A WHOLISTIC MODEL FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY AND FOR LIFE

By Ben Hanah

The wholistic model for psychotherapy and for life has been developed in the last thirty years of my work with people. It is an attempt to integrate the various aspects, qualities and realities of our lives, into one practical system in order to help us with our clients and with our own journeys towards healing, growth and fulfillment. This article presents only an overview and main points of the wholistic model.

We can look at the manifestation of our lives as made of five overlapping aspects: 1) body 2) mind 3) spirit 4) community and 5) environment. These five aspects are permeated by three qualities: 1) wisdom 2) creativity and 3) love. The five aspects of life and the three qualities spring from and are expressions of Being-pure consciousness, the eternal, transcendental reality.

BODY MIND

ENVIRONMENT SPIRIT

COMMUNITY

CREATIVITY

WISDOM LOVE

BEING

Now I will expand on these parts of life and explain how we can explore them , as healers and guides for our clients and for ourselves, using different approaches, tools and techniques to achieve more wholeness and fulfillment in our lives.

*

BODY-our body is made of many levels of energy, in which the physical material body that we experience with our senses is only one

manifestation of our whole bodily energy field (energy bundle). Each one of us is an open energy system and our body interacts constantly with other aspects of who we are and with the world around us. These aspects may be our mental and spiritual aspects, inside us, and the community and environmental aspects, outside us. (Looking at these aspects from another point of view, we realize that there is not much meaning to the words inside or outside, because the outside is part of us even by the simple fact that it defines us and our boundaries).

We are born with a genetic and energetic plan for our body, and through life experiences (inner and outer influences) our body shapes itself and our entire life in many different ways.

We absorb air and food into our body for energy and as materials for activity, purification, healing and growth. There is a saying that "who we are is what we eat" (or more accurately "what we don't shit"). Most people in western culture don't eat right food for them or the environment (non-organic food, genetically manipulated food, an excess of sugar, alcohol, fat, acidic food, processed food, food produced out of season and food that is brought to our table from other parts of the world with the expense of polluting the environment etc.). Many people don't eat a balanced diet and this in itself is enough to create a physical and emotional imbalance or diseases.

We need to educate ourselves and our clients about good nutrition in general and the specific needs of each body in different seasons and geographic locations, because we have different body types and different balances of elements in the body according to the seasons and geographic location. (See Ayur-Veda,Chinese medicine and the five elements, Macrobiotic literature, etc.)

Many people in the West breathe shallow in the chest, instead of deep belly breathing, the lack of air and energy creates fatigue, haziness and even disease in the body, mind and spirit. (To learn about breath, see Yogic pranayama, Chi-Quong, Middendorf technique and Continuum).

Our body is shaped by inner influences like balanced or imbalanced mental emotional and spiritual activities, including anxiety, relaxation, love, anger, confusion, devotion,as well as outer influences including food, air,stressors,traumas and disease. We have to teach our clients how to balance, enhance and heal their bodies. Our body is not only a machine, it has its own wisdom and memory. It is beneficial for us to develop ways of listening and learning about our needs and potential, from the body. Our

emotions are energy that arises from the body in reaction to conscious and unconscious mental activity. We can learn a great deal from our emotions about what we need from ourselves and the world (look into Reichian therapy, Bioenergetics, Hakomi, body oriented trauma therapy etc.).

Most people in western culture are very limited in their sexual knowledge, experience and expression. In spite of the sexual revolution in the nineteen sixties and seventies, many people still confuse the purpose of sex with power, self-esteem, anger, success etc.

Many men and women experience limited sexual pleasure and orgasm due to ignorance of their potential, past traumas, fear of intimacy and an unbalanced need for control.

The clothes we wear are an intimate connection with the environment. Influenced by fashion, trends, prices and cultural and religious taboos we tend to wear clothes that are unhealthy to our bodies (for example: synthetic fabrics, inorganic fibers, tight clothes and shoes that cut off blood circulation, limit our breathing and damage our natural posture). We buy clothing that is connected with the abuse other people (like unfair trade and sweatshops), or damaging to the environment (irresponsible cultivation and watering of plants for fibers which destroy the land, chemical treatment of fields, plants and fibers which poison us, other animals and plants etc.).

We can explore our somatic potential and possible interactions with others and the world at large, through different techniques and tools (martial arts, Tai-chi, Hatha-Yoga, Five -Rhythms dance, Continuum, Authentic-Movement, Contact-Improvisation, Tantra, tribal dancing, Dervishes-swirling, etc.).

MIND-Our mind is made of subtle levels of energy field and it includes: our mental activity and patterns like thoughts (conscious and unconscious), intellectual activity like reasoning and planning. imagination, visioning, intuition. belief systems, archetypal energies (see Jungian psychology) and individual and collective memory.

