Reclaim Your Health – The Importance of a Holistic Approach

This is part 1 of a 3 part video series designed to empower and support you take the first steps to reclaiming your health.

Our goal here at the International Macrobiotic school is to really offer a thorough training in holistic nutrition and help to empower as many people as possible to regain their health to learn how to look after their health, to really get more and more deeply in touch with themselves on a feeling level, and emotional level on a spiritual level, to really lead exciting, full, expressive lives.

Each video in this series is going to focus on a different subject. In this first video, I want to talk about approaching health looking at our health in a holistic way.

We are composed we have different parts of ourselves. A very common way of looking at ourselves is that we have a physical body, our organs, digestion, brain, a lot of things working on a physical level.

We have our emotions, which are a big part of ourselves, some of us may be much more emotional, some of us may be much less emotional. What I’ve learned is that even if people are less emotional, or don’t show emotions, more on the outside, actually they’re all happening on the inside, maybe consciously, maybe unconsciously. Our emotions are a big part of our life, sometimes for the better, when we’re feeling joy and happiness and so on. And sometimes not so much for the good, when we’re feeling depressed, lonely, sad, etc.

Then we have the mental side of ourselves, this incredible ability to think, to work things out, to understand things, to solve problems, to remember things to think about the future, plan for the future, etc. This is a very useful part of ourselves.

The fourth part is our spirit. We’re not just physical, emotional mental beings, we also have spirit within us, we come from spirit, you might say, some people talk about this in terms of our individual soul, soul being an individual part of spirit. And having some kind of connection to spirit, whatever form that takes it can really vary with different people is also a really important part of us and an important part of our health. If we look at history, around the world, peoples have always invested a lot of time and energy in paying attention to the spiritual side of our life. So that these four different aspects of our life.

What has happened a lot in European thinking in the last few 100 years. These different areas have been looked at as being very separate. Traditionally, most peoples around the world, whether you’re talking about ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Middle East, Asia, Ayurvedic medicine and approach to health, Chinese Medicine and approach to health,

North American South American traditions, they had holistic ways of looking at ourselves, of understanding these different parts of ourselves, and very importantly, how they’re connected, how they affect each other, how our emotions affect our physical body. Our thoughts affect our emotions and our physical body. Our spiritual connection can have a transformative effect on us and can definitely have physical, emotional effects. Our physical body affects how we think, and our emotions, etc. Strangely, I think what’s happened in European thinking in the past few 100 years, it’s become very focused on the physical. And through that it has reached an amazing physical understanding of how the body and how we in the world and nature works. But it’s separated off the spirit, how is our physical body and spirit connected, how’s the physical body and our emotions connected?

Western science medicine is beginning to look at these things now. Thank goodness. But it has had a very separate way of looking at how we work. When I got into whole, complementary medicine and alternative ways of looking at life and health, in 1980, it was thought that food really had no effect on our physical health. Can you imagine that now, things have really changed in 40-41 years. But 40 years ago, it was thought no food doesn’t have any effect on health, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, etc. There was no connection. The message people were receiving was that if you have those kinds of health problems, just eat what you like.

Now, thank goodness, in the last 20-25 years it’s been realised our food has a profound effect on our physical health. Of course, this is what macrobiotics Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, Greek medicine, ancient Greek medicine, many traditions have understood for 1000s of years, and we are now at a point in our society where we’re rediscovering these things.

Most traditions around the world, see that we not only have a physical body, a physical nervous system, we also are alive and working because we have a flow of energy or Qi, Chi or prana going through the body. When we look at things and look at ourselves and health in this way, it gives us a deeper, wider understanding of ourselves. And the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual parts of us are tangible, they’re real, they’re not just mental concepts.

It’s very easy to learn how to pick up on and read energy, we do that in a lot of our classes. There is nothing mysterious about this. I’m sure Western science is going to get to realising that there’s such a thing as Qi and chi, and I just can’t wait for the day when that happens, because we can have a unifying a lot of traditional understandings with modern Western scientific understanding.

The astronomers I think, are almost getting there, they realise that science so far has really only described being able to see 5% of what is out there 75% is dark energy 20% is dark, dark matter and they have very, very little idea of what either of those are. So our physical body has a flow of energy flowing through it. Within this are the meridians which used in acupuncture and shiatsu. And this small physical type of energy extends outwards a little bit from the body, it’s quite easy to feel this. Sometimes it’s called an aura. Then coming further out are the emotions. This is why if we’re standing close to someone, and they’re feeling strong, sadness, grief, joy, anger, we pick up on ourselves because their emotions are radiating outwards. We pick up on them in our energy body. Even sometimes you can know what someone is feeling without being to see them. Sometimes that’s pleasant sometimes that’s not pleasant. Depending on what emotions they’re feeling. These emotions are going all through the body as well as extending outwards.

Thoughts are also composed of energy. And again, this is why sometimes, particularly with people we know better, someone opens their mouth to say something, and we already know exactly what they’re going to say. Because, with thoughts, first of all, there’s the energy, and then there’s the words, or you might experience that you get a flash of insight into something.

These four different bodies are all very connected and when we focus on all of them we can really take a holistic approach to health. Watch the full video to discover this in more detail for yourself.

Our firm belief is that our health is primarily in our own hands. And the best investment we can make is learning how to look after our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health.

If you’d like to find out more about our one-year holistic nutrition course and longer training to become a health coach, wholefoods chef or macrobiotic consultant then check out or website. We also offer a range of online and in person courses too.

Make sure you check out the blog for parts 2 & 3 in this Reclaim Your Health series.

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