Holistic healing is healing which embodies many different aspects of the physical and metaphysical bodies. It includes many different variations of healing methods, spanning from well-known and trusted methods such as acupuncture and chiropractors, to more eclectic methods such as crystal use and energetic healing through the chakras. In its essence, holistic healing will tend to encompass aspects of either the mind or the spirit as well as the physical body (Ventegodt and Merrick 2009:481).
Holism considers the mind, body and spirit of a person to be bound and intertwined, and a person must be treated as a whole rather than parts that simply have a job to do (Clark 2002:4). It considers health to be not only an absence of pathogens, and to be more than being well, but the energy and enthusiasm we exude with regards to all aspects of our lives (Alster 1989:78). This view of health differs highly from the biomedical perspective which believes the body is a mechanical object which need only be fixed in the parts that you can see are damaged.
Biomedicine is the type of medicine most widely recognized in western countries, and it differs from holistic medicine in the sense that biomedicine is a positivistic model. Positivism in medicine restricts the medical methods being used to the idea that all ailments are objective and quantifiable, and any subjective elements are not useful (Lyng 1990:10). This restriction limits to the healing only of the physical body and the mind, with the mind regarded as being on a spectrum of what the human mind is capable of with chemical imbalances and neurological pathways being disturbed.
Holism sees the body and mind as a continuum of the whole individual and this makes it difficult to try to treat one while ignoring the other (Lyng 1990:78), which can be both a pro and a con for treatment depending on the circumstances presented. Both biomedicine and holistic medicine have their advantages and disadvantages, but holistic medicine is starting to become integrated into our highly biomedical society in the West more and more.
There are many medical procedures that have become common in our biomedical society that are actually holistic practices. Most people don’t realize that these practices are holistic though, as some were integrated hundreds of years ago and are very commonly used. Some of these practices include chiropractic, acupuncture, and kinesiology, all of which are quite common medical treatments in Canada.
Chiropractors are commonly used for not only treating physical symptoms and rehabilitation, but also in a preventative fashion (Redwood 2008:537). Kinesiology is holistic in the sense that it is the study of movement of the human body, which cannot be fully understood without keeping in the context of human life as a whole rather than the physical mechanics of the human body (Twietmeyer 2012:232). Acupuncture is another common holistic method used in today’s western medical societies commonly.
Medical acupuncture incorporates many areas of the brain and nervous system in the neurological responses it causes (Hollifield, Sinclair-Lian, Warner and Hammerschlag 2007:504). Along with these traditional holistic practices which have become more mainstream, there are still many traditional and more eclectic methods of holistic healing being used. My personal favourite holistic method of healing is that which incorporates crystals and chakras into the healing process.
Energetic healing has been practiced in almost all civilizations throughout history (Shore 2004:42) and it has been shown that practicing spirituality, crystal healing, and chakra healing do actually contribute to overall calmness and healing of the body and mind (Friedman 2012:2). Using the proper crystals in combination with the chakras related to and on the physical body is said to align that chakra back to its original state, and each chakra is typically associated with certain characteristics and a colour.
I learned in a crystal meditation class that the colours of the chakras associate with the colours of the crystals that are best used to balance each specific chakra, and that the characteristics of each chakra will allow you to know whether or not they are in alignment. As everything in the world is made up of vibrating particles, it seems sensible to believe that these crystals, which are made of the earth’s pure elements, can have an impact on our energies through the different frequencies of vibration in combination with our conscious thought that it is healing us.
Incorporating spirituality into medicine makes sense as spirituality refers to wholeness of life, be it with regards to a religion or anything else (O’Sullivan 2016:3). Holistic healing is being integrated more and more into western medical systems as people are finding the positivistic biomedical system to not be able to accommodate all of their needs.
The ability of holistic healing to tend to the person as a whole instead of looking at them as parts to be fixed has a way of making the person believe they are being healed, and the power of thought is immense when someone believes in something. The belief that holistic treatment works is one of the most important parts of the treatment, because that belief and hope can bring out the body’s natural self-repair mechanisms, and this combined with treatment can be a powerful thing.
