Gathering place for osteopaths
A term to replace "holistic"
I'm doing an essay at the moment and the term "holistic" comes up a lot to describe the osteopathic approach. It is a useful term and captures the essence of taking in the whole picture nicely.
In my opinion though, it has unfortunately been hijacked by the new age revolution and anything that is termed "holistic" is now thrown into the slightly whacky category.
A quick google search comes up synonyms - Age of Aquarius, alternative, astrological,balanced, crystal healing, holistic, mystic,occult, planetary, spiritual, supernaturalist
This is a normal process I guess. Words get new meanings all the time. There was a time when a person could be gay and no-one would make assumptions about their sexual orientation. However, words are powerful and can affect peoples attitudes and the image of professions alike.
I'd very much like to hear the wit, wisdom and musings of the community as to what word could possibly replace "holistic". A word that would sum up succinctly the osteopathic approach and distinguish it from other therapies.
My suggestions to kick things off would be:
A full approach (too much for lunch?)
An entiristic approach (gobbledygook)
The complete factor approach (reality tv)
The integral approach (my favorite so far)
Overarching approach
Repletist approach
Tags: age, branding, holistic, image, new, public, relations
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Clement Rhein on -
Yes, you did sown that seed, and its growing in a lovely tree! :-)
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Permalink Reply by Hume O'Rous on -
Do you know about the Fibonacci sequence...?
Just realised-if you don't want the answer made public please advise and I'll take it down....
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Permalink Reply by Hume O'Rous on
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Alice,
You were right... it is a girl's thing. My wife's just got it after about 25 seconds.... I couldn't work it out all day yesterday as I'm hopeless at maths...
The answer's ***********.
It's quite true that self limitation restricts self-development-and that particular biological influence is not gender specific.
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Permalink Reply by Clement Rhein on
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I have to say that the only thing that made me understand this Alice, is simply experiencing it for myself: a personal experience of it. otherwise, it still probably would not make sense! :-)
Now, I have a question that interests me. What experience (or whatever) actually made you grasp the holistic concept?
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Permalink Reply by Alice on -
@ Clement,
“What experience (or whatever) actually made you grasp the holistic concept?”
This is such a difficult question. I'm not sure where to start.
OK, 10” of snow is enough to get me to stay in & try at least.....
”light blue touch-paper - stand well back”.
I guess I could say that my whole life has led me to where I am.
Maybe it was going to school aged 5 with a bandage around my head from a spill on a slide and 4 stitches in my forehead. I can very clearly remember thinking "what's going on here?" I was bewildered. All those other people, seeing the world a different way to me.....
Maybe it was the mathematical debates over the tea table as I grew up.....
Maybe my granny teaching me the alphabet backwards, sign language & quotes from Shakespeare.....
Maybe my mum being killed by a lorry....
Maybe giving birth, listening to my body....
Maybe running. Running for love, for peace, for joy & freedom. For time and energy....
Maybe a close connection with nature throughout my life, the intense aroma of the tomato plants in my mum's greenhouse, the flowers and the butterflies, the frisky young bullocks that invaded our garden given half a chance when I was a kid, the wind and the rain, the fire and the earth, the elements that remind you that you are only one breath from death, one beat of your heart....
Maybe the bread my dad baked....
Maybe my lovers and friends and children, the tears and the laughter....
Maybe my teachers and mentors.
Maybe the books I have read, the stories, the shared experiential network.
Maybe the intensity with which I experience/feel everything.
Maybe my ridiculous memory.
Reasons are impossible, there is just what there is. I am where I am, if you were me you'd be here too. But you aren't and never will be.
Here is one story....
“What experience (or whatever) actually made you grasp the holistic concept?”
I don't think the holistic concept is in itself very tricky to understand.....
Holism is, for me, a mathematical reality. I did a physics degree, specialising in holography, of the laser (& computer) generated variety. Fourier transforms of beams of reflected coherent red laser light, creating diffraction patterns. Black and clear ripples on a flat photographic plate, patterns of interference. When re-illuminated; giving pretty 3D images of the original object.....each and every 'part' of that plate, that pattern, embodying the same image. Pieces of a broken plate; each with a unique black and clear pattern, yet each containing the same image on illumination, albeit at a slightly reduced resolution & more limited perspective. I produced them, played with them. Got computers to produce them even – images from nothing, numbers in the air. Weird huh?
But that was 20 years ago.........and by that age I'd lost a lot of the questioning, questing. It wasn't un-interesting, but I wasn't really looking, I just wanted to pass my degree, get a job.
Yet what is mathematics but a language with which to describe the world?
“What experience (or whatever) actually made you grasp the holistic concept?”
So I had it already, but, but....I never noticed how it applied to everything. It was an optical curiosity in my past only. I did not understand the intuitive holistic side of consciousness. The diversity in unity. It took some shocking exam nerves and a very clever man to show me that. (& a very long debate and that book by Bortoft.)
When I came into osteopathy and that first principle "body unit, or holistic whole" was introduced, I quickly realised that no-one really understood what holism was, but even then I couldn't really see how it was relevant, how it all slotted together. I kept expecting it to be explained; only it never was. & my analytical education had me looking always the opposite way, for reasons, answers, right and wrong....
