What is Holistic Healing?
What is the purpose of Holistic Healing?
Holistic means whole, the same as the word healing. The purpose of holistic therapies is to restore the person's natural wholeness, integrity and balance of the person on several levels. A holistic therapist considers and works simultaneously on all dimensions of the individual, physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual. When we are ill or suffer trauma, we experience separations and inner/outer conflicts (conscious and unconscious) on different levels of our being. A holistic approach can help you investigate and bring presence to the self, understand the root cause of the unbalance and take aligned actions. Working holistically also means observing people’s behaviours and form of expression, how they move their bodies, actively listening to their words, and paying attention to subtle dynamics; everything is not said but is part of the conversation.
The five main Holistic Self Dimensions
Humans are an extraordinary complexity of infinite and unique aspects, parts and characteristics. We often experience or focus on these elements separately when ideally, we should pay attention to how all these elements are connected and complementary to each other and how we can make them work harmoniously for our advantage and global well-being. This means paying attention to all these different dimensions of the self:
The Physical (body language)
The Emotional (action/reaction, responses and behaviours)
The Mental (Inner belief, values and thought forms)
The Energetic (subtle and energetic interactions)
The Spiritual (sense of purpose and core belief)
Why are some approaches not as effective?
Often, the therapeutic approaches available on the market focus only on some or one of these aspects, leaving behind essential parts of the self and losing sight of the being in its entirety. They may provide coping strategies without an adequate understanding of why we are going through specific experiences in life and how the unconscious mind interferes and repeat certain patterns.
One of the fields that I find highly neglected is the emotional plan, where we usually get stuck and is clogged and overwhelmed, which can create serious and lasting unbalances in the whole being. The energetic plan is also neglected, listening and learning how to tune with our subtle perceptions and inner guidance and the spiritual plan; understanding deeply how this experience can become an opportunity for my awareness to expand and grow and what is the lesson to learn on a larger scale.
The consequences of not considering the person's wholeness and uniqueness are why modern medicine fails to understate certain illnesses' root causes and provide an appropriate cure.
Here is an example: Suppose I have been through a separation from my partner that has caused me to shut down and isolate myself, and I am struggling to trust others and express my feelings. I decided to find a psychologist/counsellor/talk therapist to discuss what happened, but after a few sessions, whenever I feel emotional, I feel uncomfortable, and I suppress my feelings; I am not encouraged to express them by the therapist, so I am unsure of what to do with them. After six months of therapy, I feel I am just going around in circles, and I am not sure if I should continue, I feel that just talking about is not giving the results I want, so I decide to quit. The therapist gave me some coping strategies to help me to feel better, but after a few months, I am exactly where I started.
In this case, because the emotional plan was not acknowledged and encouraged properly by the therapist, the person did not get to release the emotional charge caused by the event. Has we know, emotions are not logical and sometimes cannot be processed rationally; they just need to flow. If the emotional overload doesn’t get to discharge, the person may develop physical symptoms such as stomach pain, headaches, tiredness, fatigue, stress, anxiety, constipation, and muscle ache, just to name a few common ones. The body will try to tell that something is off alignment, and on n a subtle level, the person may also have some energy leakages or blockages due to the thought forms that have weakened the auric field, losing connection with myself. This is why talking about what happened is often only the tip of the iceberg and could be a great way to begin the journey, but after a while, I believe that there are further steps to take.
