Holistic Medicine.

[jonathan123 2363]

We talk about Holistic Therapy but what is it exactly? The word 'Holistic' means wholeness.  To bring together the parts of ourselves that have become estranged from us. Our ability to reason. To understand what is happening etc. and to reintegrate them into one whole person. In nervous anxiety we often feel 'detached', cut off from the real world with feelings of unreality. Frightening! But can we reason ourselves out of these feeling? Can we be logical and say 'I am here, I am OK. This is a passing phase'. No, we can't because we are not capable of real coherent thought. To be whole means to have the mind, body and feelings acting as one. When in an anxiety state the three elements mentioned tend to go off in different directions. The heart may feel one thing but the head says otherwise. The head says everything is OK but the body says 'no it isn't'. In health anxiety, for instance, the mind is convinced that we are ill; or have some bad organic disease (dis-ease!) but even after being told by experts that we are OK; the mind is still at odds with the body. Feelings fool us into this error of belief and, being at the mercy of feelings, we put ourselves through hell. Bringing our minds, body and feelings together again so that we become whole is not easy. In Western society we are used to having the 'persona', the masks that we put on in the morning and change throughout the day according to who we meet. We are never really 'ourselves'. Whole. This is where Mindfulness is so important. (See write up on site). The ability to concentrate our minds on one thing at a time is the bringing together of the fragmented parts of ourselves into wholeness. We no longer anticipate, the curse of anxiety. We no longer look back with recrimination and guilt, another curse, at what could have been had we done so and so because we are living in the present which, logically, is the only place we can live. We need to question ourselves. To ask questions about why we feel the way we do then sit down and listen to the feelings. They are always trying to tell you something about life, YOUR life; why you may need to change your lifestyle, your friends, your attitude to others and sometimes your employment, if that is possible. Being in a nervous state is often that arrival at a crossroad in life. We can choose which way to go if we have the will and the determination to do it. It can be done even while we suffer because it is the suffering that goads us on. To get out of the mess we are in. There is no greater incentive than to suffer! When you feel bad sit down and ask the feelings what they are trying to tell you about yourself; your fragmented self and how you can pull the parts together, to become 'whole' again.    J.