'Holistic Healing' can be understood in two ways. Metaphysically, to be healthy is to be whole, holy, truly connected to the One. Practically, holistic medicine treats the 'whole' person - body, mind, emotions, spirit.

While holistic medicine recognizes all confirmed methods of treatment, including drugs and surgery, many people are turning to the holistic healing approach for chronic health conditions that do not respond to medical treatments. Moving away from the belief that modern medicine would simply prescribe medication to easily fix problems as they arose, more people have begun to embrace working with a holistic practitioner to identify the underlying cause of their condition and taking responsibility for achieving balance and overall health and wellbeing. Being healthy is more than just not being sick!

Important principles of holistic medicine include the following:

• All people have innate healing powers.
• The patient is a person, not a disease.
• Healing takes a team approach involving the patient and doctor, and addresses all aspects of a person's life using a variety of health care practices.
• Treatment involves fixing the cause of the condition, not just alleviating the symptoms.

The current medical system has become dominated by market economic forces which select for short term profit (and over consumption) rather than what is good for humans. This causes enormous problems for humanity. e.g. Multinational chemical / pharmaceutical corporations control many of the chemicals (herbicides, pesticides) that now dominate agricultural food production. They also patent genetically modified plants and animals that are resistant to these herbicides to increase food production and profits.
This method of food production is obviously destroying nature and harming humans.

The bizarre irony of this! They then also make massive profits by selling chemical drugs to treat the diseases caused by the chemicals they sell for food production. So they make profits while making us sick, then make further profits in treating the symptoms of these ailments.

The solution. Abide by the rules of Nature (evolution and ecology). Try to live in a non polluted environment (clean air and water, organic food). And abide by the evolutionary fact that we evolved to exercise every day outside in the sunshine (collecting / hunting food)! We live in a beautiful world - we just forget this when living in cities. And these cities are now full of tens of thousands of chemicals that are poising humanity (including unseen electromagnetic pollution with unknown effects). – Karene Howie & Geoff Haselhurst

Types of popular CAM include:

• Ayurvedic medicine
• Spiritual healing
• Iridology
• Acupuncture
• Aromatherapy
• Pranic Healing
• Homeopathy Remedies
• Naturopathy
• Reiki
• Yoga
• Meditation
• Vibrational Therpay
• Nutrition
• Healing Touch
• Crystal Healing
• Acupressure
• Energy Healing
• Massage Therapy

“Embracing holistic health and healing enables us to obtain wholeness within ourselves, which then naturally expands into increasing compassion and acceptance of others along with caring for our relationships and physical surroundings.” – Carina Bachman

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/health/index.htm

http://crystalspringshealing.com/holistic-healing.htm