Principles of Holistic Medicine

[Guest guest]

http://ahha.org/articles.asp?Id=81

 

AHHA Featured Article of the Week March 25, 2008

 

The American Holistic Medical Association (AHMA) supports practitioners

in their evolving personal and professional development as healers and

to educate physicians about holistic medicine. You can contact AHMA at

(425) 967-0737 or visit the AHMA web site at holisticmedicine.org.

 

The American Holistic Health Association has compiled a collection of

self-help articles to support your efforts to enhance your own health

and well-being.

 

This article is part of the

article category

WHAT IS HOLISTIC?

and the sub-category

HOLISTIC MEDICINE

 

---------

Principles of Holistic Medicine

 

Holistic medicine is the art and science of healing that addresses the

whole person - body, mind, and spirit. The practice of holistic medicine

integrates conventional and alternative therapies to prevent and treat

disease, and most importantly, to promote optimal helath. This condition

of holistic health is defined as the unlimited and unimpeded free flow

of life force energy through body, mind, and spirit.

Holistic medicine encompasses all safe and appropriate modalities of

diagnosis and treatment. It includes analysis of physical, nutritional,

environmental, emotional, spiritual and lifestyle elements. Holistic

medicine focuses upon patient education and participation in the healing

process.

 

The Principles of Holistic Medical Practice

Holistic physicians embrace a variety of safe, effective options in the

diagnosis and treatment, including:

a. education for lifestyle changes and self-care

b. complementary alternatives; and

c. conventional drugs and surgery

 

Searching for the underlying causes of disease is preferable to treating

symptoms alone.

 

Holistic physicians expend as much effort in establishing what kind of

patient has a disease as they do in establishing what kind of disease a

patient has.

 

Prevention is preferable to treatment and is usually more

cost-effective. The most cost-effective approach evokes the patient's

own innate healing capabilities.

Illness is viewed as a manifestation of a dysfunction of the whole

person, not as an isolated event.

 

A major determinant of healing outcomes is the quality of the

relationship established between physician and patient, in which patient

autonomy is encouraged.

 

The ideal physician-patient relationship considers the needs, desires,

awareness and insight of the patient as well as those of the physician.

 

Physicians significantly influence patients by their example.

 

Illness, pain, and the dying process can be learning opportunities for

patients and physicians.

 

Holistic physicians encourage patients to evoke the healing power of

love, hope, humor and enthusiasm, and to release the toxic consequences

of hostility, shame, greed, depression, and prolonged fear, anger, and

grief.

 

Unconditional love is life's most powerful medicine. Physicians strive

to adopt an attitude of unconditional love for patients, themselves, and

other practitioners.

Optimal health is much more than the absence of sickness. It is the

conscious pursuit of the highest qualities of the physical,

environmental, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social aspects of the

human experience.

 

--------

This material is used with the permission of the the American Holistic

Medical Association (AHMA). Various professional members of the American

Holistic Medical Association (AHMA) contributed to the development of

these principles.