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Holism

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Basically, it is virtually impossible to discuss body, mind, and spirit as individual entities, as they are intricately interwoven and interdependent. Mind is the builder and body is the result. It is the soul incarnate that provides human life. Spirit is the connection of soul with the divine or God. In medicine, René Descartes is credited with the scientific separation of body, mind, and soul. He felt that the body is materially present in a physical sense and that the mind is essentially immaterial—it has no physical manifestations. To a great extent this is the philosophy of science and of modern medicine.

In 1929 Jan Smuts, general and prime minister of South Africa, introduced the word holism in a masterpiece book, Holism and Evolution. From early 1900 until 1945, Edgar Cayce laid the foundation for the remarkably broad field of holistic medicine. I was introduced to the Cayce material in 1972, and it changed my life forever, awakening my interest in all aspects of health and mysticism. In 1978, with the founding of the American Holistic Medical Association, www.holisticmedicine.org, I envisioned that at least 10% of physicians would become holistically inclined within ten years. Actually, the number of out-of-the-closet holistic physicians has changed little through the ensuing thirty-six years, but it has been the main source for truly holistic medicine! Despite having the American Board of Holistic Medicine, AHMA membership has not kept up with the actual growth in total physicians. Now, to my surprise, the current leadership of AHMA has decided that the word holistic will never be accepted by the Establishment and voted to drop holistic in favor of integrated—a word already highly polluted by hospitals pretending to be inclusive. The Establishment is the problem, not the solution!

Most physicians are too brainwashed by the PharmacoMafia and remain sheepishly oblivious to the broader human perspective. In 1978, I was excited at the need for holistic medicine. Initially, my sense of great need was the result of being appalled by the barbarian approaches to chronic pain—cordotomy, cutting the front half of the spinal cord, and frontal lobotomy, destroying the personality forever. In 1971, having introduced Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) and Dorsal Column Stimulation (DCS), I was overwhelmed with four hundred patients each year. I selected only 6% at most for the DCS and most of the rest were much too complex for TENS. Almost all were iatrogenically addicted to Valium® and Percodan®. They had had an average of five to seven unsuccessful surgeries; they had an average of forty-nine symptoms. Clearly the system had failed them.

Between 1971 and 1978, I added acupuncture, biofeedback, past-life therapy, music therapy, massage and exercise, nutrition, and gradually a wide variety of self-regulation techniques. I sensed the broad spiritual crisis that many patients had endured. Thus was the need for a return to spiritual healing at all levels. I naively thought that we would have several thousand physicians join the holistic movement within a few years. The AMA rejected the concept from the beginning. Then a few hospitals paid lip service and started mentioning the very word. However, the practice of comprehensive holism never took hold and soon the acceptable terms became complementary and alternative. Finally, the current pretend is integrative medicine, with many hospitals paying slightly more than lip service and offering a few alternatives—never holistic or comprehensive.

Meanwhile, the broadest scientific field of all, energy medicine, evolved to include everything outside drugs and surgery. Holism began to be relegated to the past. Even the American Holistic Medical Association voted to drop the word holistic, because the current leaders believe the term would never be accepted by the Establishment. Of course it is the Establishment, which is more constipated and fixed on ignoring the basic cause of disease—stress! At least a huge majority of disease is the result of spiritual distress, leading to anxiety and depression and ultimately to a majority of illnesses!

If the cause is spiritual, the solution must be holistic—the basic meaning of which is holy. This spiritual existential crisis leads to hopelessness, poor self-esteem, and failure to take care of self. Ultimately it is recognition that the body is the temple of the soul, which requires attention to the self—mind, spirit, and soul working together to heal the body and to keep it healthy.

Practicing in a comprehensive holistic clinic between 1971 and 2003, I worked with over 30,000 patients who had been failed by conventional medicine. For three years our clinic was named by the American Academy of Pain Management as the most cost effective and the most successful for management of chronic pain. Our success rate was consistently 85%. Of course virtually all the patients had depression as well as a wide variety of medical problems in addition to pain.

