What is holistic medicine?
Let’s review 4 fundamental principles of the holistic medical model and explore the essential difference between allopathic or conventional medicine (ie what is on offer via the NHS and other conventional health services) and alternative health systems.
Whilst conventional medicine tends to be directed by ‘genetic determinism’ ie that our genes and DNA decide our health, functional and alternative medicine eschew this approach (because it is, quite frankly, outdated) and focus on the clear evidence that genetic expression is modifiable and is determined by environmental cues. *If you’d like to better understand the science that underpins this new scientific paradigm, I suggest Bruce Lipton’s The Biology of Belief as a good place to start.
#1: Our health is determined by our environment, not by our genes.
There is a nice phrase that sums this up:
The genes may hold the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.
This is true for the vast majority (>95%) of chronic illnesses; there are only a very small number of purely genetically determined diseases. of course is very good news, because we can change our environment in many ways, but we cannot change our genetic code. This puts the power of re-establishing health back in the hands of the individual.
This understanding provokes us to ask a logical question: what do we mean by ‘environment’, and how can we change it?
I like to break it down into categories:
Physical surroundings
Social
Gut
Inner (the milieu of thoughts and emotions, mostly subconscious)
I’ll be devoting future segments on exploring each of these in more detail. For now, we can acknowledge that each of these categories of environment communicate information to our bodies, and our bodies respond to this information in a way which supports us best.
#2: Our bodies never make a mistake.
You can count on your body to draw on hundreds of thousands of years of human experience and evolution to respond in the most optimal way to the environment; a response that puts your best interest at the forefront. Your body is your trusted friend.
Symptoms therefore, are valuable information. They are the way your body communicates to you about the quality and safety of your environment. They are messages from you, to you, about you. Unlike your thoughts and feelings which can be misled and confused, your body provides more direct truth about the status of you and your environment.
For example, if you think that all is (ostensibly) well, but your body is expressing signals of distress (for example racing heart or palpitations, anxiety, headaches, brain fog, bowel upset), you can trust that your body us letting you know that on some level it does not feel safe and is generating a protective response to ensure your survival.
#3: Safety first.
Over a long period of evolution, your body has developed a powerful and effective ancestral defence system. It is the reason you are here today. It prioritises safety over any other function of the body. It is designed to respond immediately to a threat. It is also designed to shut off when the threat is resolved.
#4: Symptoms and ‘dis-ease’ arise when the environment is unsupportive, and the modern crisis of chronic illness describes the cultivation of a sustained unsupportive or threatening environment.
I would suggest that the conventional allopathic medical model creates more threat: fear of disease, fear of the treatment, fear of the healthcare provider, fear of the tests. Holistic practitioners deeply understand the importance of trust and safety in the development of a successful and supportive healing environment.
How do we reverse this (because it can be reversed)?
We do this by reviewing how and where your environment is unsupportive. We begin to explore the most fundamental question: Am I safe?
As you will see, this is a foundational question that, directly or indirectly forms the basis of all holistic models. Holistic medicine is the cultivation of a safe, responsive and supportive environment from the outside in, and and even more importantly, from the inside out.
