Holistic Health for Peace Within, Between, and Among
What are the five aspects of every whole person?
Many talk about holistic health without including all aspects of a person. Humans are complex beings; the highest developed living things on the earth. We are composed of interrelated and interconnected systems that are in five main areas: physical (body), mental (brain), social (relationships), spiritual (nonmaterial, transpersonal), and community (physical and social environment).
First, let us examine “personhood.” Personal health means more than just the absence of sickness. In the ancient Latin world, they called it Valeo, which means to be healthy and have wellness. It is having healthy functioning in all aspects of the self. We also call this being whole and having holistic health.
The whole person functions at the highest, optimal level in all areas. That can be called the “mature self” or “authentic self.” A very close variation is what Parker Palmer and others have called the “true self.”[1]
What does optimal holistically healthy look like? In the Western world, family system theorist Murray Bowen referred to being mature and true to one’s authentic “differentiated self” or having high “self-differentiation.” That is doing well in their body, mind, soul, and relationships, especially in terms of having a unique identity separate from their family of origin’s assigned role, as well as mutually supportive relationships in their community.[2]
The renowned Swiss psychiatrist, Carl G. Jung, called this process, “individuation,” and emphasized that it may not be achieved fully until midlife.[3]
Each person is a complex, constant interweaving of our physical, psychological, sociological, and spiritual parts that always exist in the context of community/culture and environment. Multiple developmental frameworks have been discovered that help explain the steps or stages humans go through in developing from helpless newborns to fully functioning adults, then mature elders. They include physical (see any medical or human development text), cognitive (read Jean Piaget), psychosocial developmental tasks (Eric Erickson), moral development (see Lawrence Kohlberg), and spiritual or faith stages of development (read James Fowler).
Psychosocial development covers interpersonal behaviors — how one interacts with others in relationships within social systems. It also focuses on the emotional aspect of all persons within the system. Thus, we seek to learn how we can become fully human by being our whole self — our mature self, or our true self — and how we can best interact in our community. The overall goal is best represented by Virginia Satir’s proclamation, “Peace within. Peace between. Peace among.”[4]
For “peace within,” we must remember that we are not responsible for our family of origin, our background, and the things we had to go through as children, but we adults are each accountable for our journey. We are responsible for ourselves — responsible for the choices we make as adults. This means we don’t choose our genetics, the family or circumstances we were born into, or the community, but we are responsible for the individual choices we make as we enter adulthood (arbitrarily 17 to 24 years of age as it varies in different countries). Behavioral choices have consequences. We are accountable to others for our behaviors. You choose the behavior and you simultaneously choose the consequence.
Our family of origin system greatly influences us as we were raised by parents who were greatly influenced by their family of origin, etc. However, in adulthood, we have the cognitive ability to think and decide for ourselves, which can differentiate us from our family (as explained above). We are not responsible for our heritage but we are accountable for our journey and we live in grace. As adults, we are accountable every step of the way for our own integrity — self-respect, dignity, and the amount of positive connection and collaboration we have with other humans — as well as the divine to attain Satir’s “peace between.”
As stated in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence (U.S.A.), “All (humans) are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” To that, this writer would add, “with optimal, holistic health.”
We are each unique. Thus there are great ranges of ability levels and great divergence in socio-economic statuses among the population, as well as an array of human values from very open-minded and generous (mature, accepting, loving, collaborative) to bigoted and prejudicial (immature, rejecting, greedy, competitive). However, our fundamental human rights are the same; our ultimate worth as a person is the same = equality.
From a higher-level perspective, higher self or “in God’s eyes,” as some would say, we are all the same. Therefore, we all deserve equal acceptance, respect, empathy, cooperation, and collaboration to enable and empower us to live together peacefully as individuals — differentiated beings who are connected to interact with other individuals and groups.
And, we all need each other. That gets us to what Satir called, “Peace among.” To achieve this, we are called to tolerate human differences in our pluralistic world to the point of offering acceptance, inclusion, welcoming, and affirmations of worth to all whom we personally encounter (unless they physically present a clear, imminent threat of danger to us). This is certainly a necessary part of growing and developing any organization, from the workplace to the nation.
To be holistically healthy requires awareness — cognizance of our total personhood: body, mind, spirit, and relationships — in our community and physical environment. It is to care for one’s self — mentally, socially, and spiritually, as well as physically — as one cares about others and interacts with them collaboratively with empathetic compassion and respectful assertiveness. It also requires each of us to be ecologically minded.
We each have a voice and a right to use it by expressing our authentic thoughts (ideas), feelings (emotions), and needs (or wants). And, we also have the responsibility of hearing others by listening with empathy and compassion to their needs.
The behavioral mandate is the Golden Rule — treat others the way you want to be treated. By doing that, we can attain peace within, peace between, and peace among through the wisdom and grace of the creator for peace with all — enjoy your peace.
[1] Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, 20th Anniversary Ed., (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017).
[2] Murray Bowen, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, (New York: Aaronson, 1982); Michael Kerr and Murray Bowen, Family Evaluation, (New York: Norton, 1988).
[3] Wayne G. Rollins, Jung and the Bible, (Atlanta: John Knox, 1983), 38–40.
[4] Virginia Satir, The New Peoplemaking, (Mountain View, CA: Science and Behavior, 1988), 368.
