Integral Health is the process through which we humans achieve well-being by the ordering of consciousness.  This includes the expansion of consciousness (knowledge) and the intensification of consciousness (wisdom).

                                                -Graham Simpson, M.D.

For the past decade,it has become obvious to many of us health professionals that a new model of medicine is needed.  An understanding of integral health will not only assist us in dealing with the ever-increasing incidence of chronic disease, but it will teach us to acknowledge the multidimensional nature of the human being and embrace alternative systems of health delivery that are less invasive and more effective.

In 1977, George Engel wrote in the journal Science that psychiatry and biomedicine were in crisis because they both adhered to a view of disease that was no longer adequate for the scientific tasks and social responsibilities of either medicine or psychiatry.  Engel proposed a new biopsychosocial method that treats a person, and not just the illness.

The integral health model we wish to present here extends Engel’s idea and is patterned after the works of Ken Wilber, Jean Gebser, and others.

Humanity has evolved from a simple consciousness to self-consciousness and is now ready for its next major transition, from self consciousness to integral consciousness.  Integral consciousness is an emergent psychohistorical development.  With this awareness, the interaction between the physician and his or her patient changes.  We can no longer adhere to the mechanistic, fix-it disease mentality that conventional medicine has upheld throughout much of the last century, treating symptoms of illness instead of getting to the root of a person’s problem. 

Integral health, here, means integrative, inclusive, comprehensive, and balanced.  As Wilber writes, “To understand the whole, it is necessary to understand the parts.  To understand the parts, it is necessary to understand the whole.  Such is the circle of understanding.”

The value of any method lies in how useful it is.  We have been applying this integral health method with increasing success and would appreciate feedback from other health practitioners engaged in similar practices, as well as clients who share a similar experience in their lives.  As Wilber points out, any phenomenon can be approached in an interior and exterior fashion, and also as an individual and a member of a collective.

Before discussing these in detail, it is important to recognize the power of the Internet in the future of medicine.  In conventional medicine, hospitals and doctors are responsible for the medical environment.  Now, the consumer is in the driver’s seat.  Much of what people want – and can have because of the Internet – is self-service.  We would like to provide a new context for individuals to serve themselves, for example, with coaching from EternityMedicine.com.  By integrating the best of conventional and alternative medicine, we can delay, prevent and in some cases, actually reverse the diseases associated with aging – you can now live better longer.

We believe physicians, chiropractors and other health professionals who are oriented to preventative medicine can best deliver this method.  Certain integrated centers for example, Eternity Medicine Institutes and medical spas, especially day spas and destination resort-spas, are ideal locations for people interested in incorporating this method into their lives.  Moreover, through the Internet, useful products and lifelong learning related to this method can be provided.

Until recently, most of what we know as medicine was largely confined to the upper right quadrant of Figure A.  In fact, most medicine practiced today is still predominantly from this quadrant.  About twenty five years ago, people began to appreciate wellness medicine and mind-body practices (upper left quadrant); though these practices too are incomplete.  As Aaron Antonovsky wrote, “And yet, the voluminous writing of – shall we call it the holistic approach to health? – as far as I can tell, shows a near-total absence of reference to, or awareness of, the larger social system in which the mind-body relationship operates.”

History, culture, worldview and social structure are all indispensable (lower quadrants) to understanding the roots of health and well-being.  Systems theory (lower right quadrant) provides us with a framework for alternative medicine.  As Ranjan pointed out in Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, “The notion of relativity, that the same element can assume a different identity according to the context in which it operates, points to one of the most salient differences between bio-medicine and other medical systems.”  In biomedicine, pharmacology, for example, emphasizes an active ingredient regardless of context.  Herbalism, on the other hand, emphasizes context, with the impact of the whole not only being greater, but even being different from the sum of the individual parts.”

Von Bertalannffy writes, “The existence of laws of similar structures in different fields enable the use of systems which are simpler or better known as models for more complicated and less manageable systems.”

Ranjan concludes that it is precisely within this kind of conceptual scheme that Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, and other alternative medical systems have been developed.  In Ayurveda, the simpler and better known method is call doshas.  In Chinese medicine, there are the five elements and yin and yang; in homeopathy, there is the law of similars.

If we look at Figure A., we can see how a particular medical system will have strong influence on the cultural worldview, which will set limits to individual thoughts that register in the brain.  And as Wilber points our, we can go around that circle in any direction.  They are all interwoven.  They are all mutually determining.  They all cause, and are caused by, others, in concentric spheres of contexts within contexts indefinitely.

The integral health method we have introduced attempts to deliver a new model for health that honors all four quadrants.

EXTERIOR OBJECTIVE

EMI’s program is divided into 3 simple steps.

MEASURE: The first step after a client has decided to enroll in an integral health program is to complete a meta-analysis.  This includes a comprehensive physical exam, fitness test, organ analysis, and biomarker analysis, together with select laboratory and other testing that may be necessary. 

MENTOR: For each client, a personal wellness and 8 part age management program is designed, including detoxification, exercise, nutrition, hormones, supplements and lifelong (mind-body) learning. 

MONITOR: All the clients’ biomarkers are recorded and with their fitness data is uploaded to their personal Lifetime Health Assessment and Monitoring Program (LHAMP) – this is step three.