Most people in western cultures have a very narrow, distorted and limited experience and understanding of the nature. capacity and potential of their minds. Unfortunately mainstream western Psychotherapy addresses only a small part of our mental activity. It is our duty to encourage, inform and teach our clients about the vast dimensions of the mind. (See Rudolf Steiner philosophy-anthroposophy, westerns psychology including; Jung, cognitive psychology, limbic brain research, eastern and shamanic

philosophy and psychology etc.)

SPIRIT-Here I refer to spirit as the aspect of life which cannot be experienced by our senses in everyday states of consciousness and that cannot be measured and or explained by our present day mainstream scientific theories, logic or technology. My definition of spirit is intentionally vague, in order to include a vast range of experiences, theories and possibilities. Religion is a cultural or social attempt to structure and formalize spirituality and in many cases it distorts or destroys spirituality in the process. Pure spirituality may be a personal experience, a belief system and the expression of each individual.

Spirituality enlivens and deepens the other aspects to life, it enhances and develops qualities like love, devotion and service, and brings meaning to life beyond material existence.

Lack of balance in the spiritual aspect of life may result in limitations and weakness in the other aspects of life and ultimately to an unfulfilled life as a Whole. Without a balanced spiritual life there is a tendency to be over focused on material gratification. Self-image and self-esteem are shaky and the experience and understanding of love and relationships are superficial. Community life is limited and prone to disintegration (see communism and the kibbutz communities in Israel) and the relationship to nature tends to be mechanical.

There are many ways, techniques and traditions to explore and develop the spiritual aspect of our life, as through meditation, prayers, rituals, dancing, music, mind-altering substances, chanting, movement, breathing etc.

COMMUNITY-For millions of years we lived in tight communities: small, wondering groups of hunters-gatherers. Only about ten thousand years ago we started to live in stable permanent settlements in an extended family social system, in villages and then in small towns. Through human history we developed a rich verbal and non-verbal communication and expressions that connected us to each other as individuals, as a group and to the animals plants and the earth.

As part of the intense and extreme processes of individuation and individualization in the western culture, we have lost the balance in our relationships with individuals and the social structures around us: family, neighborhood, work, school and nation. As a result of this many people

are isolated and feel lonely and scared.

We have lost our wisdom of how to communicate with each other in an effective and peaceful way and how to be intimate with others. We have lost our old ways, the communal traditions, ceremonies and rituals that connect us to ourselves, to others, to nature and to the divine.

In current times of industrial and postindustrial culture, the nuclear family system of two parents families or single parent families, is neither functional nor practical for either the parents and the children. These needs and expectations from the parents to provide and interact with the child on so many levels creates tremendous pressure on both the parents and the child, psychologically, mentally, emotionally, energetically, financially and socially.

We need to develop new social structure that will support and enhance the growth and fulfillment of life for the parent and children and of the community as a whole. (See Quaker communities, Buddhist sangha and traditional and tribal families structures).

ENVIRONMENT includes the many levels and dimensions of creation. and it embraces our rooms and homes, work pace, neighborhoods, villages and towns The esthetic, balance and clutter that we create. See Feng Shui and Stapatya-Veda.) and the land, the sea, the planet Earth, the solar system, our galaxy and all of creation.

Most people in western culture have an urban living style and have very little contact, if at all with plants, animals and the earth. They don't have much awareness of the multidimensional and inseparable connection between people and nature, even though most of our species which emerged from nature, lived in nature and walked barefoot on the earth for eight million years, until about hundred years ago.

Unfortunately, for the most part we have a mechanical relationship with nature. Most people don't feel that they are part of nature and nature is out there only to conquer or to use thoughtlessly . As a result of this attitude, we contaminate our environment, destroy many eco-systems and species of animals and plants and change the climate.

Most of us don't grow our own food any more, many times we don't even prepare our food , and we only hunt and gather our food in the supermarket. This isolation from nature-from the earth, the plants, and the animals creates imbalance in our body, mind and spirit.

The result of this situation is the severe health and environmental crisis, that the human race is currently facing. (See diseases like cancer, allergies and asthma, and planetary emergencies like draughts, contamination of the oceans and global warming.)

*

Each of the three qualities permeates the five aspects of life and enriches them with its own uniqueness. Our challenge is to find a dynamic balance between the three qualities in each of the five aspect of life, a balance that supports the full expression of each a pect of life.

WlSDOM is the combined theories and experiences of life. It is not enough to read books, take classes, listen to speeches or study philosophy. We need a direct experience too. It can either be an experience from within (within our body, emotions, insight, intuition and spirit), an external experience (by interacting with people, animals. plants and the elements), or both.

