By Alina M. Hernandez
Many years ago, I was texting with a friend, and referring to something being “holistic,” and I inadvertently wrote “wholism” instead of holism. Her prompt response, “it’s ‘holism,’ not wholism.” When I looked down, I realized I had written it with a “w.”
This innocuous misstep left me pondering why do we use the word, “holism,” and why and how do we employ it? Fast forward to the present day, and its current use in the context of health and wellness – and it is probably one of the most misused and abused words in our industry – yet it acts as a ubiquitous payoff for many wellness offerings, products, and services.
We have all heard of the “holistic wellness” approach, programs, treatments, for the resort, clinical environment, workplace and even hotels etc. (the list is quite long). But, ultimately, do we really know how to apply a holistic approach – how to operationalize it to be optimized it for the benefits it is supposed to bestow – and do we really understand those benefits, from a holistic perspective?
While I hear many refer to the term, are we employing it with its true meaning and desired outcomes? Often when we do hear it, we use it while assuming that we, and the other person(s), have a common understanding of its meaning. In the Wellness industry – and elsewhere it has, for the most part, been adapted to reference non-allopathic treatments, therapies. experiences – and even products. Often, it refers to modalities originating from the ancient spiritual healing traditions, and to imply something that works better or has a wider bandwidth of efficiency or effectiveness. Does that make the experience and outcome “holistic?” While on first thought, we might believe it does, scratching below the surface tells us otherwise. Here’s why.
What’s in a word?
When running a search for the word, “holism” (noun) or “holistic” (adjective), these are some of the entries I found:
1. The Oxford dictionary describes it as “the theory that parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole, or cannot be understood without reference to the whole, which is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts. Holism is often applied to mental states, language, and ecology.”
2. The Wikipedia example, simply stated, “the interdisciplinary idea that systems possess properties as wholes apart from the properties of their component parts.”
3. An online mental health platform discusses the pros and the cons of “Holism” and an “approach (in psychology) to understanding the human mind and behavior that focuses on looking at things as a whole.”
The word, it seems, has lost its real meaning and essence – and has become almost a “throw-away” term to convey something representing anything that goes beyond what is the conventional mindset of the Western paradigm to health and wellbeing.
Deep roots and even deeper meaning
From where does the word holism originate? According to the BMJ (leading British peer-reviewed medical journal), “Holistic is a term widely applied in science in general, including medicine, where it refers to managing the “whole person,” not just the symptoms or a disease.
Holistic is a neologism or newly coined word, introduced in 1926 by Jan Christian Smuts—a South African soldier, statesman, and philosopher—in his treatise Holism and Evolution. Smuts visualised the universe as three “wholes…” This “unification of separate parts” has vast systemic implications that go way beyond the condition of the human body or mind, and includes multi/interdisciplinary thinking and application, including metaphysical, social, environmental, biological, and even cosmological. He concluded that the universe “operates” to create “wholes,” and this explains our evolution and existence. He therefore coined holism to explain this phenomenon, taken from the Greek “holos” which means “whole” the term derives from PIE the Prototype-Indo-European root “sol” or “whole,” “entire,” or “total.”
Why does this matter? Whether Noam Chomsky’s philosophy that language is innate in humans to Martin Heidegger’s position that “language is the house of being,” words are beyond important because they carry ancient wisdom and thought form. And, if they are to convey, translate and propagate wellness, healing, and wellbeing – they need to be congruent with the essence of their meaning – and this is everything! In other words, how you apply something directly relates to the results and full expression of that something.
Misguided claims of Holistic wellness and its by products
Revisiting Holism and its origins, what insights can we take on how to better apply it to improve creating true holistic wellness? In its most basic form, a holistic therapy should address the mind, body, and spirit, the environment where it is being delivered, the way it is operated, and the entire supplier- to-consumer pipeline. It’s also about considering the individual as well as the collective experience within an offering. It is seeing the forest in its entirety and knowing about how each tree works, and how the trees-and-forest ecosystem communicate in harmony – there is a science to this – think forest bathing experiences and the balance of ecosystems.
If, as an example, I am claiming to be a Holistic Wellness offering but fail to take care of my staff and house the offering in a building constructed with degenerative building materials, and are unengaged with the greater community at large, all holistic claims will fall short. It’s like general therapy or counseling, if I am only treating the individual but fail to understand the individual’s own network and environment, the therapy will be limited in its capacity to be effective. The early addiction work of the 1970’s understood early on that if a person was going to heal from addiction, it needed to align both people and the environment of that individual, to set him/her up to succeed.
Like “well-washing,” or “green washing,” appearing or claiming to deliver a form of “holistic wellness” by merely labeling it as such, either knowingly or unknowingly, only confuses at best, and is potentially damages at worst.
Likewise, spiritual bypassing, a term coined by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist in the mid 1980’s illustrates this point. He relayed that spiritual bypassing is a “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental issues.”
