I wanted to launch my website on January 1, 2020 for my new career as an Integrative Health Coach. That didn’t happen, because I couldn’t decide on the new logo. Originally, I thought I would name my site Journey to Wholeness, the name of my conference in 2016. But, unfortunately, the domain was taken. The word “wholeness” meant a lot to me because it encompassed wellness in all the domains of life. We are biopsychosocial-spiritual beings. Therefore, it is important that we address our health in all these states of life. If the word “wholeness” was taken, what other word could I use? One morning while reading, I came across the word “holistic”; I knew then holism would replace wholeness and my new website would be called “Journey to Holism”—an approach to health.
Merriam-Webster online defines holism as “a theory that the universe and especially living nature is correctly seen in terms of interacting wholes (as of living organisms) that are more than the mere sum of elementary particles.” That was the confirmation I needed. But things got a little bit more interesting when I started my nutrition class at Maryland University of Integrative Health the following week. Call it synchronicity or serendipity but staring at me as one of my assigned readings was the article The Fine Line: (W)holism and Science by Dr. Annemarie Colbin. I was curious about her parentheses surrounding the letter “w”. Then I became curious about the difference between the two words—wholism and holism. I looked up the word holism, but Merriam-Webster pointed me back to the word holism. I sent an email to my professor, who forwarded me the article “Wholistic or Holistic? Does it Matter?” From this brief unplanned research, I gleaned that there were nuances between the two words, which seemed to be connected to the origin of its philosophy. The meaning of the two words is the same, but there are linguistic differences.
One of these differences is on the concept of wholeness. In “wholism,” there is emphasis on the word whole, as in whole system or whole person. Some people prefer this meaning because it may, for them, deemphasize the theme of evolution present in Jan Smut’s work, a South African statesman, military leader, and philosopher, who coined the word “holism”. For others, the word “wholism” may be the choice word merely because of linguistics; its emphasis on the word “whole.” Whether we use holism or wholism, integrative health coaching focuses on the whole person not just on one aspect of the person’s life because all areas are inevitably linked. As John Muir, Scottish-American naturalist and environmental philosopher, states “Tug on anything at all and you’ll find it connected to everything else in the universe.”
We live within a universe that we are connected to. For example, we are impacted by the seasons, so it makes good sense to eat according to the seasons, from a holistic perspective. This was brought to my attention by one of my classmates who believed that seasonal foods had greater nutrient density than the same food off season. I began to think about that idea in a different way. I had not thought of it before in terms of wholeness. Nature knows what we need during the cold season, so oranges, tangerines, and kale, for example are plentiful. Life is a cycle and this cycle is reflected in a wholeness approach.
So, I began to take this thinking a little further: how can I integrate my life so that all the parts function as one? How can I harmonize my life so that it performs as one big orchestra?
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