The word holistic has been used to describe health care
practices that include acupuncture, massage therapy, Reiki, naturopathy,
and homeopathy. These practices attempt to bring harmony to the
physical, energetic, and/or nutritional states of individuals.
Holistic Psychotherapy also seeks to bring balance
between these systems. However, as with all psychotherapy, its primary
focus is the treatment of psychological and emotional pain that
manifests in depression, anxiety, trauma and related disorders. It is
the way in which holistic psychotherapy treats these disorders that
marks its departure from conventional psychotherapy and denotes its
singular effectiveness.
Generally speaking traditional psychotherapy focuses
on problematic thoughts and behavior, interprets the underlining meaning
of these thoughts and behavior, and then provides solutions that are
practiced by clients and adjusted as circumstances warrant.
Unlike traditional psychotherapy, Holistic
Psychotherapy optimally fosters growth and healing by noting the
synergistic relationship between all the ways we experience ourselves
and the world—thinking, feeling, doing, and sensing. Holistic
practitioners then channel this knowledge through methods that support
the healthy interaction between the processes of the thinking mind, the
feeling body, and the emotionally enfused spirit to bring growth and
healing.
Holistic Psychotherapy engages methods that encourage
us to talk, feel, act and sense in ways that make our experiences
manageable, safe, and empowering. Holistic Psychotherapy helps us make
sense out of anxious and depressed states, manage overpowering feelings,
bring solutions to our problems, and teaches us how to effectively plan
for our future.
Holistic Psychotherapy recognizes, for instance, that
depression is a symptom. Depression might feel like the problem but it
is really the messenger that tells us we are suffering an imbalance
somewhere in self. Depression is the red light that signals us to stop.
Just as you would not continue driving a car with the engine light
blinking without risking breakdown so ignoring depression risks a
physical and emotional breakdown.
Holistic Psychotherapy is the equivalent of preventive
medicine. A holistic practitioner will assess what area or areas of self
are causing distress--the mind, the body, or the emotions--and how each
area is effecting the other. A holistic psychotherapist has state of the
art tools and methods honed by years of practice and ongoing training to
help individuals, couples, and families identify the source of depressed
and anxious experiences while helping to alleviate them, and then
provides guidance to develop preventive skills to protect against
reoccurrence.
Holistic Psychotherapy is not eclectic psychotherapy
or a bag of techniques learned once in a workshop. It is a conscious,
skillful, organic blending of eastern methods of healing with western
healing psychotherapies that safely support you to engage all your ways
of experiencing—thinking, feeling, sensing, doing—so that you relate to
yourself with understanding, respect, appreciation, and joy.
Holistic Psychotherapy recognizes that you have all
the answers and its function is to help you access those answers with
competence, responsible action, and a felt sensation of healthy control.