Wholistic?
by Bruce GibsonND.
The Term *Wholistic* can be defined to describe the perspective of looking at “The Whole” of Life, living things, Human existence and the inter-relationship between the relevant parts of something. This is a term that is not exclusively used in relation to health, but its common usage relates to Health as being affected by the many aspects of our lives such as The Environment, our Social structure, family interactions, our physical activity, Nutritional intake, our Thoughts and beliefs and much more.
In the bigger picture of things – everything in Nature, on Earth and throughout The Universe, whether in the microcosm (the smallest scale) or macrocosm (the biggest scale) has an effect on “other things” and indirectly everything else.
Wikipedia reports Wholistic in relation to its original Term: Holism and states: “Holism (from holos, a Greek word meaning all, whole, entire, total) is the idea that all the properties of a given system (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave.” and “The term holism was introduced by the South African statesman Jan Smuts in his 1926 book, Holism and Evolution.[1] Smuts defined holism as “The tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution.“
In the 1980′s the term holistic evolved into the term wholistic in order to clarify the concept even further and incorporating the word: “Whole”. For example schools refer to wholistic learning styles and medicine refers to the wholistic model that considers the mind, body, spirit in diagnosis and treatment.
The whole website at www.WholisticHealing.org.au is focused on further defining What Wholistic IS and deals with the many facets of Wholistic Health, Wellness and Wholistic Healing approaches.
