Holistic Approach to HealTH
If you zoom in really close, you would only see each individual cell toiling away day after day, until it splits into two more identical cells that do the same thing, or until it dies. At that level, each cell seems like an island all by itself. Alone with it’s work and its struggles. Our existence is often restricted to our individual thoughts, emotions, experiences, and bodies. The system we live in separates us based on gender, race, sexuality, religion, age, job title, economic status, etc. Until all we feel is isolated.
Our medical system breaks us apart even further, addressing each individual body part or system as if it was functioning on its own. Each practitioner specializes in the gut, the brain, the muscles, the bones, the heart, the skin, or feet and spend little time speaking to one another. We are dragged around from one specialist to another trying to figure out what is wrong with us. Worse than that, we’re told it’s idiopathic (they don’t know what’s causing our symptoms and they don’t have a pill, surgery, or insurance code for that); it’s all in our heads . We look normal on their tests, but know we are anything but normal on the inside. So much of our dis-ease comes without a medical diagnosis, a treatment plan, or any assurance that we’ll receive the support we need.
It’s no wonder that many of us suffer from chronic pain, depression, anxiety, diabetes, cancer, fatigue, etc. When you zoom in too far you only see what’s happening in a tiny disconnected place. But that’s not how the system functions. No one cell is functioning in isolation, no one person can survive alone. I mean just think about how complex we are.
We are made of more microorganisms than our own body cells. We are inherently an ecosystem, an entire universe. When we begin to think of ourselves as a part of a community, not only the community we live in, but the community of cells, micro-organisms, and their environment; we can begin to address the imbalances in the system. We can begin to zoom out and see how we are not alone. How our community shapes us and how when we change things on the macro level we can change things on the micro level.
How does our mind, body, emotions, and environment connect? How can we use these connections to bring about healing? And where can this take us? Unfortunately, each of these topics could be multiple books, but I’ll try and keep it short and simple.
Mind, Body, Emotions, and Environment
Here I’m going to begin at the micro level again and zoom out from there.
Our DNA is like an instruction manual that constantly changes and adapts to fit our environment. We turn genes on and off all the time based on what we are exposed to, what we think, what our body needs AND what past generations have experienced! A great example of this is lactose intolerance. Sometimes its inborn, where a person just doesn’t have the gene to create the enzyme, but most of the time when we stop ingesting milk, our body stops producing the enzymes to digest it. Over time our change in diet affects our genes. This happens ALL the time with many many different genes.
One level up, our cells function by passing information back and forth. Each cell communicates with its surrounding cells based on it’s own environment. This communication could be through hormones, nerve impulses and so on. We don’t really have a great understanding of this yet. We learned in high school biology that mitochondria help us produce energy, but did you know they actually directly impact our immune system as well. They can basically go into red alert and divert energy to survival and away from healing.
Once we get out of the cells, we have tissues and organs that communicate with hormones, neurotransmitters, and nerve impulses. They function as units. For example, the brain and the endocrine (hormone) system work together to send and receive signals throughout the entire body. Each cell has estrogen and testosterone receptors. The adrenals, pituitary gland, and hypothalamus work together to coordinate many functions related to stress and the stress response. Muscles work in functional units to coordinate movement. Our sense organs (eyes, ears, skin, nose, and tongue) send information to our brain to help us determine if our environment is benefitting us or harming us.
All of these actions are constantly working in order to help us maintain homeostasis, which is the balancing of our internal systems in response to the internal and external environment.
Our external environment directly impacts our physiology in ways that we already know about. we sweat when we’re hot, shiver when we’re cold. We salivate when we smell food and much more. But what we often don’t realize is that our perceptions of our external environment, regardless of how “real” they are, affect our physiology. If we think about biting into a lemon we salivate. If we smell a sweet familiar smell it might remind us of home or a close friend, which in turn helps us relax or get excited. But it can also be negative, if we are walking down the street alone we might become hypervigilant. Our heart will start racing, our breath shorten, and we prepare to defend ourselves. This sends a cascade down to the microlevel where our mitochondria produce the energy needed, blood diverts to systems of survival, and our immune system suppresses so we can use that energy to get out of danger.
Once we’re out of danger or the anticipated danger subsides, we can go back to baseline levels and continue on our way, but when this becomes chronic we develop chronic issues. Issues like adrenal fatigue, lowered immune system, headaches, chronic pain, blood pressure issues, and diabetes all come back to how we perceive and process what happens to us. It’s much less about events that occur in our lives, than it is the amount of support we have and the amount we can actually process and hold. If we are unsupported and have little in the way of choice when it comes to stressful or traumatic situations we are more likely to develop long lasting negative beliefs about the world. Those beliefs shape how everything else afterwards is processed. therefore, how we move through life and how our body reacts affects us all the way down to the cellular level.
If we can process and can develop a sense of trust in ourselves and a few people, we can then process past beliefs and perceptions that are no longer serving us and healing can begin!
How do we use the connections to jumpstart healing?
Through my work, personally and with hundreds of clients, I have used bodywork, corrective exercise, emotional healing, chakras, somatics, and more to understand underlying issues and begin to address the root causes of our dis-ease. Many traditional systems and modern practitioners have noticed the connection between emotions, experiences and body posture. When we feel stressed and scared we often curl up into the fetal position. Our chest collapses. Our head moves forward. When we have no grounding, we often have low back problems. When we are stuck in our heads to much we often have tension headaches. We clench our jaws when we hold our tongues, trying not to voice our needs or our anger. But these connections usually aren’t obvious, unless we know where to look.
When I do intakes with my clients, I always begin with the physical pains that are presenting themselves to us. We often talk about headaches, back aches, neck pain, shoulder pain, etc. And as we work together I work the muscles groups dealing with referral pain and loosening up the physical tension in the body. Often as we work, I get hints or even floods of an emotional releases. Sometimes I literally will get a hot flash as energy moves!
In my work my clients always have the choice whether to deal with the emotions/memories or not. Massage, when done appropriately, creates a safe space for healing to occur in. It reconnects us to our foundation and allows us to listen to our bodies again. And only from solid ground can true healing really begin.
Where do we go from here?
With the knowledge that our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and communal health affects us all the way down to the cellular level and beyond, we must take each of these into account when addressing our healing. We can’t fully heal unless our physical needs are met. We can’t physically heal unless we feel safe. We can’t feel safe unless we know we belong and we can’t know we belong until we find safe relationships. That is why our healing practices need to take into account the entirety of our parts, because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. From now on our job is to create a healing system that addresses us as the complex and interconnected beings we are.
