Health and Healing

Duration: 33 minutes

One of the most intriguing developments in healthcare in recent years is a concerted effort among doctors, nurses, and healthcare specialists to actually define just what we mean by the word "health" in the first place. There are almost as many definitions of "health" as there are descriptions of disease—some focusing on physiological factors, some on psycho-spiritual factors, some on interpersonal and cultural factors, and some on environmental and circumstantial factors. Only now have we begun piecing these many different interpretations into a single mosaic of understanding, an Integral vision of health that seeks to treat the whole person—that is, treating body, mind, and spirit as revealed in self, culture, and nature.
 

Barbara describes the momentous reverberations Integral theory has had upon her own work, her own field, and her own practice. She and Ken discuss several health organizations that are already dealing with matters of Integral concern, trying to find ways to integrate a wide array of health-related factors—including family counseling, mental and spiritual health, preventative care, nutrition, education and access to information, different needs and values in the patient, different kinds of treatment modalities for the patient, and even the actual architectural design of the healing environment. All the pieces of the puzzle are already on the table, and all we've needed is an image of wholeness on the front of the box to help us begin putting them together.
 

Barbara and Ken discuss one of the central obstacles to Integral healthcare reform: a cultural preoccupation with "illness" and a medical paradigm that tends to define health as the "absence of disease." They make the point that there is a positive metric that is just as crucial an indicator of our overall health, what we might call a feeling of "well-being". In many ways this has become a pivotal issue in our cultural dialogue about healthcare, as many proponents talk about moving from an "illness" model to a "wellness" model of health.
 

Some have recommended that perhaps the best litmus test of spiritual development can be seen in our relationship with death—whether it be fearful or accepting. Working from this definition, we can see that American society is suffering from extreme spiritual malnourishment. We are for the most part kept quarantined from the reality of death, viewing it as a mortal enemy at the end of the road rather than the natural completion of the life cycle. There are psychological gaps that exist between the abject fear of death and the intuitive recognition of our own existential nature, forming a fertile crescent for nearly every neurosis afflicting the modern man and woman—neuroses that can ironically worsen our condition and hasten our ultimate deliverance. An integral vision, Barbara insists, would begin working with this schism directly, opening the door for a spiritual renaissance in health and healing.
 

Barbara Dossey's work is a stunning exemplar of Integral theory and practice being taken into the world in very practical and enriching ways. Her deep love, wisdom, and commitment to compassion and the relief of suffering is unmistakable. Her clarity, intelligence, and sophistication shine through like a thousand suns. Barbara is one of our most respected and beloved Integral pioneers, helping to pull Integral theory out of the clouds of abstraction and bring it right where it most belongs—in the bowels of human suffering, reflected in the hearts, minds, and souls of healers everywhere.