Holistic Practitioner Research Articles

The Relationship Between Holistic Practice and ‘Spiritual but not Religious’ Identity in the UK

In the contemporary UK, holistic practices – concerned with healing an interconnected mind, body, and spirit of the person – appear to be establishing themselves across more popular, or ‘mainstream’ settings. Simultaneously, the UK has seen increasing numbers of individuals identifying as not religious, and within this a significant population identifying specifically as ‘Spiritual But Not Religious’ (hereafter SBNR). This work consists of a survey that explores British holistic practitioners’ understandings and experiences of spirituality in relation to their practices. It identifies and compares answers across three groups of practitioners: the SBNR, the other not religious, and the religious. Findings demonstrate little difference between SBNR and other participants’ understandings and experiences of spirituality through their practice. Regardless of their varying identities, British holistic practitioners largely favoured the incorporation of ‘spirituality’ into their practice yet wished to distance their practice from ‘religion’. For many practitioners, this meant a desire to keep holistic practice separate from notions of ‘dogma’ or ‘institution’ that may restrict themselves or others from engaging with holistic spirituality. Attention is also given to the implication that, for some, this rejection of ‘religion’ may more specifically reflect a rejection of association with Christianity. Findings suggest that SBNR holistic practitioners do not particularly present as a distinct group with unique beliefs. Rather, it would appear that an engagement with ‘spirituality-without-religion’ is embraced within the UK holistic practitioner community as a whole.

Transnational spirituality and healing: an ethnographic exploration of alternative medicine in Lisbon and Athens

In contemporary Portugal and Greece, the number of individuals who resort to alternative medicine continues to rise. From yoga, meditation and energy therapies to healing based on various religio-spiritual traditions, there is a variety of therapeutic practices one can choose from. The main objective of this paper is to show how a therapeutic and spiritual pluralism is produced through the implementation of transnational influences on spirituality and healing. It investigates the diverse ways in which the practice of spirituality through healing leads to a better understanding of how current processes of globalisation, transnationalism and multiculturalism affect, develop and negotiate one’s individual, social, spiritual and medical identity. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Lisbon and Athens, the Portuguese and Greek capital equivalently, the paper explores the pluralistic and transnational character of alternative medicine and the spiritual creativity with which such therapies are practised. Taking the role of the (spiritual) holistic practitioner as healer as a point of departure, it provides an empirical account of the shifting status of both religiosity and healthcare in two southern European countries that are still followed by the stereotype of being predominantly linked to Christianity as the denominational religion, and to biomedicine as the predominant healthcare system.

A License to Be Crazy

The author’s multivoiced perspectives as mother, holistic practitioner, therapist, and social justice activist will address and question some of her and others’ assumptions, beliefs, mistakes, and social constructions around madness. Rather than coming to a conclusive “answer” to the question “What is psychosis if it is not what the bio medical model of psychiatry says it is,” the author cautiously offers her gleanings and queries. These few bare questionable and questioning bones rattle to tell more of their story.

A Comparative Discourse on Christian and Secular Distinctive Features of Transformational Development

The primary objective of this article is to explore some distinctions between Christian and secular views of transformation, characteristics of transformational development and the holistic practitioner. To meet this aim, relevant literature has been explored. The article argues that the Christian’s development motivation, goal and process are distinctive . The affirmation of indigenous knowledge; peaceful relationships, self-worth, empowerment and spiritual development are basic characteristics of transformational development. The paper also insists that the attitudes and characteristics of a holistic practitioner play a crucial role in realising these characteristics of transformational development. Understanding the value of this could assist faith-based organization and church-based development agency staff in engaging holistically.

Speaking Bodies: Listening for Mary Gove Nichols (1810–84)

Nineteenth-century American author, holistic health practitioner, and women’s rights advocate Mary Gove Nichols was well known in her own time, founding utopian communities, establishing and writing for health journals, giving lectures, and generally causing a stir by wearing pants and preaching Free Love. Yet, her work is largely unknown to twenty-first-century readers. This article argues that Gove Nichols’s fiction and nonfiction, including her autobiographical novel Mary Lyndon (1855), deserve renewed critical attention because of the significance of her philosophy of embodiment for twenty-first-century feminist scholarship. Although Gove Nichols argues that bodies are socially constructed, she does not dismiss bodies in her methods of liberating women from oppression. On the contrary, bodies form the basis of her activism: she argues that in order to reform society, one must look not only to intellectual and spiritual health, but also to the material health of those who live in it. In this way, her work heralds the twenty-first-century feminist theoretical turn toward a new materialism that argues for the resilient and creative potential of bodies in social justice movements. An analysis of Gove Nichols’s water-cure-inspired narrative strategies reveals how literature provides a way of thinking about bodies that is essential for theory.

