Blueprint for Holistic Healing. C. Norman Shealy

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: