WELLNESS is not just about attaining a healthy physical body. Wellness is defined as the active process of increased awareness that allows one to make more positive choices toward a successful existence in all areas of one’s life. Total wellness takes place when there is a healthy balance and integration of body, mind, emotions, and spirit, emanating an overall sense of well-being.
In order to attain a healthy body, one must develop a healthy mindset and gain the knowledge necessary to do so. In order to procure a healthy mind and set a healthy spiritually conscious foundation, one must be able to manage and control their emotions and change their perception on life and the world that surrounds them.
Throughout this awakening process one should also aim to improve and elevate their relationship with themselves as well as others to magnify their fullest potential, as positive human interconnectedness is an essential piece of the puzzle.
Growing up in western society individuals are taught to conventionally address their body, mind, emotions, and spirit in pieces of the whole, as if each part is completely separate from the other. Western society promotes specialization, or fragmented concepts as opposed to integration, or complete ideas, regarding these four parts that make up the human entity.
All our entity and what we put in it, nutrition, thoughts, emotions, spirit, and physical energies need to work synergistically in harmony with one another in order to enjoy a radiant, disease free life, full of appreciation, gratitude, and internal peace!
HOLISTICALLY UNIFIED APPROACH DESPITE CONVENTIONAL DECEPTION!
Holistic medicine encompasses all parts of a human’s body-mind-spirit and emotion. Specifically, holistic, or alternative medicine, alludes to treatments that are employed outside of the conventional medical paradigm. A holistic model of medicine aims to create homeostatic balance safely, permanently, and without side effects, through the use of herbs, supplements, dietary changes, mindfulness, and other natural healing techniques.
The mind-body-spirit connection can be so incredibly powerful that malignant tumors have gone into spontaneous remission with genuine faith and the right energy focus. The credibility of such a miracle is as foreign a concept to most doctors today as the thought of a Macintosh computer was to someone hundreds of years ago.
From a deep, intellectual, intuitive perspective, many are much savvier to the urgency of a holistic approach to healing than you would think. However, the reluctance to believe in alternative medicine (or at the very least a complimentary form of medicine), exemplifies the lack of knowledge, as well as denial and fear that allow most individuals to ignore the common sense truth. BLIND trust in the powers of authority traps people in a false sense of reality and security!
Holistic medicine, although suppressed by the pharmaceutical industry through any means possible, is actually not a new concept in the US by any stretch. In fact, until the early part of the 19th century, the vast majority of medical care was provided by botanical healers, chiropractors, midwives, homeopaths, and other “healers”. Homeopathy, hypnotism, water therapy, and various other alternative medicine approaches increased in popularity during the late 1880s and early 1900s. Although a democratization of medical knowledge was present back then, there was still a genuine respect and value associated with nature, reflecting on the Romantic Period in art and literature. Unfortunately, that respect gradually diminished.
Through powerful political influence the mainstream medical establishment was able to suppress any advances in alternative medicine for MANY decades as money and prestige took precedence over the health of an individual!
DID YOU KNOW: Big pHARMa outspends ALL others pouring $2.7 billion into its lobbying interests with US government agencies from 1998 to 2013! Conflict of interest maybe?
By the late 1960’s and 1970s, the holistic health care movement reemerged, in accordance with a distrust in the powers of authority, and rightly so. At the time, the hippies, as part of a radical movement against these powers, were well aware of the damage being done to the earth and its people through irresponsible, greed-driven industrialization practices and mainstream medicine. Due to their liberal political stance, the way they physically presented themselves, and their affiliation with mind altering drugs, hippies were largely ostracized, ignored, or demonized by the mainstream population of closed minded followers and obedient sleepwalkers.
Despite social stigmas opposing this fairly intelligent counterculture, a lot could have been learned by these courageous individuals that strongly disagreed with political and social violence, and encouraged a love centered ideology that focused on peace, clean untainted whole food nutrition, alternative medicine, and personal freedom.
Throughout this time, the whole food and supplement movements did the best they could (despite heavy opposition by mainstream medicine and corporate food giants), to reintroduce the concept of food, not only as a means to survive, but as a therapeutic agent. Americans were introduced to diverse traditional medical approaches, like those from indigenous, Chinese, and Indian cultures.
The early 1980s brought wellness programs that incorporated diet, personal fitness, and other healing systems like yoga, tai chi, and massage into the industry. Despite the fact that alternative medicine progressed in popularity throughout the 1980s, Holistic medicine was still largely discredited by the conventional medical establishment until the early 1990s when it gained federal and scholarly recognition.
Despite its gains in popularity, conventional medicine backed by the extremely powerful pharmaceutical industry, still to this day works very hard to SUPPRESS and discredit alternative medicine practices due to the threat it poses on the profits of a health care system that relies on drugs and surgeries as a means to manage the symptoms of patients at BEST. This leaves patients dependent on a broken rigged system designed unfortunately to put PROFITS over human LIVES.
Holistic, or alternative medicine, treats the body logistically in conjunction with the mind, emotions, and spirit. Western medicine has a long way to go, but the process has begun as integrative medicine is becoming more commonplace. Integrative medicine according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, “combines mainstream medical therapies and CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) therapies for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) believes in implementing a more integrative approach, and states that “The existing definition of health should include the spiritual aspect, and that health care should be in the hands of those who are fully aware of and sympathetic to the spiritual dimension.” Keep in mind this is a government-regulated organization, which says a lot. Accepting, recognizing, and instituting change is an important part of growth for individuals, as well as the nation as a whole.
Practitioners of Western medicine need to embrace long overdue resistance to change and focus on the personal needs of the individual. The integration of all parts of the human entity should become commonplace, as it is with Eastern medicine. The main focus should be on wellness care, instead of just sick care. By focusing on prevention and managing all parts of the body in unison, needless prolonged suffering can be avoided, and optimal wellness can be achieved.
Unfortunately, this conversion will not take place overnight, mostly due to the pharmaceutical industry’s financial interest in keeping people sick, coupled with mass blind trust in the powers of authority, as well as lack of knowledge and personal freedom! The best we can do is share this TRUTH with as many people as possible, building this new paradigm that promotes health NOT sickness, one brick at a time!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814294/
http://www.whccamp.hhs.gov/fr2.html
https://globalwellnessinstitute.org/industry-research/history-of-wellness/