I tried for twenty years to find a holistic physician to take over the clinic. Failing that, I closed the clinic in 2003 and have focused on research and writing. Almost daily I receive requests to see difficult patients who have been failed by the system. I am asked many times a week for referral to a holistic physician. There are about a thousand who are members of the devolving AHMA, but I know of no truly comprehensive clinic. There are, of course, a few excellent clinics which offer some great alternatives.

With the advent of the Unaffordable Care Act, it is estimated that 30% of physicians will retire early and the system may well collapse, while offering, at best, drugs and surgery—critical perhaps 15% of the time and failing almost always even to acknowledge the underlying spiritual crisis. Even with our system already costing over twice that of any other western country, the US remains about number 37 on the totem pole of health. The only hope is a turn to holism!

In the 90s Congress “mandated” at NIH a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine(NCCAM), which funds some research but rather a paltry amount compared to mainstream PharmacoMafia work. Indeed, the vast majority of American physicians and medical journals are today pawns of the PharmacoMafia! Silently almost half of physicians personally use some Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) approaches but only about 16% admit to ever referring a patient for such safe alternatives. Despite the negligence of physicians in truthfully evaluating and using many of the safe alternative approaches to health, the American public has embraced the field to the extent that more than 50% of Americans use some “nonmedical” alternative approach every year. Indeed, I believe unequivocally that at least 85% of illnesses should be treated comprehensively with these safer and more effective alternatives. There is a need for conventional medicine—mostly in acute illnesses and injuries. On the other hand, if individuals take responsibility for their lifestyle and live a healthy life, most illnesses can be avoided.

Almost twenty years ago Dr. Elmer Green, father of biofeedback, organized the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energy and Energy Medicine, www.issseem.org. Thus energy medicine became another of the new terms.

Hospitals have most often jumped belatedly into the marketplace offering their form of integrative medicine, which means that they espouse integrating some alternatives. Most often they do a crappy job and prostitute the whole concept.

The CAM approaches recognized by the NCCAM are:

1 Nutrition and Lifestyle: diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management

2 Mind-Body Medicine

3 Alternative systems of Medical Thought: Traditional Chinese Medicine

4 Alternative systems of Medical Thought: Yoga and Ayurveda

5 Alternative systems of Medical Thought: Homeopathy

6 Bioenergetic Medicine

7 Pharmacologic/Biologically based: Herbal Medicine

8 Pharmacologic/Biologically based: nutrition, dietary supplements, and vitamins

9 Manipulative Therapies: Chiropractic, Osteopathic

10 Manipulative Therapies: Massage

The American Student Medical Association (ASMA) established syllabi for teaching all these CAM approaches, but few medical schools offer anything significant in these fields. To a great extent all of these fields can just as easily be considered holistic medicine, integrative medicine, or energy medicine. Of course, I have to mention that spiritual and soul medicines are part of mind-body medicine and are the most critical issues avoided by the Establishment and integrative medicine. I am pleased to have written the ASMA syllabus for training in mind-body medicine. Conventional American medicine uses only drugs and surgery—none of the more critical issues are addressed by most MDs and DOs.

My own practice began in 1971 to offer all the CAM categories. The Shealy Institute and Shealy Wellness Center became the most cost-effective and most patient-effective clinic I know. Ninety-plus percent of what we did required no physician. That is why I founded Holos University Graduate Seminar, www.holosuniversity.org, to train competent individuals in the broad field of spiritual healing and energy medicine. These include essentially all the CAM, holistic, integrative, and energy medicine approaches to health.

In 2008, my movie, Medical Renaissance—The Secret Code, www.Medical-Renaissance.net, was produced. It is the best overall presentation I know to demonstrate the effectiveness of holistic medicine. Recently I have released the most exciting result of the influence of spiritual intuition—rejuvenation of DNA telomeres, the key to life, health, and longevity! For the first time in history, we have demonstrated rejuvenation and regrowth of this key to health and longevity!

As mentioned before, I receive almost daily requests for referrals to a truly holistic clinic. The only way I can see a solution to this problem is to begin again and to create the model for holism, the International Institute of Holistic Medicine, which has now been done with a world-class migraine specialist, a world-class cardiologist, a world-class sound physician, and the original pain and depression specialist in Springfield, Missouri.

