What Is Holistic Health?

It’s kind of weird starting an article with a question that seems pretty obvious to answer… We all intuitively know that health is important. We all know deep down that certain habits like exercise and a full night’s sleep are good for us… we know that things like fast food and cans of Coke cause problems. But the truth is, if we know all of this… why are we the sickest society to ever have lived in the history of our time? And why do the stats demonstrating this just keep on getting worse?

Yes we live longer, but in 2017 it was found that 67.2% of men and 61.5% of women are either overweight or obese.

The UK sees 170,000 people die of heart disease every year. That’s more than a quarter of all deaths for 2017. We also see around 165,000 people die of cancer every year, which represented 28% of all deaths in the UK for 2017.

So what seemed like an obvious question to answer… “why is health and wellness important?”, is being brushed off by more than 50% of the population.

The truth is that a lot of those who do not fall under this category of being obese, or having cardiovascular disease etc, are still victims to low levels of vitality. Which seems to be a byproduct of 21st century living.  

Most people experience at least a couple of the following:

• Low energy and fatigue
• A tight, inflexible, and rigid body
• Lack of strength to do daily tasks
• Food cravings
• High stress, and restlessness
• Anxiety & depression
• Chronic pain
• Not being comfortable in their body
• Yeast and fungal infections
• Digestive trouble
• Mental lethargy and inability to focus
• Constipation, gas, bloating
• Poor posture
• Addictions to stimulants like caffeine, alcohol, sugar
• Poor sleep
• Low sex drive
• Skin issues like pimples, acne, rosacea, eczema, etc
• Emotional outbursts of anxiety, panic, anger, worry
• Poor circulation
• A lacklustre experience of life
• Often sick with colds, sore throats, and the flu

Is living with crippling fatigue, pain, or poor cognitive function something you should be experiencing? Call me old fashioned, but I think not.

Health and wellness is important first and foremost to avoid lifestyle based diseases like Heart Disease, Diabetes, Neurodegenerative Disease, and Cancer.

Health and wellness is critical so that you can experience everything life has to offer. From being able to walk outside, to take part in exercise, to have a clear and restful mind, to being able to work efficiently… and most importantly to live the life you want to live. 

A lot of the symptomatic issues I mentioned above are simply caused by a lack of information. Most people weren’t really taught things like:

• Techniques to reduce stress levels.
• Exercises to vitalise the body.
• How to calm the mind when it’s overactive.
• How to stretch tight muscles and strengthen weak ones.
• How to develop emotional intelligence.
• How to eat in a way that nourishes and satiates both body and brain.

So what does it mean to be healthy? Is it merely an absence of pharmaceutical prescriptions?

I’ll let you in on a little secret… It’s not this:

A healthy individual does not necessarily look like they have washboard abs, big arms, and an ability to sprint a mile. Like I’ll cover in a bit, you can look like a fitness mag model on the outside, but be rotting on the inside, and have a whole host of health challenges. 

And I hate to break it to the Generation Zs out there, but health is also unfortunately not determined by your Insta following. There is yet to be a correlation of how many active wear discount codes you can sell and your levels of health and wellness.

Some characteristics of living a healthy lifestyle include:

• You have ideal weight
• You are not dogmatic about diets
• You have a functional body
• You have the energy to do everything you want to do during the day
• You can sleep well undisturbed
• You are free from addictions
• You can live, if you choose, without stimulants
• You can focus on a task and have a clear mind
• You can handle stress
• You have emotional intelligence

In our modern way of living, this can seem very hard to find. 

This is because most people have compartmentalised what health truly means. A lot of people are incredibly fit, look like navy seals, but can’t sleep properly and have a boat load of addictions.

Overall, people are are experiencing a challenge of being truly healthy through:

• Standard diet approaches, 
• Machine based exercises and ineffective workouts at the gym,
• High levels of stress.

All of which can be addressed through an effective specialised health and wellness program.

The truth is many people have always thought of their health as never being quite good, and a lot of these characteristics may seem fleeting to them. I can assure you that they are all absolutely possible, and within reach with the right help. 

A lot of people who:

• Can’t get healthy
• Are not happy with their energy levels
• Not happy with the way their body looks
• Not content with how they feel 

Are simply victims to “isolated thinking”. They think that the body and brain are isolated things that do not need to be integrated. 

We see this a lot with people who either solely focus on diet, but have a body that’s not functional and this puts them off from doing a lot of movement practices that highly energise and vitalise the body. 

Or they only focus on exercise, but their diet is not up to parr and they suffer from fatigue, poor skin health, and dodgy digestion. 

They might even be masters of both exercise and diet, yet don’t know how their lifestyle may be causing them to have imbalanced hormones, low sex drive, and chronic muscle soreness.

By viewing the body as a whole interconnected system, you can effectively optimise yourself and break free from any kind of dysfunction, plateau, or unachieved goal.

