appetite changes or stomach upset), dry mouth, and muscle pain. When you have had a physical illness have you also felt anxious, sad, disconnected, or even angry along with that illness?
There are many examples of how one area of wellness could affect the others. If you are experiencing a low emotional state, you could also be affected physically. These physical symptoms could show up as not sleeping well, fatigued, or physical aches and pains. If you’re feeling spiritually disconnected, it might affect your emotional state, increasing a level or sadness, tearful, or overwhelmed, and so on.
These examples are obviously less desirable. However, the opposite can also occur. Research shows that spirituality may boost both your mental and physical wellness, specifically including a reduction in hypertension (or high blood pressure) and reduced stress.
When you visit a holistic health practitioner, these are just some of the reasons why you may be asked about more than your physical symptoms. He or she will also be concerned about your overall well-being, emotional or mental state, and quality of life. Having all this information can help a holistic health practitioner make recommendations that treat all these areas for more well-rounded results.
Holistic Health and Your Mental State
Everyone has varying needs when it comes to keeping a happy and balanced mental state. Psychiatric therapy, prescription medications, and other approaches embraced by Western medicine are useful and appropriate for many. However, the world of holistic health offers other valuable options that can help some people achieve better mental balance, either in addition to or independent of other methods. Since many of us try to focus on holistic health when it comes to caring for our mental state, let’s take a look at how a holistic approach to mental health and wellness may be beneficial.
Potential Mental Benefits of Holistic Health
When it comes to mental health and well-being, a holistic approach will usually take into account medical and psychiatric issues, but also spiritual and emotional ones. A holistic approach to achieving mental balance might include training your thoughts to reshape situations toward a more positive or productive view. You might simply choose to try and block the negativity of others or focus on finding what you can learn in a difficult experience.
Another example would be making shifts or changes in physical activity, diet, or stress reduction to improve your mental state. A daily walk outside could significantly boost your mood and help you cope with stress. Decreasing your intake of junk food might make you feel more energetic physically, which could leave you feeling more positive mentally. Using meditation to relieve stress may be key to avoiding a downward spiral of frustration and sadness.
What is Energy Healing
The term “energy healing” is used to describe a variety of holistic healing techniques that use the natural mind-body connection to promote emotional and physical well-being. By accessing, channeling, balancing, and manipulating the body’s natural energy centers, energy healing processes may help support health.
Energy healing is based on connecting the subconscious and conscious, engaging the whole person to promote health and well-being. Unlike the prescription medications or invasive surgeries that are common conventional medical practices, energy healing combines physical, mental, and spiritual aspects to enable the body’s natural healing ability. The Emotion Code® and Body Code™, are modalities of energy healing practices that were designed to be accessible and simple so anyone who wants to use them can!