Whole-person health (and why it matters)

Whole-person health (and why it matters)

I bang on a lot about the idea that ‘health’ is so much more than the distilled, ‘westernised’, medicalised construct that we often default to when we think about our health.  Thankfully we are now starting to see evidence-based research that supports this notion – despite the concept not being the slightest bit new!  The ancient Greeks were all over the idea that in order to be healthy, and avoid disease, it was necessary to have a ‘healthy mind in a healthy body’.  And the eastern approach to health has always been holistic – working with physical, emotional and spiritual components.  In Chinese Medicine, there are considered to be three causes of illness: emotional state, environment or other causes (includes nutrition and trauma).  In Ayurvedic medicine, which has its roots in the Indian subcontinent, health comes from the balance between three elemental energies – Vata (space and air), Pitta (fire and water), Kapha (earth and water).  These dynamic energies are believed to be constantly responding to an individual’s thoughts, emotions, behaviours and the environment.

Despite all this ancient wisdom, many of our healthcare systems and practices are focused on separate functions / specialties of health (such as: cardiology (heart), orthopaedics (bones), gynaecology & obstetrics (uterus’ & pregnancy) and psychiatry (mental health). Sure, this makes sense in so many ways, but it becomes a real problem when you have symptoms that aren’t easily diagnosed / treated in one of these defined categories – which is most definitely the case when we’re working with chronic inflammatory diseases (thought to be related to psychological trauma) and the all-important symptomology of mental health conditions that are experienced both psychologically and physically. One of the other big differences between eastern and western approaches to healthcare is the emphasis that the medicalised (western) model puts on diagnosing and treating disease based on symptoms that patients report / can be tested.  Oriental (eastern) approaches are heavily focused on health promotion and the maintenance of balance across all facets of a person’s life in a holistic manner.

Because I believe that trauma is a whole-person experience – I can’t work in any other way than working with the whole client.  Let’s just explore this briefly.  Trauma (whether singular big ‘T’rauma, the compounding effects of multiple small ‘t’rauma, or early attachment trauma) can affect all of these parts of a person’s life:

• Physical health – racing heart, sweating, panic attacks, chronic pain / fatigue, migraines, gynaecological issues, low motivation and pain reducing interest in engaging in physical activity
• Mental health – reliving events / flashbacks, low mood & motivation, safety-seeking / avoidant behaviours
• Social health – withdrawing from social connections if people feel unsafe, symptoms mentioned above making it hard to be around other people, and for other people to be around us
• Sleep health – nightmares, insomnia, disturbed sleep
• Nutritional health – disturbances to nervous system can lead to decreased / increased appetite, low motivation to make food at home resulting in less adaptive food choices, reliance on substances such as alcohol to numb above symptoms

I often explain to clients that we want to get to a place where we have established balance across all of the different facets of our health, and we actively explore what that might look like (and what we need to get there) for each individual person.  It’s not that each of these health sections require us to do the same routine thing all the time to maintain balance – we need to be more creative than that.  We also need to be able to tune into what our body / mind / whole-person might need at any given time to maintain that balance.  Here’s a few suggestions for how we might explore various different approaches to supporting these different parts of whole-person health:

• Physical health / movement – this means attendance to maintenance of any particular issues by seeking specialist care, being responsible for our physical health by having regular blood tests, having regular cervical smear tests / HPV checks, moving our bodies intentionally (aerobically and strength)
• Mental / psychological health – going to therapy, working with a coach, joining a support group, working on healthy boundaries, relationships and connections
• Nutrition / fluid health – attending to any intolerances, dietary preferences in an adaptive (balanced way), supplementing where necessary, supporting healthy gut-microbiome, learning how your body processes different macro and micro-nutrients, drinking enough water, minimising caffeine and alcohol
• Spiritual health / mindfulness – this isn’t about religion per se, but more about developing a connection to something deeper / more profound than us, using various approaches to develop an ability to be ‘in the present moment’
• Sleep health & rest – attending to disturbances in sleep, developing a healthy sleep hygiene practice, getting restorative rest beyond sleep

Over the next few weeks I’m going to share a bit about how I’ve explored different ways to balance all of these parts of my own health with a desire to make it both practical and also demonstrate how it doesn’t have to be a quick, perfect or rigid process!

If you’d like somewhere to talk about aspects of your whole-person health, please get in touch with us: www.theabaker.com.au / hello@theabaker.com.au / 03 9077 8194.