Massage, Wellness, Healers and Holistic Therapy

Massage, bodywork and many other forms of alternative therapies are part of what might be called the wellness movement. The wellness movement has arisen in part as a response to the limitations of drug and surgery based medicine i.e. treatment based on fighting disease rather than on promoting health. In health care, like in politics and education, there is growing realization that we cannot simply leave our well-being in the hands of institutions and corporations; we must participate and take some responsibility ourselves. Good health, like good government, does not flourish in an environment of apathy.

Wellness is not defined by a set of x-rays or blood tests that reveal no known pathologies. Wellness is feeling good about life, and that obviously includes not just the physical body, but also our psychological and emotional states, our relationships and vocations, and our spiritual processes. It is evident that these are all interrelated. A holistic approach to health care or anything else is one which recognizes and honors this interrelatedness.

Healers are people who help facilitate a healthy integration of these various parts of ourselves and our lives. They are effective because they have tools - some combination of talents, perceptions and knowledge - which can encourage positive change to occur within us. Healers do not do things to us, they work with us in our quest for wellness.

Holistic therapy then, is the partnership between healers and those who seek them out. Whatever their particular talents may be, the main challenge in the work of healers is simply to be present for and with another human being. No technique or talent or body of knowledge can replace the necessity of this presence. Human presence is what opens the doorway so the tools can be used.

Many people run a lengthy gamut of practitioners and therapies before they find something that works for them. Along the way they are bombarded with an endless stream of claims of the miracles various practitioners, techniques, potions and supplements will provide them. Glossy magazines and catalogues, televised info-mercials, books, websites and videos hype these products and services so aggressively it seems hard to fathom how any of us could be in less than perfect, shining, exuberant health and happiness.

I'm not picking on alternative health care here, this kind of propaganda is rampant in every area of modern American society. My point is that wellness is not something we can achieve merely as isolated individuals. Wellness is not something that can be bought and sold. Wellness is a way of life and if it is ever to become a major feature in our society (which it clearly isn't now) that will require broad and significant changes in how we think about things.

Our society is ill with a bad case of materialism. For our purpose here we might define materialism as the belief that some mechanical process will reliably bring us the result we seek. But wellness is not simply a matter of applying the right mechanical methods in a standardized fashion and getting the same predictable results every time for every person.

Real life and real people are far more complex and mysterious than that. That kind of formulaic approach that discounts so much of our humanness is exactly what has turned so many people away from mainstream medicine, and it is a bit dismaying to see the same phenomena developing in alternative health care... the same unrealistic claims, the same materialistic concepts, the same arrogance, the same greed.

Part of the response of the alternative health care community itself to this problem is certification and testing and other attempts to regulate their own ranks, but unfortunately, many of these attempts suffer from the same problems. More money changes hands and more certificates appear on the walls of practitioners, but it doesn't really result in an improvement of the situation. In addition, most of the best practitioners have that presence I mentioned and are using intuitions and perceptions in their work and none of this can be measured or tested in any known standardized way, so regulation of this kind is as likely to degrade the profession as it is to enhance it.

"Holistic" is one of the modern buzzwords and it is frequently misapplied out of ignorance or as a marketing strategy. But it is a valid and desirable approach we very much need to bring to fruition in our culture. I applaud practitioners who attempt it and I encourage those interested in wellness to seek them out and not be discouraged by their imitators. By working together we might yet bring wellness to America.

About the author:
Dean Kisling, Massage Therapist

Back to Massage Articles