 I find in man a miniature universe - AT Still As Andrew Taylor Still said: "Anyone can find disease- to find health should be the object of the doctor". This was a plea to move beyond the analytic and embrace the holistic paradigm.
But why? Well, the more we resonate with the part, the less aware we are of the whole and vice versa. So if we concentrate on the injured or diseased part in a patient, we lose its relationship to the bigger picture. And if we just look at the bigger picture, we are not aware of the injured part. So the challenge to us as practitioners is how do we hold the part and the whole at the same time? How can we find the health rather than merely attempting to confront dis-ease? Yet the holographic principle states that to access the part is to access the whole...hmm an interesting conundrum indeed! So maybe the first challenge to us as practitioners is how do we enter the relational space to become holistic? Maintaining awareness of the three tides at the same time (the ripples on the surface, the deeper water and the ocean floor is a great analogy) would be a good starting point. And the second challenge then becomes - how do we come into contact (touch)? Touch is incredibly powerful – it is our bio-electric searching tool, more powerful than any machine! Touch carries charge even if it’s just projected touch (say touching the cranium and intending touch to the sacrum). Touch is fundamental to the human experience. It is the first of the senses to develop in the human infant, and it remains perhaps the most emotionally central throughout our lives. Research has shown that less than one second of safe, interpersonal touch, such as a hand to the back or the shoulder can influence health and behaviour in remarkable ways. The questions we ask the body through touch are like sonar, we are listening to an incredible amount of information, as we become the fulcrum for our clients. And this fulcrum is loaded with intelligence. In fact the complex matrix of health is profound and unfathomable. It is the quest for health that keeps us alive and steeped in mystery...... This blog is inspired by a lecture by Robert Lever at the Breath of Life Conference 2017, author of 'Finding the Health'. |