Why nothing in the body functions on its own and is always a part of an integrated whole. 

Holistic thinking about the human body is perhaps the best approach to health.  I think that Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine for a reason, has many great quotes that emphasize this view.

“Everything in excess is opposed to nature”

Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

Walking is man’s best medicine

Hippocrates

 

Hippocrates was also an extremely scientific and fact based individual, as am I, a greater understanding of real science lends to a greater understanding of the true healing potential of the body.  In this article I will attempt to explain how Western Medicine in many ways falls short of being able to truly treat and cure diseases and bodily ailments, especially orthopedic injuries by lacking a holistic approach.

You see Western Medicine has a very analytical MIND based approach to science, the mind and ego likes to categorize things, break them up, put them in order, and rank them in their importance.  This is a good thing, it helps us to form our identity through consciously realizing we are individuals, but it also serves to help us analyze and interpret patterns and information, which is one of our most powerful tools of intellect.

Intellect is not bad but applied in such a strict approach you can be right but still be wrong.  Let me try my best to explain.

Wanting to categorize and separate everything is great, it is the basis of western anatomy and it can lend to developing a great understanding of how the body’s different parts function, however western anatomy can lead to problems because we like to break the body down into its specific “systems”.  For example, if you develop plantar fasciitis and are experiencing foot pain, a doctor can observe that you have flat arches and prescribe an orthotic to make the foot arch.  Scientifically there is nothing wrong with this approach at all.  The foot does not arch, so you make it arch, this logically will restore normal foot function, so it is in fact a right answer.

But at the same time this can be DEAD WRONG AND DANGEROUS.

By taking a holistic approach we can have a greater understanding of the entire body and how it relates to this condition, not just the foot on its own. If someone’s foot does not arch oftentimes it is a symptom of a body that is flexed or in a pronated position chronically, this means that they will often be slouching at the shoulders, their hips will be a bit rotated to the front, and they will have different length tension relationships throughout the legs and knees.  So if you treat someone who has developed this compensation to make the foot flat, the knees will internally rotate and hips will be all out of place.  Treating this person with an orthotic can indeed fix the flat-footed problem, while at the same time causing tremendous damage to the knees hips and spine, because you never fixed those other issues in the first place.

The person will still have a pronated and slouched moving pattern from the rest of the body all the way from the head down in many cases, so imagine that your foot goes flat to support this flexed posture with internally rotated knees, and then you suddenly arch the foot but keep the rest of the body exactly the same.  You will then be placing a tremendous amount of torque force on the knee and back because the feet can no longer turn the proper way (Going flat footed) to allow for this compensation and change in weight distribution because of the orthotic which is creating an arch artificially.

I cant tell you how many times I see the results of physical therapists, surgeons, and other healthcare professionals be willing to cut someone open before even attempting to fix any of these posture related issues, it is amazing to me how often orthotics are misused and not properly evaluated.  These professionals can only do so much, but someone who has a holistic approach to the body will see all of these different factors in advance.

Continuing with the example of someone who is pronated with flat feet, a physical therapist or trainer with an holistic approach may also find that the person has forward shoulder syndrome due to tight lats and weak upper back stabilizers, you could then make sure to work on the persons upper body posture as well, you can also tell them to foam roll their legs daily while you find an orthotic for them.  These factors considered in unison can allow the person to heal, but just throwing the orthotics in could just cause more damage without also fixing and rehabilitating the rest of the body’s poor posture.

 

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF MISTREATMENT AMONG WESTERN PHILOSOPHY PRACTITIONERS

Another example I see during my personal experiences has been physical therapists or chiropractors prescribing isolated treatment and movements for specific muscles.  What I mean is that many times they will prescribe a movement that is very small and literally isolates a muscle, instead of integrating it as a whole through compound movements.

Many times isolated strengthening exercises can be great, but with a more holistic approach I am concerned with getting the muscle to function properly WITH OTHER MUSCLES AS A WHOLE.  For example a woman I train has weak hip abductors, the gluteus medius was specifically targeted in therapy among others, the doctors prescribed some sort of silly leg raise against a wall with a very small range of motion which is not very applicable to life and functional movement in general.  The reason is because this woman also has very tight hip flexors (like most people) and is pronated in general, this means that these exercises wont do much at all unless the hips are loosened and the abductors work with the hips and glutes in unison.  A much better exercise would be a wide stance Plié squat down to a bench or as low as the hips allow, this exercise allows for complete abduction of the hips while also stretching the hip flexors and engaging the glutes, almost anyone can perform this exercise safely and get a good stretch and butt workout.

