It’s a familiar feeling – you’ve gone to see your doctor, who after only a few minutes, doesn’t know how to treat you other than to offer you a prescription that may help you with whatever problem you are experiencing. You may enjoy temporary relief while you are on the drug – and as soon as you stop taking it again, the symptoms return. You don’t feel yourself. Something is off, but even the doctor can’t help you.
First, I want to say that it’s not your doctor’s fault. Most weren’t trained in medical school to look at your whole body system or even to understand that your mind, body, and spirit are connected – imbalances in one area may be causing imbalances in another. Your doctor, in many cases, was only trained to prescribe drugs to you, meaning they only know how to treat symptoms, not root causes. What you may be asking him or her to do, is outside of their field of expertise. Western medical care, including prescription medication, provide much value to society but in many cases the doctors are offering you a bandaid without a long-term solution.
Case in point, a 37-year-old client came to Path Wellbeing after their doctors (an ophthalmologist and a dermatologist) tried to treat their ocular rosacea with courses of antibiotics. After a couple of weeks, the client was experiencing an upset stomach (a possible early sign of an ulcer, one of many gastrointestinal issues that have been linked to antibiotic use) with no improvements to their ocular rosacea. After doing a full intake and assessment and understanding their unique needs, one of our practitioners offered this client diet, lifestyle and short-course herbal remedies designed for their specific constitution to help treat their acute condition.
Within days, the client started to feel relief and within a week their acute symptoms went away. The client now has a better understanding of what can aggravate their ocular rosacea and has learned through continual holistic healthcare that nutritional and lifestyle changes – especially stress reduction – are key to keeping this and other related underlying conditions, which are part of their natural constitution, at bay.*
This is where holistic healing comes in – complementary and alternative medicine to your current Western medical care, taking a whole-person approach that is often dismissed in doctor’s offices. I want to be clear that even your doctor is probably uninformed or mis-informed about holistic healing so you probably can’t ask them what it is or how it could help you. With so many herbs, supplements, and vitamins on the market today – and an overall lack of regulation, organization, and training in the holistic healing market, it’s hard to ascertain what is right for you and to ignore the hype. This can also cloud the opinion of many Western healthcare practitioners: “stay away from herbs – they can only hurt you” is not an uncommon opinion.
But much like it is NOT a holistic healer’s job to prescribe Western medications (mostly synthetic drugs made in a lab and sold over the counter or by prescription only), it is also NOT a Western doctor’s job to prescribe or to know how herbal remedies and natural healing solutions might help you. For that, you must find a holistic healer with proper training. These practitioners will spend hours (as opposed to minutes) with you to understand your unique needs and how an herb, food, or other healing remedy might affect your individual system before prescribing them to you.
This is where the rubber really meets the road in holistic healing and where so many Americans are already spending enormous amounts – more than $12 billion(!)/year – on natural supplements alone, some of which may be doing more harm than good. Unless you have a holistic health practitioner who has assessed your constitution and knows specifically what you need based on your body type, you may at best be wasting your money, and at worst hurting yourself.
But, what is holistic healing anyway? Let’s start with a basic definition – according to the National Institute of Health (NIH), holistic medicine is an “attitudinal approach to health care rather than a particular set of techniques. It addresses the psychological, familial, societal, ethical and spiritual as well as biological dimensions of health and illness.”
In short, holistic healing is aimed at understanding YOUR UNIQUE YOU and helping to heal you based on that understanding. I would also add that holistic healing moves past symptomatology – or simply reviewing and treating symptoms – to address the root cause of your disease or imbalance. Our goal is not a prescription-based lifestyle but one of natural balance and healing that provides longevity and alleviates the root cause of suffering.
And, holistic healing does so NATURALLY through diet, lifestyle, natural medicines such as herbs; and working with the spiritual and subtle body energy of your biofield. None of this is easy. You may have heard from your doctor: “clean up your diet”, “lose weight”, or “reduce stress” to help fix your imbalance. I’m willing to bet that they even made these recommendations without any suggestions on how to do so or giving you resources you can access that help you to do so in a way that works for YOU.
At Path Wellbeing, our practitioners have seen these cases hundreds of times and have decided to step up to help heal the world we live in. We have all tried to stick to a New Year’s Resolution that has failed. And, research shows that accountability will help you stick to your goals. At Path Wellbeing, we offer not just accountability, but a custom-tailored path forward that works for YOU.
We aren’t just practitioners – we are also CLIENTS of holistic healing and have faced many of the same challenges you have. So, while you’re spending excess time and money to achieve results that are either unattainable or unsustainable, you could have hired a holistic healing coach or practitioner to help you achieve those results not only more sustainably, but in a way that works for YOU and your unique constitution.
Our practitioners have years of training and experience in Ayurvedic medicine, a whole-person system that focuses on your most important asset: YOU. Through nutrition, lifestyle, herbal, and other healing remedies, our practitioners are here to help you become your best-self and are highly qualified to help you navigate the intricacies of a complex medical system that strains to help you heal. So, whether you’re looking for nutrition and lifestyle advice, a food plan, or to heal from an acute or chronic disease, our practitioners are here to help!
You can book a free 15-minute consultation with one of our practitioners today if you’re still wondering if Path Wellbeing is right for you. OR, if you’re ready to start your path, fill out this online intake form and one of our practitioners will be in touch to help get you started…
*The client who experienced this condition approved these statements and our sharing of their condition with other clients and potential clients of Path Wellbeing.
Required Disclosure: The information contained within this article is for educational purposes only and should not replace the direct advice of a doctor or other qualified healthcare professional. Always consult a medical or other professional healthcare provider when considering a new health regime.
