Holistic Health
Holistic health is a philosophy which sees health as an inseparable combination of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, cultural and environmental factors. The word 'holistic' come from the Greek word 'holos' which means whole. Health can only be measured and improved only by taking into account the whole person, not by limiting your focus to only one aspect or set of symptoms. For example, a feeling with disatisfaction or unhappiness with your life may contribute to your physical illness or injury and so that feeling must be addressed along with your physical symptoms in order to truly restore you to health.
A Holistic Health Practitioner is trained to consider all aspects of a person's life and use that perspective to help clients become healthier. The tools that a Holistic Health Practitioner uses depends on the training of the practitioner and can include some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practices, self-care recommendations and referrals to other professionals including Western doctors and mental health professionals. Most CAM practitioners are not extensively trained as Holistic Health Practitioners though some may learn about the perspective within their CAM training. Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practices are health-related practices that either supplement or replace allopathic/Western medicine. There are a wide variey of CAM choices, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and apparent effectiveness. Just because a practice is alternative or complementary does not mean that it is holistic. For example, chiropractic care and massage are CAM practices but, depending on how they are implemented, often focus only on physical symptoms.
Natural HealthNatural health generally refers to complementary and alternative medicine practices which use natural products and practices to help a person heal. Examples of this are homeopathy, flower essences, and herbal medicine. Again, though they can be very useful, natural healing practices are not always holistic because they mostly focus on one aspect of well-being.
Energy HealingOne category of complementary and alternative medicine is energy healing, which involves the manipulation of the body's subtle energies to aid and support healing. Energy healing practices can be as different as the various theories of energy systems in the body that they are based on. Since the body's energy systems have not been fully measured and understood by today's science, energy healing practices are sometimes based on ancient wisdom from different cultures. Though the mechanisms of energy healing are not well understood, in some practices, the results of the energy healing can be measured. Examples of energy healing include acupuncture which works with Chinese medicine theory of energy meridians, and Reiki which today often works with the theory of chakras from India. BodyTalk can be described as an energy healing practice but it is exceptional in that it works with a number of theorized energy systems including meridians, chakras, energy bodies and more.
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Consciousness
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The word consciousness can be used to mean all sorts of different things in different areas of study and perspectives. In many healing practices, and particularly in BodyTalk, we define consciousness as "what animates each body part and what animates the person as a whole" (Veltheim, 2013, p. 4). We are talking about what makes something alive instead of just a collection of particles (although even a particle is animated and held together by consciousness).
There is a hierarchy of consciousness which creates what we understand to be a person. At the "top" level, we have Universal Consciousness which has many different names including God, the Divine, Creation, the Universe, Source, etc. Next is what we call Innate in BodyTalk, also called the higher self or the supermental; it is the part of an individual which is in touch with the Universal Consciousness. This is the part of you that knows who you are and where you fit into the big picture. Then the mental body comes in with belief systems, thoughts and emotions that filter the higher self. At the next level, the vital body organizes the information into your energy system including meridians, chakras, auras and the like. The emotions are also considered to be a part of the vital body. Finally, our physical body further focuses the energy into all the parts that we know, see and feel in our physical world. |
This top-down organization of consciousness has consequences when it comes to healing. We can try to "fix" a problem on the physical level (with surgery or drugs) but if the part of the vital body (or energy system) has the template of that problem, that fix won't last very long. Also, if you try to correct the problem on the vital level, say with acupuncture, you will generally have some better results, but if the problem came from the mind then you may still struggle to heal completely. The mental body is where the consciousness of your higher self is altered by belief systems to create these problems or distortions.
General and Local Consciousness
All levels of being from a person, to a body part, to a cell, to an atom and beyond have a consciousness. Just as consciousness flows from the Universal Consciousness to the higher self and downward to create a human (General Consciousness), it also flows from Universal Consciousness to a natural consciousness of a body part such as a shoulder (Local Consciousness). The mind then imposes beliefs on that natural consciousness which then alter the energy and physical form of the shoulder. In BodyTalk, we can work with the general consciousness of a whole person or be more specific and work directly with the consciousness of any of the smaller parts of the body. When a person has beliefs around responsibility, these tend to live in the shoulder and we can work with the consciousness of the shoulder to help remove the distortion on these beliefs. Each different part of the body has consciousness which includes different themes with which we can work directly.
Consciousness-Based Healing
Consciousness-based healing techniques such as BodyTalk address distortions where they originate at the level of the mind (mental body), therefore creating truly amazing and lasting healing at all levels of consciousness. A BodyTalk Practitioner is aware of the downwards causation of illness, and understands that even if it appears that we are addressing something at a lower level such as the physical, we are really always simply using that level as a focus tool and that the consciousness of the higher self must be where healing originates and trickles down through the mental, vital and physical levels.
You are simply a manifestation of consciousness itself. This has consequences in how you look at life and how you go about healing and changing that life. This isn't to say that it's a bad idea to eat healthy and take care of your body, but that if you are truly commited to healing you must also address the beliefs that can distort and sabotage that healthy eating at so many levels. BodyTalk sessions often include much work on consciousness since it is the fundamental determinant of healing.
You are simply a manifestation of consciousness itself. This has consequences in how you look at life and how you go about healing and changing that life. This isn't to say that it's a bad idea to eat healthy and take care of your body, but that if you are truly commited to healing you must also address the beliefs that can distort and sabotage that healthy eating at so many levels. BodyTalk sessions often include much work on consciousness since it is the fundamental determinant of healing.