ho·lis·tic /hōˈlistik/
"Holistic Healing", "Holistic Wellness", What does it mean?
“Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.” -Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine
Welcome to my new series of articles about holistic animal wellness and healing, what it is, its definitions, its tenets, and holistic paradigms and approaches. The underlying purpose is to reclaim and reframe the concept of holistic wellness and holistic healing for both animals and humans.
Our current human medical and veterinary medical systems have lost their way to the corporate profiteers of Big Pharma, Big Agribusiness, Big Pet Food, and insurance companies.
Health and healing have been available to humans and animals on this planet for as long as humans have lived, for thousands upon thousands of years. Humans have discovered and experimented with ways of helping the body heal as a part of our very survival.
It is time to reclaim our health, our animals' health, and our planet's health from the hands of Big Business.
Exploring different healing paradigms and systems is a step in that direction. A new round of my program on holistic veterinary wellness for prevention is starting up in April. Its a small group program, exploring Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine, seasonal healing, nutrition, plant medicine and energy medicine for our animals and ourselves!
ho·lis·tic /hōˈlistik/
adjective
adjective: holistic
characterized by the belief that the parts of something are interconnected and can be explained only by reference to the whole.
"The solution demands a holistic approach and a strategic vision of what can be achieved."
Medicine
characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the symptoms of an illness.
"Many people conclude that holistic medicines are beneficial."
Holistic was coined by South African soldier and statesman Jan Christian Smuts in the 1920s as a philosophical term. Smuts, who—aside from war and politics—was a student of natural science, used the term to describe his complex philosophy regarding the organization of nature. Viewing the universe in terms of "wholes"—that is, organisms and systems instead of molecules and atoms—he derived holism from the Greek word holos, meaning "whole." In his 1926 book Holism and Evolution, he defines holism as "[the] tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution." - Merriam-Webster Dictionary
People think of several things when they hear the word “HOLISTIC”.
They may think of granola-eating barefoot hippies and the health food stores that sprung up in the 1970s and 80s. These health food co-ops were actually the beginning of Whole Foods long before it became part of the Bezos empire.
In the 1960s and 70s, there was a revival of healing modalities that had been essentially outcast by the American Medical Association in the 1920s. These included:
Homeopathy is a healing modality founded by Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician, in 1796 that spread worldwide. Several homeopathic colleges existed in the United States but closed in the early 1900s when the newly formed American Medical Association (AMA) sponsored a report in 1910 that ranked medical schools, penalizing those that used homeopathic medications.
Chiropractic care was developed by Daniel David Palmer, who founded the Palmer School of Chiropractic in 1897. In the 20th century, chiropractic spread to all 50 states, although acceptance and licensure have been ongoing battles with conventional medicine.
Acupuncture: Chinese medicine has been practiced in the United States since colonial times when Chinese immigrants arrived. It was mentioned in medical literature in 1822. Sir William Osler endorsed acupuncture in his 1892 book The Principles and Practice of Medicine. The media's coverage of acupuncture during President Nixon's visit to China helped spark public interest, and by the mid-1970s, many states had legalized it.
Beyond these specific modalities, there was also a return to nutrition, nutritional supplementation, fasting, detoxification, massage and folk medicine arising out of the counterculture movement of the 1960s.
The practice of these modalities expanded naturally to the health care of animals and veterinary medicine. The term “holistic" began being used in the early 1980s by veterinarians who practiced these various alternative medicine modalities. In 1982, they formed the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association (AHVMA) to represent veterinarians who had additional training in complementary approaches like acupuncture, chiropractic, herbal medicine, and homeopathy.
The AHVMA eventually became a member of the AVMA House of Delegates and currently serves as an umbrella organization for numerous certification courses, schools and programs that teach these modalities.
With the advent of social media and Facebook, “holistic pet care” took off like wildfire. There continues to be a shortage of holistically trained veterinarians and a larger demand for this type of care by the public. Much of this was fueled by the corporatization of veterinary medicine.
Corporate veterinary medicine began in 1987 when VCA Animal Hospitals purchased its first independent clinic. Since then, the number of corporate-owned veterinary practices has grown, with small independently owned practices being bought up across the country. Pet health insurance companies sprung up, and the prices for veterinary care quadrupled over a very short period of time.
Pet owners began looking for more affordable options that would help alleviate their pets' symptoms, and many turned to Facebook. Luckily, a vital holistic pet community with some very knowledgeable people, including practicing veterinarians, began forming discussion and educational groups.
Like any community on social media, it has grown over the past couple of decades. Good advice can still be found amidst a large amount of questionable advice. Some people are well-trained. Some people claim “certification” and training but have very little practical experience and no medical background. Many are there trying to sell their supplements by giving free advice and recommending their particular line of supplements as the solution.
The unfortunate result is that “holistic” becomes lumped into raw-feeding, the latest greatest cure-all supplement, or a cheap cure based on free advice. Desperate pet owners post about their sick animals and receive advice from 100s of other desperate pet owners for things that may or may not work. In the meantime, the actual animals, who may have been helped by the right advice from the right person, can go on suffering. Some of the better moderated groups will refer people to actual licensed veterinarians and professionals who can provide individualized help.
On the other side of the equation, the hands of the licensed veterinarians have been tied off and on due to licensing regulations around the provision of telemedicine and telehealth. Again, it becomes a battle between licensing bureaucracy not keeping up with demand.