If you feel like you don’t “fit the bill” when it comes to the characteristics of living healthy, that’s certainly not something to dwell on for too long. In many ways, you are a healthy individual if you’re actively making choices to progress and make yourself healthier.

Living a healthy lifestyle is something you work on, not something you work for.  You may find comfort in the fact that you are working towards making those characteristics bigger parts of you.

The saying “it’s all about the journey, not the destination” is certainly a cliché, but it’s completely true. There are ups and downs and no one is 100% perfectly healthy at all times. Because once you achieve a particular dream, such as having a “functional body”, that becomes the baseline of health for you. You naturally always want to evolve. Learning how to better manage your mind and meditate may be the next mountain for you to climb.

The term Holistic Health is sometimes misunderstood or conjures up a false image of what Holistic Health Practitioners really do.

It’s a term sometimes associated with hippies or woo-woo individuals that don’t seem to be grounded in reality. I find that a lot of people who have never really met a Holistic Health Practitioner often think that the profession revolves around crystal healing, or people who just like to meditate a lot. 

But as you will soon find out, that’s just a very superficial image of what Holistic Health means. And the skill and knowledge deployed by a Holistic Health Practitioner goes far beyond what the uninitiated lay-person may think. 

Here are some key principles: 

• View the body as a whole system.
• Nothing in the body works in isolation.
• When you get to the root of an issue or challenge, it often times resolves quickly.
• Certain principles to living a healthy life that cannot be replaced or avoided.
• Help people increase their vitality, decrease their stress, and get them to their ideal weight.
• Mentor and coach the client out of their challenge, or towards a particular objective.
• Work with diet, movement, and lifestyle.

When you combine all of these principles, you can start to see how a Holistic Health Practitioner can offer much more than a typical personal trainer or nutritionist when it comes to changing the way your body looks, your health, vitality, and ability to decrease the levels of stress in your life.

The foundation of a Holistic Health Practitioner’s perspective is that they see the client in their entirety. 

It all starts with assessments to paint the picture of what’s going on in your body.

My assessments include gaining information on:

• Various systems in the body like your glands and organs,
• Biomechanics,
• Posture,
• Lifestyle Habits,
• Food and Diet,
• Different types and levels of stress,
• Your ability to move in different planes of motion,
• Core strength,
• Muscle Imbalances,
• Joint ranges of motion,
• Your flexibility, coordination, and balance.
• Physiological load,
• What type of exercise would benefit you best,
• And more.

When you tie it all up together you have a clear view of what’s happening, and can work with more precision to achieve a client’s goal. 

A good example of how a holistic health practitioner skillset is special is with a common client complaint: low back pain. 

Back pain is a very common challenge people have now days. Through a diet & lifestyle questionnaire, a health appraisal questionnaire (in which organs and systems of the body are assessed), and a physical examination, we can gain a lot of information as to what’s going on. 

Taking this specific case study as an example, I can identify whether or not someone may be experiencing inflammation in their gastro-intestinal system, which can reflexively cause the abdominal muscles to shut down and become weak, which then affects the client’s ability to effectively stabilise their spine, and effectively overload the relevant stabiliser muscles that contribute to a person being able to move with freedom and not experience any pain. 

In this particular situation, a certain food choice may be the original factor that is causing the back pain. We’d then remove this from the client’s diet, rehabilitate core function, and work on any muscle imbalances that have occurred. 

This holistic approach enables the client to see what was causing the discomfort in the first place, and then make the relevant diet changes. This would be more effective than to go to a therapist who may be effective in temporarily removing the pain, but after a while it will come back, as the root cause was left unaddressed. 

The fundamental premise for a Holistic Health Practitioner, is that there is far more than just physical health, that makes a human being healthy. 

A sophisticated approach to increasing vitality, decreasing stress, and increasing physical performance has to take into account more than the physical. 

As well as being physical human beings, we also have emotions, a mind, and a spirit. All of these parts are connected and make us who we are, as unique individuals.

Many professions are reductionist in nature. They zoom in on a specific issue and address that in great detail. But what happens when a specific issue is merely a bi-product of another part of you?

A holistic approach offers that there’s a deeper understanding of the topics at play. 

Isolated thinking may lead to many dead ends and ineffective results. This is why a Holistic Health Practitioner may help a lot of people who’ve failed to get results through traditional means. Be it a struggle to get out of pain, a struggle to lose weight, a struggle to overcome chronic fatigue, or a chronic skin condition.

The body is a system of systems. Everything ties together, and works as a whole unit. The health and wellness industry is filled with experts in isolated subjects.

A core principle of Holistic Health is that everyone is unique. We’re all uniquely individual, both on the inside and out. Through this idea of biochemical individuality… the notion that we are as different on the inside as we are on the outside, we understand that everyone has different metabolisms, different lengths of intestines, different stomachs, different capacity to detox, assimilate, and eliminate food, etc.

This goes even further when we consider everyone has a different capacity to effectively detox things like alcohol, assimilate vitamin D from the sun, or deal with big city pollution.

