Holistic Health and Healing
In the Garden of Eden
In the Garden of Eden there is no disease. I can think of no better way of conveying the vast power and strength of healing through holistic health than by making that declaration. The axiom that improved health is attained through improved natural balance is common to all holistic healers. Jethro Kloss, a leader and icon of the nature-cure tradition, entitled his famous book, Back to Eden; and, front-covered the book with a Garden of Eden painting by Harry Anderson. Of course, religion is not meant to be implied in the statement but rather the force and power of nature – which is holistic health and healing in a nutshell.
One heals in holistic health by improving the health of the body through natural and humanistic means. Real food, dignified living and working conditions, natural substances, and ecological philosophy is woven into a practice of living that it is often termed an Alternative-health paradigm.1 The many major diseases which have cut a wide swath through human recorded history have all been overcome and defeated by Alternative-health paradigm principles: better housing, quality foods, stable communities, respect of human dignity, and environmental awareness. Not too many diseases, if any, have been overcome by drugs and surgery; in fact, cancer, which will soon be our leading cause of death, is almost invariably caused by industrial outputs. Disease then is thought of by holistically minded individuals as a type of societal curse.
Improving the health of the body can be accomplished through many avenues. When one uses these avenues in accordance with Alternative-health paradigm principles then one can be said to be using holistic means. Holistic means will always strive toward directing a person closer to the imagined Garden of Eden. For example, eating real food instead of contaminated foods will bring a person closer to health than not. Herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, antibiotics, synthetic hormones, and preservatives, when deliberately excluded from food, is considered by holistic healers to be a pathway toward improved health. Another example of a healer’s holistic method would be to help someone become comfortable with one’s body and abilities. We live as human beings within the global village, not as a cog in the wheel of corporate globalization. Another obvious example of holistic healing is, of course, enhanced spirituality or prayer. It is self-evident that satisfaction along these lines is ever guiding toward a person’s conception of the Garden of Eden.
Holistic health and healing is a contiguous health system in its own right. This means that things like dirty air, polluted foods, and indignant environments are stated via holistic axiom to be the cause disease and, at the same time, a reversal of these factors will actually throw off and remove disease.2 Healing a person holistically becomes an exercise in health improvement rather than an exercise in the arbitrary suppression of symptoms.
There are no cures in holistic health. The magic bullet cure for cancer, cure for arthritis, or cure for the common cold is a Standard-health paradigm concept. Holistically we work toward healing and removing these afflictions by reducing the factors which provoke them and by helping the body itself to throw off any pathological affliction. A “cure” implies a denial that the disease is actually caused.
Holistic health has been known and practiced by mankind for a very long time; however, in North America of late, scientific man has decided he knows nature better than the Lifeforce of the body itself.
by Healer J.Mark Taylor
Director, Arcady Holistic Clinic
1 By contrast, the Standard-health paradigm of the current medical system eschews nature in favour of nihilistic science and technology.
2 This is not the case in Standard medicine. Ever more exotic drugs and surgeries will be used in an effort to combat the ill-effects of economic growth until citizens rise up and replace the medico status quo.
Healer J. Mark Taylor, Medical Herbalist
5, 1922 - 9 Avenue SE.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2G 0V2