The “classical osteopathy” was the most interesting. Some lecturers were saying things that made sense in terms of holism - but they still didn't understand it.
So the viva exam nerves. They were debilitating. I couldn't think, couldn't speak. I knew they were ridiculous but couldn't seem to do anything about them. The more I labelled them as 'wrong' and tried to keep them under control, the worse it got. Until someone asked me some questions about why I was doing exam nerves, how had it come to be, how was it serving me? Why was I making that choice? And eventually asked me what the alternative was. And that was that....
….I took a leap of faith and tried being differently. And it worked just fine.....
….and every single time something came along it turned out to be the same answer
….& like a row of dominoes falling down or a stone being thrown in a pond it all rippled outwards, and still is. ATStill hadn't seen holograms or studied fourier transforms but he observed life and described it perfectly with those 4 principles: body-unit, structure-function, self-heal, rule-of-artery. It is holism as it applies to the living process, rather than inanimate objects. But without the holistic concept they become a mechanistic polyanalytical model to which the concept of 'vitality' needs to be added.
And anyone could do this, look back on your life and look for something, anything, where you have re-interpreted something. Thought something was just the way it was and realised it wasn't. Thought you were just being you but then realised you could be alternately. Any 'Aha' moment of intuitive realisation. And then realise that everything you see & feel is interpretation, you literally cannot touch reality. When we see the world it is meaning which we see. Capture that learning process, slow it down. Because when we look at a patient, that's what we need to do.
And still now I struggle to rearrange my thinking. The analytical scientific process is not wrong, it is how we feel the world, we do not escape that. Those muscle spindles and golgi tendon organs, faithfully measuring space and time. The boundary and the movement. But there is more to it than that, there is the intuitive holistic consciousness to which we have become blind. The subjective experience. For there is no way to organise that input without it. I see a synthesis of the two, the intuitive, subjective and analytical, objective consciousnesses. The former, the intuition, being that to which our western 'scientific' society is currently blind. And the realisation of which is such a revelatory experience to those who see it. The latter, the analysis, being that which we do not escape, as it is how we experience what-is (feel/listen), what those golgi tendon organs and muscle spindles do. Just as the sympathetic and parasympathetic autonomic nervous systems do not really oppose but work together in concert, and really are not 2 separate things even, just our perception. So too this.
There is then just life and the question 'How?'. 'How can I BE?'
The thoughts or questions that help me the most are those 4 principles
1) That the body never goes 'wrong'. If the body, or any 'part' is doing something then it is because it has learnt to be that way. It is appropriate for the configuration.
2) That how we are is a choice, and an alternative choice can be enabled or facilitated.
3) That there is a natural tendency to heal, to survive. To maintain a meaning.
4) Communication is key. Communication is the only way that 'parts' can be a whole, integrated.
“What experience (or whatever) actually made you grasp the holistic concept?”
I treat people. A lot of the time I haven't the faintest idea what I am doing. They make an alternative choice. They get 'better'.
Treating or teaching (or indeed any interaction/relationship of living 'parts') are completely synominous. Any such will make an holistic Whole, have a meaning. And I guess how I see things, from where I currently stand, all you really try to do with either is allow learning to occur. And really it's not even a 'trying' but a co-evolution. It's a responsibility for the effect that your presence will have. It's being a certain way, choosing how to be, to enable awareness, enable potential, to enable freedom to learn. Provide the environment for the patient or pupil etc.....
For me the only question ever is 'how?', 'how to BE?'. Not 'what?', not a static 'thing', but a process.
And the only way you can possibly tell is if you pay attention, make no assumptions, feel, listen, palpate. Analysis can and must guide and inform but should never limit.
Something like that. :)
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Permalink Reply by Jerry Hesch, MHS, PT on -
My agreement with integral: "Integral Person Practice: Respecting that some of the knowledge science and medicine is hierarchical such as nomenclature but that wisdom is synthesis, the web that interconnects."
Jerry Hesch
Hesch Institute
02/20/2011
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Permalink Reply by Guy Edwards on -
My vote is for integrative!
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Permalink Reply by Quatermass on -
"I treat people. A lot of the time I haven't the faintest idea what I am doing. They make an alternative choice. They get 'better'."
What an insightful paradox! Thank you for that (and the rest).
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Permalink Reply by Jerry Hesch, MHS, PT on
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This truly speaks to me. The paradox is of clients I see down the road and they say "you helped me!" and my recall is different, so perhaps I facilitated the process even if by simply being non-judgemental and allowing the process to unfold as opposed to squeeze it into my paternalistic paradigm. Maybe the small biomechanical enhancements paid dividends over time, how to know? Can't know. Paying attention, that I value. Just last week discovered the the talocrural joint controls the C1 "counterrotation", seen in a person whose talus was stuck posteriorly and the rest of the pattern, subtalar et al recallewere consistent with what is found with an anterior talus (anterior glide and plantar flexed fixation). C1 was counter-rotated from what is typical and released reflexively when the talus was restored. The subtalar was still stuck as was the rest of the pattern but C1 released. Does this have value, maybe, the joy of discovery and in the future recognizing patterns that may guide care perhaps is the teleology. god bless the client on the days I can't pay attention.
Jerry hHsch
Hesch Institute
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