CREATIVITY is the energy that propels life toward its evolution and fulfillment. It is the force that, together with wisdom and love, manifests the immense potential in creation and in all of us.

In western culture many of us are taught verbally and non-verbally to believe that creativity is the gift of the artist and the genius. That the rest of us are doomed to a boring, mundane, repetitious and mechanical life.

Creativity is not the gift that only recognized artists, and geniuses have. All of us are artists and geniuses in our unique way, just imply in the way in which we can manifest ourselves in our lives. (See the creative and artistic life of the Balinese)

We can be creative in every expression of our life, in the way we walk, talk, dance, dress up, sing, cook, eat, write, work, plan our day and week, decorate our home, interact with people, raise our children, love, live and die.

LOVE is a state of consciousness and not an emotion. It is the opposite of fear and control. It is caring for the well being, growth and fulfillment of the other and it is a force that attracts us to each other, just like gravity.

Unfortunately the word "love" is contaminated in our culture with

connotations of sexual attraction, family bonds etc., maybe it would be better to use the word compassion, but the word compassion too, has its own limiting connotations of pity and religious obligations.

Love is not about falling in love, or infatuation, which are merely the hope and fantasy of love, and what we call romantic love is only a part of what love is. Love has different faces like devotion, fierceness, service and altruism and it is unconditional, always.

When we love someone once we never stop loving that person. Even when anger and fear and hate cover the love and we are not aware of it or don't express it, it is still there.

In order to love someone we need to know the other. The more we know the other, the more we can love. But knowing is only one part of love. The other parts are appreciation and acceptance. We have to appreciate the complexity of the other, and all the dimensions of which that individual is made. Then we have to accept the other with the light and the dark parts, the perfection and the imperfection that together leads the other towards wholeness.

It is important for us to learn not only how to love, but also how to be loved, to be at the receiving end of love, to be open and not in control. To love is not only a passive experience within the heart of the lover. The lover has to be active, creative and wise much of the time. It is about supporting and encouraging the other to manifest and fulfill oneself.

Wisdom without creativity is static and without energy to manifest itself. Wisdom without love can be harsh and detached. Creativity without wisdom can be dangerous and destructive (i.e. nuclear weapons). Creativity without love can be ruthless and dangerous. (See the Nazi movement). Love without wisdom is weak and can become sentimental and love without creativity is limited and repetitious

*

BEING-is pure consciousness, the transcendental silence, the cosmic void, and together with the material creation, the active consciousness and the mind, they construct the all-comprehensive reality-life.

We, the human race, are a conscious medium of the self-expression of Being, and our true mission is to function with our full potential in creation, while we are anchored in Being. By increasing our awareness of Being

(pure consciousness) while we are active in the world, we are able to function with more harmony and balance in the world. This increased awareness of Being in our consciousness is the only cause for our growing experience of safety and peace while being in the world.

In order to achieve this we need to have a concrete, direct and lasting experience of Being. This experience is not only possible, but it is also accessible to those who are committed to achieve it.

Through the ages people in different cultures all over the world have developed tools and techniques to experience and to stabilize Being in their awareness. Meditation, breathing techniques like pranayama, movement techniques like dervishes swirling, drumming, chanting, vision-quest, mind altering substances and plants, fasting, peak and extreme experiences are some of these tools.

It is our challenge to encourage ourselves and our clients to develop Being-pure awareness, in our consciousness and to let it shine through our thoughts, words and actions, in the five aspects and the three qualities of our life, so we and the whole world may live in an ever growing fulfillment and peace.

*

Healers, coaches and guides who have used this wholistic model to psychotherapy and life, have found it to be a useful and practical way to bring richness and balance to their own life and to the life of the people who are seeking their help.

One way to use this model is to evaluate and re-evaluate its applications every so often. Are the five aspects of one's life manifested enough? Are they dynamically balanced with each other? Are the five aspects of life permeated enough, and in a balanced way, with the three qualities? And is Being present enough in our life?

I invite you to experiment with this wholistic model and integrate it with your own personal and professional experience. Mold it to be your own model, so it will

reflect your own uniqueness and will be an expression of your wisdom, creativity and love.

SUGGESTED READINGS

The Spell of the Sensuous/Abrams Boundaries of the Soul/Singer Others Ways of Knowing/Broomfield Non-Violent Communication/Rosenberg A General Theory of Love/Lewis Cosmic Memory/Steiner The Book on the Taboo/Watts The Heart Aroused/Whyte Plant Spirit Medicine/Cowen Entheogens and the Future of Religion/Forte The Universe is a Green Dragon/Swimme A Path with a Heart/Kornfield Uniting Heaven and Earth/Colegrave Planet Medicine/Grossinger