The
volume reflects in a small measure, our celebration of
holistic pathways to healing, and our desire to share
with everybody interested, what we mean by holistic
healing and how we can go about it. Our excitement and
enthusiasm is not dissimilar to those who are privileged
to find nuggets of wisdom and insight after years of
search and groping.
A privilege, certainly it has been, and a grace
conferred, to watch, and to participate with, those in a
state of dis-ease, their journey to getting well, with
the help of all the therapeutic metaphors they choose to
use. Disease and illness tend to lose their metaphorical
significance by the very act of observing them intensely
and closely, even as they tell us a lot about the
pathologies involved. The essence of holistic healing is
to use the information garnered by this close,
reductionist observation even as we stand back and
observe and enquire : What does this particular state of
dis-ease mean to me?
Naming a disease and a state of illness has no meaning
really. Each person is unique, each sickness is unique,
and therefore his/her healing path is unique. Our
experience with the holistic healing of so many person
tells us that only by ignoring a particularistic
diagnosis, can we render the incurable as curable. Thus
we have had confirmed diabetics getting off insulin, and
certified terminal cancer patients recessing to get well.
There is in all this no one prescription. Every person
has to choose his/her ways of wanting to get well. Our
clients therefore use bibliotherapy (the use of books),
attend workshops, use selfassessment exercises, invoke
right brain healing through art, music and psychodrama,
and use the powder of group therapy, learning from other
fellow sojourners. These precede, coincide with, and
follow all the other handson therapies like Acupressure,
Polarity, Touch for Health, Yoga, Zen Shiatsu, and many
others. The latter with out the former in our experience
is incomplete as they do not help change basic beliefs,
attitudes, and values.
Most importantly, we have learnt in this process that
this kind of action research, if you will, is legitimate
science and valid research methodology. Normative medical
science by missing out on so many facts of healing,
diminishes science in as much as it does a disservice by
leaving traditional healing therapies fractured and not
endowed with the potency they are capable of. Our
audience for this book, therefore, is not just our
correspondence course students, or those who attend our
workshops, or who come to our Holistic Health Centre, but
other allopathic, homeopathic and ayurvedic practitioners
as well.
The main crunch is that this method takes time. Who would
not give time to get well? If he/she cannot give time,
what then anyway is the hope and meaning of getting well?
We recommend dear reader, heal/healee, to take off from
what you routinely do, to peruse through this volume and
reflect and contemplate on what is being said here even
as you act anew.
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