Physical well-being directly relates to emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being. Research shows that holistic care—the concept of combining complementary and conventional medical therapies—enhances a patient’s overall well-being and improves the healing process. Holistic therapy is a type of therapy that addresses the “whole” person. This kind of therapy integrates spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional forms of well-being. Its goal is to help individuals develop a deeper understanding of themselves on all these levels.
What is Holistic Health and Wellness?
At Gillette, holistic health and wellness describe health care that combines conventional treatments (e.g. medication, surgery) with integrative modalities (e.g. music therapy, Healing Touch, osteopathic manipulation therapy, essential oils, etc.) to promote well-being, alleviate the side effects of medication, and aid in the rehabilitation and treatment of complex medical conditions. Integrative therapies don’t replace conventional treatment but are used as an effective complement to the other care we provide.
Integrative therapies that are available as part of inpatient services range from aromatherapy and massage to nutrition guidance and music therapy. These therapies are often credited with easing nausea, improving circulation, and increasing comfort. Research has shown that when used in conjunction with medical care, integrative therapies can help ease related symptoms and improve a patient’s quality of life.
Many of the physicians, therapists, nurses, and other health care staff here at Gillette are trained in both conventional and integrative care and can guide you in choosing services that best fit your diagnosis, treatment schedule, and interests.
Who benefits from Holistic Health modalities?
Holistic Health modalities are available to patients of all ages during hospital stays or clinic visits. Children, teens, and adults who have complex, rare, and traumatic conditions can benefit from integrative care designed to reduce stress, decrease symptoms and enhance overall well-being.
My Body was Haunted – Ali’s Recovery from Chronic Pain
Even after an injury heals, sometimes an imprint of it can remain. How this happens varies from person to person. But for some individuals, like Ali Tokkesdal, it manifests in the form of chronic pain. “I couldn’t walk. It felt like my body had turned against me, like it was haunted,” says Ali.
Types of Holistic Therapy
Holistic psychotherapy is an umbrella term that can encompass a number of different types of treatments. Professionals who offer this type of treatment may refer to themselves as holistic therapists, but they may also refer to their practice as:
- Eclectic or integrative therapy – An approach that draws on multiple traditions and techniques in order to best address a person’s needs.
- Mind-body therapy – This refers to groups of techniques that focus on improving body functioning and inducing relaxations as a way to improve health.
- Somatic therapy – A body-centric approach that utilizes strategies such as breathwork, dance, and meditation to heal trauma, stress, and other mental health issues.
- Spiritual therapy – An approach that incorporates belief systems and spiritual faith to explore problems that a person faces in their life.
- Adaptive Yoga – fosters mind-body awareness while building strength and flexibility for individuals with developmental, intellectual, and/or physical disabilities. Adaptive Yoga also provides an enhanced ability to manage stress, a deepened sense of connection with others, hope, and a renewed sense of freedom through movement and breathwork.
- Aromatherapy – uses extracts from plants to enhance physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being by reducing stress, promoting sleep, and increasing comfort. At Gillette, we use bergamot, ginger, lavender, orange, and peppermint essential oils.
- Clinical Hypnosis – creates a state of focused attention allowing one to self-regulate a variety of symptoms thereby gaining an empowering sense of control. By promoting conscious mind-body connections, patients can achieve a desired therapeutic outcome such as a reduction in acute and chronic pain, calming a variety of fears, and easing anxiety.
- Guided Imagery – involves using mental images in a purposeful way to achieve a desired therapeutic goal. It begins with general relaxation techniques and then uses guided visualization to promote relaxation, reduce stress and anxiety, and focus on breathing. A typical session lasts 20 to 25 minutes.
- Hand Relaxation – is a massage technique developed by Gillette nurses that can be provided for patients to help reduce anxiety, modulate pain, and promote rest, relaxation and sleep.
- Healing Touch (HT) – is an energy therapy in which clinicians use their hands in a heart-centered, intentional way to support health and promote healing. HT can be used to modulate pain and increase comfort, reduce anxiety, strengthen immune function, and enhance rest, relaxation, and sleep.
- Mind-Body Awareness – helps to develop and support greater awareness of the connection between the mind and the body to support wellness and maximize the power of the mind and the body together. This approach uses various techniques to ground, expand and balance.
