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Holistic appreciation and treatment of the physical systems of the body

Holistic appreciation, care and treatment of physical, mental, emotional, psychological, psychic and spiritual health

Holistic appreciation, study and application of various modalities of health care and of medicine

Holistic appreciation of synergies among various roles of healers and care-givers in an effort centered on empowered patients.

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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Holistic Health -- No Other Kind

By Ding Reyes

Editor, Earthlite's Sparks & Reflections  Newsletter

This was written as an editorial in S& R

A HIGH SCHOOL Biology student once submitted as his class project a beautifully-executed drawing of his understanding of the circulatory system—the heart at the center, color-coded arteries, capillaries and veins carrying blood away from it, through all other organs, and back to it, all with arrows and even shading for a 3-d effect. But he got a failing mark for that effort. Reason: he did not include the lungs or the intestines in his cycle, thinking that those organs belonged completely to other systems that wouyld later be the subject of separate discussions and separate projects. Explaining his omissions, he said he didn’t know that blood had to pass the lungs or the intestines in any special way. The teacher shot back: “You mean, you do not even know why we breathe or why we eat?

He did know, of course, that we have to keep breathing and eating, or else we die. As to the “why?” on that, well… “No, Ma’am.” He had taken Health & Science as a subject in Grade 5 (or was it Grade 3) a few years earlier, but either absent siya nang ituro ‘yon,” or the earlier teacher really failed to lead him to integrate separate systems (respiratory, circulatory, nervous, skeletal, etc.) in his knowledge of anatomy and physiology of the human body, of health and of life, as in being alive.

Yes, you read right, that teacher failed. You’d never have thought that teachers could fail, because in this educational system, only students are known to fail. But then, this is where not only teachers but the entire formal educational system itself is failing miserably. And so we have a whole population looking at the body as if it were made of absolutely-segregated parts, systems, organs and body parts to memorize for the coming exams. The students get to pass the exams but are denied real education about health and about science.

Meanwhile, we have overspecialized physicians who keep to their own specific fields, and we have drugstores dispensing specific tablets and capsules on a symptom-to-symptom basis.

But actually the body’s dynamic systems are intimately interrelated. They are in fact integrated so much so that they had been designed to work in harmony, in no less than a beautiful symphony that has a silent ease to it. That is how healthy bodies are. We usually hear sounds only when there is a disharmony, a malfunctioning, when there is a dis-ease.

That high school biology student eventually got to appreciate the beautiful he had missed out on when he was preparing his ill-fated project that, many decades later, he would write a line about it in his poem that says: “Smile for health, the synergy of all dynamic systems of the body…” If teachers had used this approach in teaching anatomy and physiology, and highlighted the synergy in symbiosis to exalt the value of ecosystem stability in biodiversity, the students would not have hated memorizing body parts and scientific names of species (like dicus alamus), and they would not have suffered so much in their study of Biology. And we would have been, by habit, observing and appreciating the human body wholistically, enjoying health in its smooth synergy, and meeting the challenge of dis-ease in a well-rounded way.

Actually, it’s not only the synergy of all the body’s systems that can insure comfort and vigor to give us a feeling and actual state of health. There are also the crucial factors of peace and equilibrium in the mind and spirit. All health and healing would hecessary need an integrated comprehensive approach. Health is holistic. There is no other kind.

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