This guiding principle reminds the practitioner of their role to educate the patient to take responsibility for their own health. The doctor-patient relationship acts to enable the patient to heal themselves. Listening, understanding, and communicating are therefore key aspects of a doctor/practitioner’s job criteria. It’s not about what you know, it’s about transmitting that to your client so they can nurture and protect their own health.
Each person is seen as an integrated whole, with all parts of their body working together as one unified consciousness with physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects. The harmonious functioning of these parts is essential for healing. The whole is seen as greater than merely the sum of the parts.
This is a really important principle, which modern medicine is sadly failing at with dangerous repercussions. We must understand that a symptom is merely a flag getting your attention, and it generally isn’t the origin of the environment causing the issue. As a therapist it is your role to educate your client about this and to look beyond the symptoms to the underlying root causes. A holistic treatment will address both what’s presenting and what is underneath.
As herbalists and natural medicine practitioners, we see nature and all her medicine as alive, living, intelligent, and informed. We trust in the inherent wisdom and power of the body to heal itself. And this is because the body is not separate from nature, it is not outside of nature, but intrinsically woven into the fabric of nature. That means we are intelligent, we are alive and living, and we are healthy by nature and able to heal.
Healing is to reconcile a conflict, to bring together a rift and restore amity. Healing is to cleanse something and to remove an evil. Ultimately through these processes healing is to make healthy, whole, or sound and to restore to wellness free from ailment.