Ethics of the ordinary: a meeting run by the Royal Society of Medicine with the Royal College of General Practitioners

Ethics has long been recognised as an integral element of primary healthcare.1 Despite the ubiquity of ethical challenges and dilemmas in primary care, it remains a neglected domain in the world of bioethics. Accordingly, there have been calls to explore the ethical dimensions of primary healthcare.2,3 On 15 February 2011 the Royal Society of Medicine ran a conference in association with the Royal College of General Practitioners in order to fulfil this need. The conference aspired to create a lively discourse between interested practitioners such that they had the opportunity to share ideas, research and literature in the context of primary healthcare ethics. This aspiration was fully met and 70 people convened, including medical students, academics and seasoned practitioners who made use of the opportunity to share their thoughts and experiences, research ideas and projects. The focus was on ‘everyday ethics’ – the moral dimensions underpinning interactions and relationships between clinicians, patients and their families and the subtle but complex ethical dimensions of everyday life. The recent changes to GP training and requirements for revalidation, and changes in societal attitudes provide an urgent need for a solid foundation of a body of knowledge (both theoretical and empirical) and a community of scholars who are concerned with the ethics underpinning a vast majority of healthcare interactions. Two keynote speakers opened the event. Iona Heath, RCGP president, and Deborah Bowman, senior lecturer in medical ethics and law. Iona Heath's inspirational talk highlighted the experience of the particular and how the uniqueness of individuals, their encounters and their narratives cannot be forced into a procrustean framework of rules and generalities. She outlined her view of the challenges facing ethical practice in primary care and emphasised the key role of compassion. Deborah Bowman, drawing from her own qualitative research, highlighted the extraordinary in the ordinary and how bioethics has not captured the ethics of the ordinary. She emphasised the centrality of relationships and the roles of the GP as advocate, holistic practitioner and healer. We explored three themes in the workshops: research in primary care ethics, issues affecting training and issues in practice. There were also 15 poster presentations. These could be categorised into two broad themes: the clinician–patient (or teacher–student) relationship and ‘micro-ethics’,4 exploring personal and professional boundaries, the role of power, families, values and emotions in the relationship. The second theme was the exploration of the greater relevance and appropriateness of ethical paradigms other than the four principles, such as virtue ethics and feminist ethics for understanding and illuminating ethical problems, including rationing in healthcare.

Sweetened dairy probiotics and digestive discomfort

As a holistic practitioner, I was interested in Joycelyn Gage’s learning zone article ‘Understanding the role of probiotics in supporting digestive discomfort’ (September 30).

Remembering the Holistic View

We have not heard much of the word holism of late. To some extent it has been eclipsed by a new word for therapeutic inclusiveness, namely integration. However the two are entirely different. Integration is used to describe the combined use of therapies. Holism is not about therapies. It is a view of reality, and in the practice of medicine, a way of healing, whatever type of therapies are employed. Holism is still a great word for a great concept, even though the word itself has arrived in today’s culture rather worn and abused. It is a great word because it uniquely represents a view that is all too easily forgotten. This perspective sees the whole that is greater than its parts, the wider, more inclusive, multidimensional and multidisciplinary view. When applied to the healing arts it gives space to a deeper and broader dialogue between the therapist and client, which may encompass a range of aspects of the client’s life that can be related to the client’s health status. It may include patterns of signs and symptoms such as pain, swelling, mucous; patterns of function such as fitness, mobility, digestive rhythms; patterns of physiology such as glucose utilization, or blood HDL/LDL; the psychological picture such as irritability, joy, sleep, self-image, anxiety; life habits such as diet, work, exercise, addictions; social aspects such as family life, loneliness; constitutional tendencies and history, such as vulnerabilities, body type, health biography; patterns in the environment such as use of chemicals and toxins, living conditions, sensitivities; even the spiritual life of the client- the degree of meaning and depth to their life. The holistic approach requires the therapist to inquire and look deeply into the overall situation of the client, digging below the obvious symptoms. The holistic approach is simply good medicine, and it cuts across all modalities and techniques, whether alternative or conventional. For example, the naturopath who treats a hypertensive patient with supplements alone is as unholistic as the doctor who prescribes antihypertensive drugs alone. A family physician who understands and knows the patient, his vulnerabilities, his history, his work, his environment, his diet and life is a holistic practitioner within the confines of his therapeutic modality. Holism is an aspiration, a direction. It is not easy to achieve. It requires a degree of attention, awareness, skill and humanity on the part of the physician or therapist that is hard to find and harder to teach. The great physicians or therapists of the present and past are always holistic. They are the kind of therapists who read the patient like a book or like music, who think both logically and impressionistically, who can pinpoint possible causes among the host of factors, and treat by helping to shift the patient towards a less pathological life direction. The therapist needs to think holistically in order to treat holistically, and today, to do so within a current environment both of medicine, culture and science that is decidedly reductionist and therefore heading in the opposite direction. This is why it needs to be constantly remembered, and it is constantly forgotten. Holistic medicine is good medicine. Good medicine is holistic medicine. There is a temptation to assume that if you embrace the alternatives you have already entered the holistic camp. From the above discussion it is clear that this is not so. However it is worth pointing out that a good example of this is the use of science to demonstrate effectiveness of alternative medicine, as in the papers of this journal. It is easy to forget that by its nature, science is reductionist and Aristotelian, exploring reality by slicing it into understandable pieces. An extreme example of this in medicine is the genome project, a physicalist Holy Grail, in which it is assumed that if we could know the sequence of information in the genome we would be able to cure complex diseases, which is a bit like saying that if we could had a precise record of the decibels in a concert we would be able to duplicate Mozart. If science would be allowed to underpin much of therapy it would force therapists into reductionist behaviors. For example collections of articles demonstrating that

