What is Holistic Counseling?

In terms of holistic counseling, a healthy sense of Self would be one in which body, mind, and spirit are joined and at peace with each other. These three areas in recent times have been confined and compartmentalized to their respective areas of expertise-medicine, psychology, and religion. So that if a person was having spiritual issues, he/she would seek a clergy member and so forth. The fragmentation of these three areas is what led people down paths of materialism, narcissism, addictions, hedonism, and many other negative characteristics. These lead to a host of behaviors that accompany these characteristics, such as anxiety, depression, and suicidal tendencies. Holistic counseling attempts to rejoin again these fragmented but absolutely connected areas of our lives. "Reconnection with the parts of ourselves, with each other, with our communities and our environments is the call to healing across many disciplines" (Sherwood). In other words, the task of holistic counseling is to rejoin these areas of ourselves to better connect human beings to their true selves and other human beings in the world.

There has been much evidence signifying the connection between mind and body in human beings. For example, "Cutting edge research in mind body immunity clearly demonstrates that what we think and feel affects the body's cells. How we manage change, crisis, emotional and physical stress in our lives, significantly affects the illnesses that we create in our physical bodies. Conversely, as Borysenko and Borysenko (1994) point out, the power of the quality of our thoughts and