This highlights just how ridiculous the idea that there is one diet that’s best for all people. There can’t be, because we’re so uniquely individual, and require our own custom set program of food choices, movement protocols, and lifestyle design.

This means that one person’s reaction to a particular food could nourish them greatly, but be terrible for another by making them jittery, and have poor cognitive function. 

When you appreciate everyone as unique and individual you can start working with greater precision: There is no one size fits all approach.

With this, the real profound results come when you mentor a client to listen to their body and understand it as a feedback mechanism. 

Developing a relationship with your body so that you can learn what’s good and bad for it, is a life skill everyone should learn. 

This is a very interesting topic when you consider your relationship with food. Your body and brain are the biggest feedback mechanisms you have to see whether or not your food choices are working. 

Do you feel lethargic and sleep after eating? 

Do you crave coffee or tea after you eat?

These are all signs and messages your body and brain are sending you that you are eating either:

• The wrong types of foods that are optimal for you in that place in time
• The wrong ratios of fats, proteins, and carbs
• or, Both

There are other more complex factors but for the purpose of this article we shall not delve into them. 

If there is anything you remember from this article, may it be this: The internal is more important and powerful than the external.

The commercial health, beauty, and fitness industry is largely focused on the external. When I say external, I’m referring to how the body looks aesthetically. Since the external is what people can visually see all the time, a focus is spent on trying to change that. This creates a “this for that” mentality.

• Skin issues? Try this cream. 
• Overweight? Try this 14 day fat loss diet.
• Restless, Jittery, and Can’t Focus? Try this pill.
• Headaches? Try this pill.
• You get the idea. 

The industry has created a smokescreen, to cover the fact that you can change all of these things effectively and naturally by simply changing diet, and lifestyle factors that create health on the inside. The healthier you are on the inside, the healthier you are on the outside..

If you try to cover things up forever, you will just stay the same forever. It’s kind of like sweeping all the mess in your room under the bed. It’s just masking an issue instead of actually sorting it out

If there is anything you remember from this article, may it be this: The internal is more important and powerful than the external.

We’re all creatures of habit, and when you start seeing positive improvement in your health and wellness, you realise that you have more energy, and thus feel like you can do more, or do things better.

This is a key aspect of how a holistic health practitioner can facilitate growth and an upgrade in one’s health. When you understand the science of change, you can effectively avoid all of the roadblocks that come about when you go about this on your own. 

A real appreciation for how to nurture high levels of health and wellness needs to bring together ancient wisdom that has served us for thousands of years… with modern science.. This is the perfect balance that promises optimal results.

We live in a modern world, and certain supplements, technologies, and science can be used greatly to make us more resilient in an ever stressful environment. 

With the latest research in psychology and human behaviour, we can see effective techniques on how to effectively mentor someone through a process of getting healthier and experiencing greater wellbeing.

Nonetheless, certain principles have existed for thousands and thousands of years that are essential pillars in one’s health and wellness: such as methods for relaxing the mind, and techniques to feel calmer and blow off stress.

When you balance out a daily movement practice, a diet in which you’re feeding your body and brain what they need and in optimal amounts, as well as a lifestyle that is conducive to you expressing high levels of health and wellness, you are effectively expressing the highest potential of your genes and ability to live.

This is all achieved through a custom program that touches upon these 3 very variables: Movement, Diet, & Lifestyle. When you take into account all of the information already presented in this blog, and much more, you can see how a highly effective program can be built.

A holistic health and wellness program includes:

• A functional movement practice that gets your body functioning at a high level, 
• A diet program that optimises your food choices and habits, 
• Lifestyle recommendations that increase vitality and lowers stress. 

They say information is power… but this statement is in fact incorrect. Applied information is power. Otherwise you just have a bit of info in your head. You’ve got to actually do the work to get the results you’re dreaming of… and that’s really hard if you don’t have the right guidance. 

If you’re currently struggling with your health and wellness, if you’re not happy with your energy levels, your skin, the way your body looks, or your digestion, you can create genuine change and heighten your health through my Total Human Health Program.

In this program, we go through one of the most important things you can learn in your life: how to take care of your body and your mind. This gives you the tools and tactics to experience life from a special, energetic, and vibrant pair of eyes. You develop real inner vitality. 

The program features weekly video consultations and accountability calls. Our accountability calls ensure that you get the results you’re really looking for.

We’re doing the deep work that creates a shift in your body that sets the stage for long lasting health and wellbeing.

When you do the right kind of work, real sustained growth can materialise, and you have better energy, clearer focus, nicer looking skin, you start being free from food cravings. You become more resilient to stress, as well as become proud of how you look and feel!

This way of working really allows you to build a solid foundation of health and get the skills that you can use for the rest of your life. If this sounds appealing to you. I invite you to transform your health from the inside out with me and schedule a time to chat with me for further details and see if the program is right for you.