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(I might have gone a little overboard with this elaboration. I probably should have put this in the blog. Absolutely feel free to move right along to something else.) 

Holistic is one of those words you see all over the place, especially in the health and wellness space. It gets used so often and with so many different contexts that for many it becomes essentially meaningless and they just skim over it looking for the words that might actually tell them something useful. I do have two specific aspects that I am referencing when I use the word, and I will elaborate here, as I consider them essential in my understanding of human nature and the human experience.

The first aspect of holism that I emphasize is that of considering everyone and everything as mutually interactive parts of larger systems. For example, a common occurrence in therapy is for a child to be brought in as the identified patient following some behavior problems and declining grades at school. An assessment focused on the child often elicits symptoms consistent with a diagnosis of depression, and it is likely accurate that the child is depressed. If the assessment is expanded to the family system however, it is sometimes discovered that the parents are fighting frequently and perhaps mentioning divorce, or perhaps abusing alcohol, in which case the child's depression may be seen in a different light. And if the assessment is further expanded to the community, it may be discovered that one of the parents has lost a job due to a factory closing or other corporate downsizing, and has been unable to find another job that utilizes their skills and experience, so now their income is drastically reduced and the family is at risk of food and housing insecurity. This is a highly simplified example, but it illustrates the necessity of taking a broader view in order to more accurately determine the root causes of a problem or symptom, and which interventions are likely to actually make the biggest difference.

The second aspect of holism that I consider essential to understand again requires a change in perspective, this time at the level of a paradigm shift. Much of science, philosophy and medicine has long been built upon the machine paradigm, the notion that everything is made of separate parts that fit and work together. This concept became supercharged with the industrial revolution and the now ubiquitous presence of the machine. While a great deal of progress was made and continues to be made with this paradigm, it is ultimately reductionist, and is especially inadequate for understanding a human being. One of the simplest and most reductionist ideas about human beings was foisted upon the world by French Philosopher, Rene Descartes, back in the 17th century. Simple as it was, Descartes concept of the mind and body as completely separate things ("mind-body dualism") continues to be profoundly and harmfully influential to this day. The stigma of mental illness, as just one example, is largely driven by the assumption that the mind, and therefore mental and emotional dysfunctions are different from physical conditions. Quite often, this false distinction goes so far as to suggest some illness is "real", and other illness is "in your head".  The mind and the body are the same thing. This brings us to the paradigm shift, from the machine paradigm to the hologram paradigm. The hologram paradigm has several aspects and applications, but here I want to highlight the fact that a glass cube (or any shape) containing a hologram of, let's say a horse, if broken, will now contain a hologram of the same whole horse in each piece of glass. This is a counterintuitive aspect of holograms, and many people are skeptical at first that this can be true.  A machine is made of discreet parts, as are most physical objects we are routinely exposed to. A hologram contains the whole within every part, which turns out to be a much better paradigm for studying and understanding the true, complex structure and function of the whole human mind/body. The genetic code for an entire human, for example, exists in each individual cell. Each memory is stored throughout the brain, rather than in a single specific location as we used to believe. Much of what we experience as mental or emotional processes, including aspects of intuition and even the will to live come from outside of the brain. There is even serious scientific conjecture that our entire universe may operate like a hologram. So when I think or talk about "everything being connected", I am not peddling New Age woo, but taking into account a deep, complex aspect of reality that I consider essential to understanding and improving the experience of being human.