(ThyBlackMan.com) Chronic disease is any illness lasting three months or longer and generally cannot be prevented by vaccines or cured by medication, nor do they just disappear, according to MedicineNet. Chronic disease is a widespread issue in America; over one hundred million Americans suffer from some form of it. Chronic disease has exponentially burdened our healthcare system to the tune of millions of dollars.
Alternative healthcare experts point to the emergence of holistic healing as an antidote for chronic disease. Often, when we come against a major illness in our lives, we tend to focus on that illness to the exclusion to other parts of our being.
The key to responding to any crisis we face is to harness the energy of our body, mind and spirit and maintain a harmonious balance. This is holistic healing in a nutshell.
How much time we devote to each sphere of our lives determines how successfully we navigate life’s vicissitudes. Here are three keys to help heal our body, mind and spirit together.
Holistic Healing Merges the Parts into the Whole
When our bodies are negatively impacted with disease – from a common cold to cancer – it impacts not just the physical, but the mental and spiritual, as well. Everything from your prayer life to your social life to your psychological make-up is challenged. Our world and our lives are interconnected and interdependent and integrated in so many different ways. What impacts the body impacts the mind and the spirit.
The venerable actress Meryl Streep says, I have a holistic need to work and to have huge ties of love in my life. I can’t imagine eschewing one for the other.
It’s important to keep a balance between these spheres of life and that’s what a holistic healing approach does.
Holistic Healing Broadens our Perspective
The only thing you have control over is your perspective; you have a choice about how you view it, writes Chris Pine. It’s all about context. When we get a cold, we focus on the eliminating that cold. When we receive a negative health report, our attention immediately fastens upon that report. It’s human nature. What we fail to realize, though, is the larger reality of our life in the context of the challenges we face.
We focus on the station we’ve arrived at – but often we fail to appreciate the many stations in life at which we’ve prospered, lived our dreams and achieved our goals. Holistic healing gives us the wherewithal to place our lives into context, to understand that where we are is not where we’ll remain.
Holistic Healing Increases our Gratitude
Holistic healing that imparts an attitude of gratitude brings a fresh and rewarding dimension to our challenges. When we think from a holistic perspective, we begin to form a greater appreciation for our lives. You can literally heal by being grateful for who you are and what you have.
As Melody Beattie writes, Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Wake up each morning – not with an idea of the obstacles which lie ahead – but rather with an appreciation for the beauty of each moment your experience and watch how your life heals.
We can promote healing in our lives when we care for our body, mind and spirit together.
Staff Writer; W. Eric Croomes
This talented brother is a holistic lifestyle exercise expert and founder and executive coach of Infinite Strategies LLC, a multi-level coaching firm that develops and executes strategies for fitness training, youth achievement and lifestyle management. Eric is an author, fitness professional, holistic life coach and motivational speaker.
In October 2015, Eric released Life’s A Gym: Seven Fitness Principles to Get the Best of Both, which shows readers how to use exercise to attract a feeling of wellness, success and freedom (Infinite Strategies Coaching LLC, 2015) – http://www.infinitestrategiescoaching.com.