This book explores the many dimensions needed to integrate body, mind, and soul into the holistic whole. In 1988 Caroline Myss and I co-authored The Creation of Health, in which she wrote the metaphysical intuitive concepts of health and disease while I dealt with the medical concepts. Here, I hope to integrate an even broader overview of life itself.

In the late 70s, Dr. John Knowles wrote a hallmark article, The Responsibility of the Individual. He stated, “99% of individuals are born healthy and become unhealthy because of human misbehavior.” Today statistics state that only 95% of babies are born healthy and a striking 12% nationally are born prematurely! Forty percent of babies are born to single mothers, setting the stage for the greatest possible variety of the ideal, because inviting a soul to incarnate requires two potential parents who love one another and carefully prepare fully for the possibility of a healthy child who will be nurtured to optimal life.

If both parents are truly healthy and reasonably well-adjusted mentally and share spiritual ideals, then the soul choosing to incarnate with them has the best potential to arrive physically healthy. Obviously there are rare genetic inheritances that may show up despite the best of plans. Nevertheless, with this foundation the chances are at least 99% that the baby will be born healthy.

The requirements for such ideal parents are between the ages of 25 and 35, socially well-adjusted with adequate income. They do not smoke and they drink alcohol moderately, if at all. They have a body mass index of 18 to 24. They eat at least five total servings daily of fruits and vegetables. They exercise a minimum of thirty minutes at least five days a week. Unfortunately, only 3% of Americans have these essential basic habits! In addition to these critical habits, this couple will likely take some supplements, perhaps at least Vitamin D 3, a minimum of 2000 units daily and a multivitamin-mineral with up to 25 mg of B complex, with a minimum of 1000 mcg of folic acid, and at least 1000 unit of Omega-3s. During the pregnancy, the couple will avoid significant stresses, such as fluoridated, chlorinated water; smog, and excessive exposure to electromagnetic pollution. They will have regular spiritual practices, setting the mental and emotional stage for a nurturing welcome to the baby. Although I will attempt to deal with possible corrective measures for some health problems, I prefer to start with the ideals for an optimally healthy baby and childhood first.

The parents will avoid today’s Round-Up® polluted wheat and the vast majority of packaged foods, as well as all “fast food” restaurants, sugar, monosodium glutamate, hydrogenated fats, all artificial sweeteners, substitutes, and artificial additives.

At the end of nine months the mother will go into labor and have a reasonably comfortable delivery, without anesthesia or significant drugs. The healthy baby will be welcomed and kept with the mother, who will nurse it for at least the first six months of life.

Statistically, if this baby has good health habits, it will live an average of one hundred years. If it adopts the average American habits, it will live only seventy-eight years. The difference in longevity is likely to involve many more problems. Life in the US is shortened by accidents, stokes, heart attacks, cancer, infections, and a wide variety of problems—most of which are the results of behaviors and habits.

Smoking shortens life by an average of six to seven years for each pack of cigarettes smoked daily. Obesity shortens life as much as smoking three packs daily, if the person is forty or more pounds overweight. Unfortunately, being a man shortens life by about three years over that of a woman’s.

Excellent studies have shown that the major causes of premature death are:

 Obesity

 Smoking

 Medical services

 Poor nutrition

 Inactivity

 Inadequate sleep

Only three percent of Americans have the essentials:

 normal body weight

 no smoking

 adequate intake, five servings daily, of fruits and vegetables

 exercise of thirty minutes five days a week!

If all Americans had these habits, within twenty-five years, average American life would be one hundred instead of the current seventy-eight. Therefore, to start our discussion of a healthy body, it is critical to emphasize that true health is virtually impossible without these habits. Indeed, with these habits our major diseases of heart attack, hypertension, stroke, and cancer would be diminished 75 to 80%! Essentially, a vast majority of illness and premature death results from not caring for self. And this care-less-ness appears to be the result of low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Thus, I begin with evaluating the stress that is the foundation of a huge majority of disease.