Small isolated movements are never as effective as integrated bodyweight movement that can teach the nervous system how to move and fire muscles effectively.  Even exercise is completely holistic; you are not just working your muscles out.  Muscles are often thought of during exercise, except they are just one piece of the picture, equally important is the:

• Nervous system
• Tendons/Ligaments
• Cardiovascular system
• Veins/Arteries
• Fascia and connective tissue

Of special importance is the nervous system during exercise, because we are always training a neurological pattern that involves your WHOLE BODY, your blood must flow, oxygen must get to the muscles, the organs must function effectively, the connective tissue must stretch and contract, the body must be hydrated and utilize energy, you must have the mental focus and clarity.   This is just in doing movement through exercise, we can never say: It is just a muscle or an exercise.  In reality it is a pattern we are training the brain to do, this is why we must take our exercise so importantly and treat it with the same care that we would our spirituality or soul or god or a religion, because we are our bodies, our soul and intelligence all stems from our physical body, it is not just the MIND.  So if you train and teach yourself a faulty pattern that promotes slouching or tightened and short muscles you will develop physically to mimic this and become tight and wound up and eventually get injured or stifled psychologically due to tension.

I hope we can all understand the picture that I am trying to paint.  The body is one beautiful whole that we must get to flow effectively, each layer has to work in unison and be treated and looked at HOLISTICALLY.  This does not mean that we are hopeless in treating disease and finding the source of problems, it just means that it is not always as easy as A is the solution to B.

The example I used above of the pronated and arched foot would be A = B, or the lack of an arch = the Orthotic.

This is 100% percent right if you look at this condition in isolation.  But the approach is WRONG because you are not taking the time to look above your feet and see that there is a WHOLE BODY.  Quite literally hiking can be used as an example of this, when you hike if all you do is look at your feet you wont take any time to look up at the whole TRAIL and experience you are on.

So we can go back to that example and re-evaluate it from a holistic approach.

*Hmm. There is no arch in the foot and this person may need an orthotic, A goes to B, but wait there is also a severe arch in the shoulders so I need to incorporate C to help them fix the shoulders, and also I need to consider D as a response to when they incorporate all of the above.

This is how we can heal ourselves and help other, by looking at how all of these layers come together as one to balance EACHOTHER.  Every system affects another system and often times just one or two things are not considered properly that could have completely solved the problem, and not acknowledging these factors will often cause the problem to get worse.

This is the basis of understanding things holistically.  You need to use science and information intelligently and oftentimes will need to think CREATIVELY.  Who would have thought there was room for creative thinking in medicine?

I define creative thinking as thinking that requires you to analyze a situation and individually come up with and consider many different possibilities and choose the best course of action while taking all of these possibilities into consideration.  You have to look at a big picture and be able to connect dots intuitively through a scientifically WHOLE understanding of health and being a human.

 

WHY WE HAVE SUCH A HEALTH EPIDEMIC.

Recently health conscious consumers have risen exponentially around the world and especially in the United States, most likely because people found out they were literally eating poison and toxins in their food regularly by trusting big corporations to keep their food supply safe.  Unfortunately with our food greed has prevailed so another major way we do not think holistically is our DIETS and this causes doctors to overprescribe PRESCRIPTION MEDICATION.

All prescription pills are toxic to the body and must be kept to a minimum and used only in emergency and on an as-needed basis.  I am not saying drugs do not have a time and place but from a holistic approach the need for 95% of them could be slashed.  Once again I will use an example to go to the root issue in a fake case study based on what I see/observe all the time.

Lets say someone is addicted to processed sugar and flour containing products which are by nature addicting because they send the brain into a frenzy of stimuli; by nature processed sugar and flour is poisonous to the digestive system so this then inflames the gut and causes severe IBS and back pain.  This person then goes to the doctor and takes medication that temporarily masks the problem and restores bowel function, but they keep eating the sweets and flour.  What will eventually happen is the bowel problem clears up but now they break out with psoriasis all over, plus their liver and organs are tasked with detoxing the gluten AND the medication they are now taking.

Guess what A solves B single view westerners do once again?  Prescribe medication.  Any sane person can see that this is a cyclical endeavor that will not work, because the root of the problem is to cut out the gluten.  Now lets say that someone recognizes that the gluten is what is causing the problem. Good. They are an intelligent thinker.  But once again thinking holistically can throw another curve ball into the mix.  This person is eating all the sugary processed foods that contain gluten because they are going through a divorce and are losing their identity in a spiritual crisis.  This adds another layer of complexity and skillset to try to solve and work on, but the root issue can always be deeper than what it appears to be at first, it is never as simple as a pill solves an issue forever, we are just more complicated than that.

The fact of the matter is that as spiritual beings, even emotional and psychological growth and mental blocks throughout life need to be considered.  We are constantly evolving and going through our own change processes, each and every one of us, and this change process needs to be aided and helped at times, and while not everyone is ready for change, most people WILL and DO go seek help only to be steered wrong by A to B thinkers.  Giving anyone a pill or food to put into their body or prescribing exercise in any way is a great and deeply spiritual practice that demands intelligence and skill to do safely.  Once again being able to view people holistically is the ONLY WAY to safely diagnose and effectively treat diseases.

 

An Eastern Approach to Holistic Health.

