Academies for Unitive Healing

The Terminology of "Unitive Healing"

The first version of this site used the terminology "Integrative Healing." Why change it now to "Unitive Healing" ?

The growing movement to renew medical practice (and healthcare in general) confronts us with many different terms, each seemingly reaching toward the same philosophy of embracing the unity of body-mind-spirit. Yet each of the terms carries its own emotional weight. Often it seems that the terms which were intended to draw us together have served instead to drive us apart.

Perhaps the most commonly heard term for a new orientation is holistic. Or perhaps, wholistic. The root of the term is the Greek adjective, holos, meaning whole, entire, or complete [meanings translated into Latin as solus, which usually means "alone", "only"]. Or, it can mean whole as in "safe and sound" [Latin: integer] (see: Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon). The Greek word is also related to the Old English words for health and healing, and to our greeting "hello," which originally was a blessing, a wish for the health (wholeness) of another person.

Yet to many people in mainstream healthcare, holistic now seems to imply disregard for evidence and reason which "scientific medicine" values so highly. In that setting, the term easily becomes a stumbling block for useful discussion.

In a more formal sense, holism is placed in opposition to reductionism. However, since it is research into reductive detail which must supply the elements of knowledge which compose our worldview, and since a whole cannot exclude its parts, this is a false distinction.

The name integrative healing is coming into wider use, to indicate a mode of healthcare which takes into account body, mind, and spirit. As noted above, it is based on the Latin adjective, integer, meaning whole, complete, unitary, intact (Cassell's Latin Dictionary). The term is very expressive in that context, but it is potentially confused with the idea of integrated health systems (as a web search will easily show), a term for networking various levels of healthcare into conglomerate corporate systems, whose competitive instincts are usually at odds with the philosophic orientation of wholeness.

Both of these words have an interesting connection with a religious word whose original meaning has almost been lost: The Greek adjective soos (sigma-omicron-omega-sigma) means safe and sound, and healthy [as in the Latin salvus]; and sound, whole, entire [Latin: integer] (see: Liddell and Scott). This is the root for the New Testament words translated "salvation" and "saviour." It seems that in ancient times, these multiple meanings related to body-mind-spirit merged much more smoothly and easily than they do now.

In medical practice today, even as we study how to model integrative practice and how to develop appropriate patient care procedures, we must struggle with the current economic model. Procedures must fit official diagnoses, and both must be accomodated within insurance company codebooks and guidelines. Perhaps worse, we still live with a sense that the body, being physical, is somehow is more "real," that "mind" is derivative, and that "spirit" has more to do with religious doctrines than with medical procedures.

By offering the term unitive healing, I hope to invite us to move beyond those limitations and follow the lead of quantum physics to explore and embrace a consciousness of reality itself as unitive. Such a consciousness, clearly now emerging, will have immense implications for healing in the century on whose threshold we now stand. Such consciousness will penetrate into the essence of healing, going well beyond our current alternative ("instead of") and complementary ("in addition to") mentalities. And most certainly, even if only slowly, such consciousness must force change in the economic constructs of healing practice.

Perhaps -- is it too much to hope ? -- we will even reconnect with the ancient meaning of the name for the one we serve: the patient. The word seems to have fallen into disrespect because of ignorance of that meaning, which has nothing to do with the modern term paternalism. It derives from a Latin word meaning to undergo and endure (patiens), the same word which is the root of "compassion". (See Random House Dictionary, unabridged.) A truly unitive consciousness recognizes the depths of reality at work in the healing bond between helper and patient, a bond not characteristic of an arms-length economic relationship with a client.

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