INTERIOR OBJECTIVE

Self-assessment information, which includes several hundred studies over the past three decades, indicates that peoples’ reports of their own health are a global measure of the quality of their lives.  They predict survival more powerfully than any clinical assessments based on examinations by physicians and laboratory tests (exterior objective).  Thus, a person’s perspective about her or his life influences the health and longevity of that person.

Well-being is emerging as the best measure of individual health based on the 1991 U.S.  Surgeon General and the Public Health Services’ Healthy People 2000.  Since well-being is a subjective quality, health under this quadrant also becomes a subjective state.

Ellen Idler and Stanislav Kasl conclude from the Yale Health and Aging Project that self-evaluations of health predict mortality above and beyond the presence of health problems, physical disability, and biological or lifestyle risk factors.  What a person believes about him-or herself is by far the greatest measure of health.  Physical ailments are generally symptoms of greater issues within the whole person and her or his relation to the surrounding world.

Our interest is in discovering what allows individuals to go beyond the physical for their sense of well-being.  Our belief is that a sense of the spiritual and an integral worldview are the common sources of inner health and wholeness.
Well – being is clearly an interior subjective and intersubjective state.

The fundamental meaning of spiritual, as taken from the Greek word pneuma and the Latin spiritus is breath.  Spiritual is thus anything that gives us a second breath, a feeling of wholeness and being fully alive.  This is consistent with the original meaning of health, which comes from the old English and early German terms for a state of being whole.  Guided imagery, lifelong learning, meditation, prayer, psychology, relaxation, and yoga can be used to assist each client in the individuation process.  Individuation, a term coined by Carl Jung, and not to be confused with the selfish individualism of the past decade, is a lifelong process through which a person becomes increasingly whole.  Individuation entails the gradual expansion and intensification of consciousness.  The individual recognizes that the ego is not the center of one’s being, or as Jung writes, “One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.”

The recognition of the higher self, or the spiritual self, is a valuable aspect of the integral health model.  Various assessments on the interior subjective state and lifestyle patterns of the individual are also done and are included as part of the LHAMP.  Finally, several mind-body health tools are given to each client as part of their wellness program.

INTERIOR INTERSUBJECTIVE

It is not enough for information to flow through the senses.  To make sense of sensory data, using a context that organizes the information conveyed is essential.  Cognitive development is cumulative; cultivating meaning in life is a reflective process.

The work of Jean Gebser best articulates this necessary context.  In 1943, Gebser, a political historian, Eric Voegelin, and psychoanalyst Carl Jung each independently recognized that the mounting crisis for Western civilization was in fact a fundamental restructuring of consciousness (part of the new integral health model).  Prior to the initial recognition of perspective in Europe around A.D. 1250 -, the human lacked spatial awareness and thus lacked an ego-consciousness or definite sense of self.  Giotto was one of the first painters in Western civilization to show us this objectified world in his work.

We live today in this world, or what Gebser terms the perspectival era.  (See Table A. below).  Prior to this, there was the unperspectival era, consisting of the archaic, magical and mythical periods.  Gebser was very aware of the new era dawning for humanity beyond these- the aperspectival era.

Within each structure of consciousness, there is a distinct understanding of space and time coupled with a predominate sense organ.  The integration of these five structures in each of us prepares the ground for the much-needed transformation that humanity (and medicine) must undergo at this moment.  We need to assimilate the entirety of our human existence into our awareness.  With this integration, people will develop an integral worldview and a greater sense of well-being.  They will exhibit what Aaron Antonovsky called a “sense of coherence”, and will see the world as comprehensible, meaningful and manageable.  Culture (worldview) is nothing more than a collective shared meaning. 

Again, assessments are made to determine the primary structure (worldview) of the client and these become part of their LHAMP.

EXTERIOR INTEROBJECTIVE

This quadrant is about functional fit.  It is clear that a systems approach is needed to integrate alternative systems of medical practices with conventional medicine.  We use:

Each method is unique and we vary their use, depending on the needs of the client.

THE VALUE OF INTEGRAL HEALTH

We believe that as much as 90 percent of all illness can be addressed and taken care of by individuals who understand this new context for health.  The transition from our current mental structure to the emerging integral structure of consciousness will allow for this revolutionary means of healing.

The single most important lesson in life is that we are here to learn to grow into whole healthy human beings who are not merely clever or successful, but are also in touch with our deepest roots.  These roots are anchored in the ultimate reality itself.  The institution that is most suited to bring about this transformation, believe it or not, is the healthcare industry.

The details of the evolution of human consciousness, through the five distinct periods mentioned above, are well described by Gebser in his 1943 book The Ever Present Origin.  A summary of some of Gebser’s work can be found in the monograph, Remembering the Future, by Dr. Graham Simpson available at www.eternitymedicine.com.

These same stages must be integrated as part of our own psychological growth.  Of central importance for this ordering of consciousness and emergent sense of well-being is anamnesis, or the remembering of both our own personal and collective (species) psychohistorical development.  (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny).

The same context that defines the integral health model also delineates the transformation presently occurring in all our institutions, and underlies the deep ecological movement now underway, since we recognize that well people cannot exist on a sick planet.

We are now ready to expand this integral health model and invite both healthcare professionals and those interested in learning more about integral health to join us