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Ancient baths glyph dragon age3/29/2024 If we look only at one level at a time, we might be misled. In viewing the whole person this way, we can determine whether someone is moving toward or away from wellness, and whether a given therapeutic intervention is beneficial or not. For example, there may be a case in which a minor brain issue is less significant than a severe digestive disorder. Keep in mind that the above examples are only guidelines. The point of all this is Vithoulkas’s assertion that a thorough health assessment should examine and rank expressions of imbalance on all these levels. Further down the list are impaired communication, milder confusion, poor memory, lack of spiritual connection, and difficulty focusing. In these cases an individual’s “personhood” is absent. On the spiritual / mental plane, topping the list are impairments of consciousness, complete mental confusion, and delusion. Lower down are moderate to mild anger, worry, irritability, boredom, and dissatisfaction. Severe anxiety could potentially squelch one person’s ability to function while another individual might be able to manage it while continuing to work and socialize. Major depressive disorder would be at or near the top of the list. This is a harder list to make, since it’s less about the form the disorder takes and more about how much a given individual is affected. On the emotional level, expressions of emotional dysfunction are ranked by their overall impact on the person. Of course, there’s some flexibility to this list. Lower still are the urinary and reproductive systems, the muscular and skeletal systems, and the skin. (Cardiovascular disease tops the list of causes of death in the U.S.)įurther down the list are the digestive and respiratory systems, which can usually sustain considerable injury without compromising the whole organism. We also have only one heart, and when it stops working, that’s the end. We have only one brain, and if it’s damaged the consequences to our ability to get joy and meaning out of life are often dire. On the physical level, we could put issues of the brain and heart at the top of the list. Looking at the systems and functions in each layer, we can rank problems or impairments by how much they would affect the overall wellness of the organism. Next, Vithoulkas roughly defines a second hierarchy within each layer. Mainstream medicine has focused almost exclusively on this level, which has been of great benefit in the treatment of physical illness, but hasn’t made as much progress on understanding how the spiritual, mental, and emotional aspects work and integrate with the physical. Third and most exterior is the physical level – the body. Positive emotions nourish us and serve our community negative emotions (when chronic) diminish our health and are degrading to our community. Feelings can be broadly classified as positive – drawing us toward a state of happiness and creating a sense of unification with the world – and negative – drawing us toward a state of unhappiness and producing a sense of isolation and separation from the world. Second and slightly more superficial is the emotional plane, which is our vehicle for the experience and expression of emotions as well as the receptor of emotion from our environment. Vithoulkas says this third quality is of greatest importance. There are three qualities present when this level is healthy: (1) clarity (2) rationality, coherence, and logical sequence (3) creative service for the good of others and oneself. It’s through this aspect that consciousness enters the being, we register what’s happening in and around us, we understand that we are alive, and we are able to choose and communicate and evolve. The central and most vital of these is the mental / spiritual layer, which, he says, is the true essence of a person. We’ve been hearing about the mind-body connection and the triad of body-mind-spirit for decades, so at first glance this may not seem new, but keep reading for Vithoulkas’s unique take on it. First is a hierarchy of layers (which overlap to some extent): (1) the mental / spiritual layer, (2) the emotional layer, and (3) the physical layer. Vithoulkas explains that we can think of humans as having a certain hierarchy in the way we’re constructed. I’d like to offer a brief synopsis of it. One of the most interesting parts was his description of our different “layers,” how they’re related, and what this means in the progression and recovery from disease. It was so eye-opening that it inspired my path into medicine. Around the age of 20, I got a book called The Science of Homeopathy by a Greek homeopath named George Vithoulkas.
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