- Music Therapy – is the clinical use of music by a credentialed professional to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship. Addressing physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs, music therapy can be used to improve quality of life, modulate pain and reduce stress.
- Nutritional Counseling – involves the therapeutic application of nutritional modifications to reduce inflammation, restore depletions and promote overall well-being. Good nutrition is fundamental to optimal health with an array of medicinal properties such as improved postsurgical recovery, gastrointestinal health, and stronger immune function.
- Osteopathic Manipulation Therapy (OMT) – is a holistic, hands-on approach used to diagnose and treat a variety of symptoms by facilitating balance and alignment in the body through gentle, soft-tissue techniques. By promoting the body’s innate ability to heal itself, OMT can relieve a variety of distressing symptoms thereby improving function.
- Pet Therapy – offers a guided interaction that involves partnering trained dogs and handlers with patients in order to normalize a hospital stay, ease anxiety, and enhance coping within the hospital environment. The benefits of pet therapy include improved mental, social, and physiological health; relaxation and play; and increased satisfaction and morale.
- Psychotherapy Consult – is available to support emotional and behavioral adjustment while in the hospital. Various psychotherapy approaches such as cognitive-behavioral, guided imagery, relaxation, biofeedback, and other coping strategies may be incorporated as warranted.
- Spirituality Support – uses supportive listening to help patients and families understand and process difficult situations. A chaplain works toward identifying coping mechanisms and finding hope, meaning personal strengths, and resiliency that will assist patients and families through difficult events.
- Virtual Reality (VR) – allows a patient to visit Iceland or London, relax on a beach, or watch a campfire right from the comfort of a hospital bed. VR helps to relax and distract patients and their families during procedures or therapies. Benefits include improved range of motion and strength, increased social interaction, and improved cognitive outcomes.
What holistic therapy can help with
Holistic therapy can be helpful for a broad range of mental health concerns, including:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- PTSD
- Stress management
- Existential crisis
Additionally, it can also be helpful for physiological symptoms that may have a psychological root, such as muscle tension or digestive troubles.
You don’t need to have a mental health condition or symptoms to seek support from a holistic therapist. You might benefit from holistic therapy if you are simply interested in learning more about yourself and how to integrate the different aspects of your well-being.
Benefits of Holistic Therapy
The wellness practices that are frequently utilized in holistic therapy are often used more generally to help people deal with tension and stress and to promote overall well-being.
One benefit of holistic therapy is that it is a whole-body approach that addresses mental, physical, and spiritual health. It often allows individuals to better see the connections between these different aspects of their lives and better understand how this affects their health and wellness.
Many holistic techniques are also strategies that people can practice and perform on their own outside of therapeutic sessions. This can be particularly helpful in daily life when people are facing situations that can trigger stress, anxiety, or changes in mood
By implementing tactics such as deep breathing, mindfulness, or meditation, people can better manage the situations that are contributing to distress.
Holistic approaches are also often centered on prevention in addition to treatment. Rather than waiting until a problem emerges, learning to utilize holistic treatments may be helpful for preventing problems that can harm a person’s emotional, physical, social, or spiritual well-being.
Effectiveness
Because of the wide variety of techniques and approaches utilized in holistic therapy, it can be difficult to evaluate its efficacy. However, it often incorporates other empirically validated therapies such as CBT and brief dynamic psychotherapy.
Techniques such as acupuncture, yoga, and deep breathing have also been effective for many purposes. Some research does suggest that integrated, holistic care can have many benefits.
- One 2017 article suggested that holistic approaches offer physical and mental benefits that are also cost-effective.
- Research has found that mindfulness and meditation are useful for reducing anxiety and stress and can be adapted for various purposes and situations.
- Guided imagery, often used in holistic practices, may help improve sleep, improve mood, decrease stress, and improve relaxation.5
- Research has shown that deep breathing techniques can reduce stress levels and promote relaxation, which can benefit both physical and mental health.
Because holistic therapy is such a broad category, it’s difficult to make concrete statements about its overall effectiveness. However, some research has indicated that a number of different techniques used in holistic therapy can be helpful for certain mental health conditions.
For example, one study suggested that holistic treatments including Reiki and relaxation techniques helped breast cancer patients manage physical pain and decrease negative emotional reactions to treatment.
