The word ‘holistic’ comes from the Greek word ‘holos’ meaning ‘whole’. Holistic medicine is medicine that treats the whole person, mind, body and soul. Conventional or allopathic medicine tends to see the person as a collection of separate parts. If you have a kidney problem, a conventional doctor will give you drugs to affect the kidneys.
In contrast, holistic medicine sees you as a complete person, body, mind and spirit together. The holistic practitioner will consider why the disease is attacking you and what relation it bears to your diet, your posture, your personality, your lifestyle and your emotional history. Your body will be seen as a complete system in which all the parts affect one another. Often the symptoms of the disease will be seen as your body’s attempt to throw out toxins which have been accumulated, through faulty eating habits or through malfunctioning of the organs. In such a case the symptoms should not be suppressed by drugs, since this will not only prevent elimination, but even add to the toxins to be eliminated.
Allopathic medicine uses drugs to fight the disease directly, Holistic medicine believes in promoting and using the body’s own healing power.
Massage has both a physiological and a psychological effect. The various movements of massage exert either, individually or in a combination an effect to the skin, muscle, blood vessels, lymphatics, nerves and some of the internal organs, depending on the pressure and position of the movements involved. In general the pressure movements result in speeding up the body’s physiology, whilst slow, gentle movements have a soothing effect, calming the nerves and enabling the patient to relax