The proliferation of therapies, treatments rituals, and experiences taken from the Ancient Spiritual Healing traditions or the Wisdom Schools (think TCM, Tibetan Medicine, Ayurveda Yoga, etc.) have given us many wonderful treatment and experiences, connected to spiritual traditions.
When these are implemented as part of a list of many treatments or experiences, on a spa or wellness menu, in isolation, without context or understanding of the overall system where they come from, are just conveyor belt-like and transactional – seemingly unconnected to the whole without a take-home value for integration into real life. While the countless wonderful treatments coming out of the ancient healing traditions are lovely on their own, their impact can be so much greater if they are accompanied by the curation of the context in which they are delivered. Simply having an experience claiming to holistically resolve something because it has a spiritual prominence potentially sets up the individual to enter a healing or wellness cul-du-sac.
The shift to w(holism)
Wellness is something with many layers and nuances. We know that human beings are also complex systems, and with the new paradigm of Quantum Biology we are beginning to understand that the nature of life as we know it is experiencing a radical reframe. The notions and paradigm that we have understood under the Newtonian paradigm, which are fundamentally reductionist and lack that “intimate interconnectedness” which makes any whole, are slowly giving way to a complete understanding of the nature of life and existence. Think in terms of energy, where we get it and what we do with it – the “field effect,” and the whole new world of frequency healing in all its modalities and new awareness of how everything is really connected – and without a guidance to how it is all connected we miss out on the full extent of the experience and the growth that comes with it. We are realizing that nothing lives in isolation, and that we are parts of a grand whole from the most granular, on a molecular and sub-atomic level, all the way to the galaxies and the infinite universe, then we begin to grasp that all of our assumptions are undergoing a radical re-think. Wellness is no different.
If we are to truly heal and be well, we must consider the totality of that forest, the ecosystem where it lives, and the integrity of each tree – the individual parts of the great whole. How might we envision this in the Wellness space? We might start from challenging our own assumptions, and belief systems of what holism is. Does it begin with the I? Does it include the we? How does it show up in the world, and what do I observe from it? In what system does it live? If we understand that we are systems within systems, and that our environments are systems themselves how will this impact how I design and curate my wellness experience and the outcomes I promise my guests from their experience?
How will I proceed with a design brief for a new offering, and make adaptations to an existing one? When I think of my concept or Wellness promise, understanding why I am doing something is more important than what I propose to do because this will inform how I do it. This process alone begins the important steps to create holism because the purpose (or the why) informs the context or whole of it all, and the manner in which I do it (the how) will lead me to what (content) I offer.
The key is how I change my thinking to learn and train myself to think differently. How to train for Holistic thinking? How about?
Challenging assumptions on how things are done, and how products and services are delivered. What might you do differently to create meaning and excitement in people’s lives, and awareness of themselves and others – and their greater environments?
Take a multi/interdisciplinary approach to programming: see the interconnections between seemingly unrelated things – their links might surprise you.
Apply systems thinking and study the functions and take-aways for how decentralized networks work and why this helps us connect to everything. Nature, our bodies, and everything that is work this way.
Learn about values systems, instead of just values because the system where a value lives will inform you of what’s important to someone and the “why” of that system. This will greatly impact the way you might engage and understand the wellness seeker – in a profound and meaningful way.
Think like the 5% – not in terms of monetary worth, but in terms of the percentage of people who comprise the cultural creatives leading the AI (Artificial intelligence) revolution and not just consuming it for quick results.
Holism in the age of Wellness 3.0
As we stand on the doorstep of Wellness 3.0, what is the mindset, knowledge, and skillsets that we will need to galvanize a new age in health and wellbeing? How will we manage the complexity of bio individuality and precision wellness to decrease chronic disease and improve our health spans?
While researching for this article, I found a singular entry for Holism – one that paralleled my own insight on (w)holism, and I was gratified to read that there is similar thinking out there. In the Merriam-Webster’s Word Play/Word History section, I was delighted to read “the ‘w’ brings the meaning full circle.” I felt vindicated for my more than two decades of admonishment, as I read “although not fully accepted by some, and used considerably less than holistic, wholistic is not, in fact, wrong.”
Holism is a mindset, and a consciousness. It is a post conventional way of thinking and being that allows a completely new way to live and thrive.
We must be mindful of what promises we make about anything being “holistic” and question where the “whole” is. To deliver Wellness that is authentically holistic, we need to look at context and content – and how they work together and are interconnected – or whole. By viewing wellness from this lens, we welcome a new way of thinking and being. What an extraordinary opportunity to innovate and evolve the entire notion of what it means to be well, and human in harmony. If I practice holism as an individual, an independent thinker, and work with others to create ecosystems of internal and external wellness, how will that impact my capacity to be truly well?
Maybe we will move beyond our limiting beliefs and expand our notions of what it means to be human and experience a life-in-total, humans in harmony with everything because we are de facto a part of everything. By practicing and being in this space, we have the possibility to expand our horizons beyond our imagination as we learn to embrace life with limitless possibilities, towards this next iteration of Wellness – a wholistic one.