Generally speaking, holistic therapies tend to be controversial in the scientific community. In cases where mental health symptoms are more severe, is often recommended that holistic therapy be used only in conjunction with more conventional treatments.
How holistic therapy works
Holistic therapies are thought to work through a wide range of mechanisms. Often, holistic therapy focuses on integrating the understanding of psychological and physiological processes.
That is, it examines the possibility that a physical outcome (such as chronic pain) might have a psychological cause (like stress at work). The reverse might also be true; a holistic therapist might recommend a physical remedy like exercise to treat a psychological issue like anxiety.
Sometimes, holistic therapies are also based on the idea of energy work, which focuses on correcting imbalances and blockages in the body’s natural flow of energy. Reiki and acupuncture are examples of energy work in holistic therapy.
Frequency of holistic therapy sessions
The frequency of sessions can vary widely in holistic therapy. Some kinds of treatment may occur weekly, while others happen more or less often. Many forms of holistic therapy, such as massage therapy and breathwork, are available as single sessions that you attend on an as-needed basis.
A holistic therapist may also recommend a combination of approaches that occur on different schedules. For example, you might schedule psychotherapy sessions once a week, while attending yoga twice a week and seeing a nutritionist once a month.
Length of holistic therapy treatment
There is no set endpoint for holistic therapy. As with any therapy, you and your therapist will agree on treatment goals early on in the therapeutic process. This discussion should also include ways to measure progress based on your individual goals. For example, you may wish to continue treatment until you have resolved certain symptoms, until you have learned enough to continue practicing holistic techniques on your own, or until you feel that you have worked through the issues that brought you to therapy.
Because holistic therapy is so varied and can be used even when no symptoms are present, many people continue to practice some version of holistic therapy for many years or even a lifetime. As with other wellness practices such as exercising and eating a balanced diet, there is no point at which holistic therapy ceases to be useful. The important thing is that you continue to feel that you’re benefiting from it.
Structure of holistic therapy sessions
Holistic therapy sessions often begin with a check-in about your current physical and emotional state.In group settings, sharing personal information at this point is often optional but can help the group work together to support each other and meet everyone’s needs.
In long-term formats, this first phase can also be a time to check your progress since the last session and discuss how your therapy may have affected your life outside of sessions.
Then, the therapist will lead you through a series of exercises or activities, which can vary widely.
Some holistic therapy sessions focus more on psychological exercises (such as meditation or discussion), while others focus more on physical exercises (such as massage or yoga). Many include elements of both.
It’s also common for holistic therapy sessions to be somewhat educational. For example, the therapist working with you on muscle pain might provide you with information about the physiology involved and recommend that you work on certain stretches in between sessions.
What happens in a typical holistic therapy session
Again, holistic therapy sessions can vary widely; there is no typical session in this kind of therapy. However, there are a several common activities that you might encounter in holistic therapy, depending on the exact variety you pursue:
- Exercises based on CBT. Some holistic therapists incorporate aspects of CBT, including spotting and correcting cognitive distortions and increasing positive self-talk.
- Meditation and other mindfulness practices. Holistic therapy can include a variety of meditation techniques and other mindfulness practices. These might include visualization, journaling, and mindful eating.
- Breathwork. Breathwork is a common component of holistic therapy. It may be the main focus of the therapy or else a supplemental activity.
- Acupuncture or acupressure. These techniques involve applying pressure to certain points that are thought to correspond to the body’s energetic fields. Because they combine physical and non-physical components, these techniques are especially typical of holistic therapy.
- Massage and other bodywork. Your holistic therapist might use massage or other hands-on bodywork as part of your treatment.
- Reiki. Reiki is a form of energy work in which the practitioner moves their hands around you to alter your body’s energy without actually touching you.
- Aromatherapy or sound therapy. Some holistic therapists may recommend these sensory elements of treatment.
What to look for in a holistic therapist
Regardless of which kind of holistic therapy you choose, make sure you work with someone who has extensive training using their techniques to treat the kinds of challenges you want to address.
Practitioners of various holistic therapies will often have certifications and licenses to practice specific treatments, such as Reiki, yoga, or massage.
Holistic therapists don’t always need to be psychotherapists. However, if you do expect psychotherapy to be part of your treatment, you should also make sure that your therapist has advanced training and is licensed to practice in the state where you live.
