What does HOLISTIC mean?

Holistic means looking at the whole picture instead of just one tiny piece. Imagine you have a messy bedroom. If you only pick up the socks and leave the toys on the floor, you haven’t really cleaned the room completely. You saw part of it, but not all of it together.

Think about your favorite sandwich. A holisitic way to eat or think about that sandwich is to enjoy the bread, the cheese, the tomato, and how they sit on your tongue all at once. If you only care if the toast is crispy, you miss the flavor of the tomato juice mixing with the creamy cheese. The parts work together to make something bigger than themselves.

Look outside at a tree. A non-holistic view says, "That is a green leaf." A holistic view says, "The root drinks water from the soil, the stem carries it up, and the leaf catches sunlight." The leaf cannot survive alone. It needs the dirt, the rain, and the sun working together.

You can see a single brick clearly, but you only understand the wall when you see how every brick holds the others up.

When your doctor treats you holistically, they don’t just look at your tummy ache. They ask if you slept well, what you ate for breakfast, and if you are happy. Your body is like that sandwich or that tree. Everything connects. The whole is more important than any single part because nothing in our world stands totally alone.