Many ancient eastern medicinal practices that have been known to have great efficacy throughout history by those who are skilled have understood this holistic approach long before modern medicine.  This does not mean that modern medicine does not have its place, because it certainly does and must be learned and understood to grow and fully comprehend health, but one also must learn from these eastern practices and combine them for a functional understanding of holistic health and how the body as A WHOLE works.

Eastern philosophies have long understood that we are beings made of vibrations, which has been verified by quantum physicists and scientists for some time now.  They understood why we must meditate to cleanse our energy, I’ll use the word Chi as it is very symbolic and an appropriate word to for this vital life force that flows through us.  To consider and apply that we have chi, or a vital life force flowing through us allows us to see energy flowing as a whole.  It will allow us to see that someone who is depressed lacks this vital energy and help them restore it through meditation and focusing on the body.  You see the body is 80% of the physical space that we make up.  The brain and mind-body connection is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. All I am saying is that the other 80%, like the heart which has a much greater electromagnetic current than the brain, or the water that flows through us, or the digestive system that has more neurons than the brain and spine combined; is ALSO EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.

This is where eastern philosophies and approaches to energy and the body are vastly superior to western practices and understanding of energy, which is very limited.  You see we are always producing our chi or life force energy whether we want to acknowledging it our not, understanding how to harness this energy and cultivate it through spreading love by smiling at others and exercise is extremely important.

I would like to dive further into the example of smiling at another and producing what I call “love”.  Love is actually proven by science to be a specific wavelength, which is steady and calming, while fear is fast and rapid and produces what we would call negative or draining energy. This draining energy must be avoided at all costs.  Smiling just happens to be one of the best ways to avoid it!  Smiling, and I mean an authentic smile that is expressed with the heart and body, is a PHYSICAL ACT.  You will feel the energy flow throughout your midline, through your heart, and be expressed in your beautiful FACE, a smile and teeth and lips that you FACE THE WORLD WITH.  I’m sure you can think of someone who as soon as you see them lights you up with their great smile and positive energy, this is their vibrational energy, or chi, flowing to you.

This is an example of the un-manifested and chi flowing through us, being manifested physically, which eastern practices have understood for thousands of years, and this will greatly increase your understanding of health and the body and how energy flows.

WHY WE MUST USE BOTH APPROACHES

An explanation of the eastern principals of duality, or yin and yang, is necessary so we can understand that once again as with anything in life the answer to western meeting eastern practices is this: somewhere in the middle. In other words we need balance.

Yin is restorative and restful energy, think: sleep, water, night, and digestion, walking, soft.

Yang is an active expanding energy it expends energy, think: exercise, fire, daytime, eating, hard, powerlifting

EASTERN MEDICINE = YIN

I will place eastern philosophies such as Ayurveda medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine for example under YIN in this case because they have a greater understanding of these energy principals in general, and they often aim to balance the energy, and understanding these teachings will allow us to understand that we need REST and we need to focus on cultivating our vital energy!

WESTERN MEDICINE = YANG

I will place western medicine under Yang because western ideals include: targeted drug treatments that are concentrated, surgeries, quick and assumed diagnosis, and systemic organization and treatment.  I believe that it is WAY TO MUCH YANG! And that this fire and heat is eating people alive left and right, but it also is extremely valuable.  Trauma or fast acting illnesses are some examples when this aggressive systemic yang based approach is very effective at treating injuries and it is absolutely vital in many situations for survival.

WHOLE, is the key word, we must be whole.  We cannot break something as complicated as a human being down into a muscle or a specific movement or just one exercise. We are always much deeper than that with many more layers.  Even with medical approaches the answer is somewhere in between, it is BALANCED.  Our culture however tends to be much more aggressive, we have an over balance of YANG, we are losing respect for the YIN, the sleep, the rest, and the diet.  Once we can embrace these principals of energy cultivation and rest as a society, and begin to try to treat the body as whole, and not try to solve problems with the A solves B mentality that I described, we can truly begin to understand and breed good health.  Good health is infectious because good health spreads love.  Good energy picks everyone up to the same vibrational frequency.  Lets all strive to raise the collective environment and fill it with health and wellness by taking of us first and then by helping others.

This means not just exercising until you want to drop dead without taking the time to treat yourself to a massage once in a while.

No more eating processed garbage and then taking a pill to fix your heartburn.

No more expecting orthopedic injuries to heal without some work undoing what caused it in the first place, or not taking the time to find what caused it.

No more being to egotistical to acknowledge the complex energy flow systems throughout the body.

No more ignoring our spiritual growth and psychological challenges that may be affecting our health, if stress is causing a physical decline to your health it means that it is TIME TO CHANGE OUR STRESSFUL HABITS AND GET MORE REST!

A holistic approach benefits our health by allowing us to truly do what each of us needs to balance us out INDIVIDUALLY.  We are all as different on the inside as we are on the outside, and to understand this we need to THINK HOLISTICALLY.

Here’s to a safe and functional understanding of holistic health and a well thought out and safe approach to health and vitality that considers all aspects when making a decision.  Lets make the world a happier more love filled place by starting with our own functional holistic approach to health.