Alternative medicine: Musculoskeletal system

This article is intended to be an entry-level review of the holistic approach to musculoskeletal disorders. Conventional and theories of pathophysiology and common therapies will be discussed. The holistic approach entails looking beyond individual physical conditions and disorders, and attempting to identify imbalances (structural, environmental, or emotional) that underlie physical manifestations of disease. Conventional medicine usually looks at clinical symptoms such as the disease itself, while the holistic approach sees clinical symptoms as a sign of imbalance. Conventional therapy is usually aimed at removing the clinical signs (such as pain) rather than improving overall health and balance. The holistic practitioner attempts to bring a patient back into balance, enabling the patient to re-establish homeostasis and health. The holistic approach encompasses a broader scope, incorporating diet, nutrition, weight, activity, lifestyle, supplements, anti-inflammatories, emotional aspects, and owner interactions. Why consider a holistic approach for musculoskeletal disorders? Current conventional therapy for many chronic diseases, such as osteoarthritis (OA) and intervertebral disc disease, are limited to suppressing or minimizing pain and inflammation rather than improving overall health, slowing further degeneration, or improving joint health. The holistic approach attempts to address these issues. As veterinarians, we often let basic concepts such as weight loss, exercise, physical therapy, and owner counseling go unaddressed. Although covered under alternative therapies, these concepts are hardly and are often crucial to successful therapy.

Holistic Occupational Therapy: Historical Meaning and Contemporary Implications

Holism is an idea that occupational therapists use frequently to describe and characterize their practice. And yet, there seems to be some controversy about what it means and what it implies? This paper explores the historical and contemporary meaning of holism, and attempts to project implications for occupational therapy of adopting a strict definition of the holistic practitioner. Implications are explored according to four principles of holistic health care: that the individual is an integrated being, with the capacity to maintain equilibrium; that the goal of health care is the experience of health, not merely the absence of observable signs of illness; that evaluation of health should be a synthesis of understanding of the individual in his or her environment, not an analysis of the individual; and finally, that illness is a normal experience and an opportunity to achieve a higher level of self-awareness and integration with the environment. Each of these principles is explored relative to perceived current practices in the areas of service, research and education in occupational therapy. The paper concludes with a summary of the changes that would be required of the discipline of occupational therapy, if it were to adhere strictly to this definition.

Making a spiritual diagnosis in general practice

A holistic practitioner is encouraged to make his diagnosis in terms of body, mind, emotion and spirit. This is a fine ideal, but in practice we as doctors usually only record in the patient’s notes the physical diagnosis, and only rarely the psychological factors. If I do record the emotional diagnosis, it is often my own emotions that the patient has evoked! Can one actually record a diagnosis in spiritual terms, or is it only a vague subjective feeling? If it can be recorded, is this something that can be done practically in general practice? Before considering how I make a spiritual diagnosis I would like to review how I normally arrive at a diagnosis in practice, and then look at some lessons that I have learnt from working with a spiritual healer.