In addition, veterinary schools have, in large part, been hijacked by funding from Big Pet Food and Big Pharma. Students are not being taught how to critically reason through a medical case. Instead, they are commonly taught to follow yes/no algorithms when making a diagnosis. There is still very little, if any, instruction in nutrition beyond reading the name of a pet food, “no need to look at that ingredient list, trust us". When it comes to holistic modalities, they are somewhat more accepting but often teach and use them in an allopathic manner - more on that later.
How Do I Define “HOLISTIC”
"Holistic" medicine or wellness is a paradigm that informs one's approach to wellness or the treatment of a patient who may be suffering from some type of imbalance, whether physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. These are usually intertwined.
It begins with the premise that the individual is unique in their constitution and is already whole. With the right support, the body can repair and heal itself.
In quantum reality, everything is connected to everything else, and nothing exists in isolation from anything else. That means that something happening on the other side of the world sends out quantum waves or ripples, affecting everything in its path, a phenomenon called the butterfly effect.
As humans, our minds are extremely busy. Busy, monkey minds combined with digital reality means we are that much more disconnected and ungrounded from the exterior world of real, living beings, the sky, the wind, the smells from the flowers blooming in our garden, the earth under our feet, and the call of birds overhead.
When we can step back and look at the world through a holistic lens, we see this interconnected web of life, with the individual just one locus amidst the greater web. Within the individual is another web, a fractal of the larger. This telescopes inward and outward, perhaps to infinity.
As the famous spiritual maxim goes, “As above, so below. As within, so without.”
Our greatest challenge in this modern world is to keep one foot grounded on the earth while allowing our other foot to explore other dimensions and not be hypnotized by the digital reality of our choosing. With Artificial Intelligence already here, the ante has been upped a million-fold. It may soon become a regular thing to lay out on the earth, or in mud baths, to keep ourselves grounded in some way.
The Strands of the Web
Here are a few strands:
Physical: organs, body parts, physical exam findings, diagnostic: blood, radiographs, CT/MRI.
Lifestyle + Daily routines: water intake, exercise: type + routines, mealtimes, sleeping, alone time, social time, recreation/play.
Nutrition: diet, supplements, mealtimes, feeding style.
Social environment: same species interactions, family members, other species, human interactions, activity level, ages, routines.
Mental/behavioral: early life experiences, socialization, training, environmental enrichment.
Emotional: leaving the litter, early life experiences, recent losses or deaths of humans and other animals in the family group, change in households, moving, new baby, change in humans’ jobs, routines, mental/emotional/physical status.
Energetic: the liminal space between the physical body and the flow of Qi, lymph, and blood through the body. Can involve pulses, chakras, meridians, acupuncture points, trigger points, fascial knots, chiropractic subluxations. Managing the flow of Qi and anything that may be impeding it.
Ancestral lineage: We speak of this for humans. It also applies to animals and includes genetic/inherited physical conditions, breed-specific tendencies, and preferences. What specific traits - physical, behavioral, personality- were selected for, intentionally or unintentionally, in the ancestral lines? What were the personalities, temperaments, and lifestyles of the parents? We know that more than physical factors are passed on through the generations. There are epigenetic factors from intelligence, learned behavior, immunity, behavioral, emotional (fear, anxiety), immune system dysregulation from over-vaccination, nutritional deficiencies, microbiome imbalances, and many more we do not know about.
Spiritual: There may be karmic patterns that the individual brings in with them that are unrelated to this life but formed in a past incarnation. They may have a spiritual contract with their human that involves healing a spiritual, emotional, or mental wound. They may be an ally or guardian that has incarnated with this human multiple times to serve any number of purposes. They may be here to teach or help humans integrate shadow pieces within themselves. There are numerous possibilities, and some of these are none of our business to intrude upon. Sometimes, they do require our facilitation, validation, or just witnessing and pointing out.
Species-specific behaviors and species-specific requirements need to be taken into consideration. In order to evaluate behavior, mental and emotional states, and lifestyle factors, we need to understand the species' natural history. This includes ancestral diets, what they evolved to eat, what climates and ecosystems they evolved within, and what type of social groups they lived in or not.
Different species and even different breeds will express their emotional and mental states with different behaviors. This needs to be taken into consideration when assessing two big categories that problems get lumped into: PAIN + ANXIETY. There will be more on these two at a later date.
As you can see, this quickly becomes a complex web. Fortunately, there are maps and systems handed down to us, some from ancient systems of healing like Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, some from shamanic folk medicine sources, and some from modern pioneers in healing. I use a combination of these from a lifetime of learning and digging deep into my own healing journey.
My year-long foundation program in holistic preventative wellness for animals is based upon the Five Element cycles developed by ancient Taoists. They described five elemental processes that, through their interplay, transform and transmute the greater reality within and without. When they dance in harmony with each other, the individual is in balance with their inner and outer environments, and longevity is assured.
“Although undifferentiated reality is inexpressible, we can talk around it using more symbols. The physical world, as it appears to the unenlightened, consists of many separate parts. These parts, however, are not really separate. According to mystics from around the world, each moment of enlightenment (grace/insight/samadhi/satori) reveals that everything—all the separate parts of the universe— are manifestations of the same whole. There is only one reality, and it is whole and unified. It is one." ― Gary Zukav, Dancing Wu Li Masters