Strength in Systems: Holistic Health and Wellness

Holos Therapeutics is all about the holistic nature of health and wellness. In fact, "health" derives from the Old English term hælþ, which means "wholeness; being whole, sound or well." Literally everything in our being is interconnected: mind, body, thought, movement, emotion, sensation.

My approach views the human person as a multidimensional cognitive system, leaving behind the obsolete, simplistic, and inaccurate "mind-body duality." Our best sciences tell us that everything "mental" is always embodied, and everything "physical" is imbued with mind. To generate and sustain health, therefore, we must engage our whole being, and not just fragmented aspects of ourselves.

Enter: The Fantastic Fascia

The key to working with your whole, multidimensional self is the fascia. Long neglected by anatomists, physiologists, and psychologists, the fascia has finally received the attention is deserves. Research over the past few decades has revealed that fascia is simultaneously:

• our primary sensory organ (it contains more nerve density than even the skin, tongue, and eyes!)
• our primary organ of form and movement (with muscle, which is technically part of fascia)
• the central system for perceptual and emotional integration
• the body's inclusive communication and signaling network

To help people engage and work with fascia in this inclusive, integrating, systematic manner, I've developed a method I call "Interotelligence." The term speaks to the fact that human intelligence is quite literally embodied. Mind isn't something ethereal and abstract, somehow separate from yet connected to a "merely physical" body. As I detailed in my doctoral dissertation, the concepts "mind" and "body" refer to the same unified phenomenon. Instead of this simplistic duality, cognition is a complex, dynamic, multidimensional phenomenon emerging from the interaction of a diverse set of energetic patterns that constitute embodied life forms. And it is the fascia that centrally helps us synthesize and experience this complex of energy flows as a unified Self: this is the core of interoception. Thus, to be authentically human and thoroughly healthy, we must learn to ground and express our being through the unique intelligence manifest in the fascial system.

How Interotelligence Applies to the Three Paths

Interotelligence is the practice of cultivating your innate strength and an adaptive, functional wholeness by learning to work with, and optimize, the intelligence of the fascial system. Whether you want to develop physical fitness on any level (strength, endurance, balance, coordination, stability, etc.); or you want to resolve or work through challenging psychological experiences (depression, anxiety, ADHD, OCD, grief, insomnia, compulsive/addictive behaviors); or you want to deepen and expand the soulful-spiritual dimensions of your life, this is most effectively and directly accomplished by working with the various energy systems that are all synthesized through the fascia.

This is because in all three paths within Holos Therapeutics, the goals of each path are best met when you work on the systematic levels of being.

• Somatic Strength: We are strongest and most functionally adaptive when we engage the whole body in any instance of physical movement and exertion. Isolating individual muscles or limited muscle groups might build a physique that looks good on social media, but this doesn't generate functional, adaptive, sustainable strength and physical health. To create practical, dynamic ability, we must establish a solid foundation in "fascial fitness," which is the basis of all movement, structure, form, sensation, and perception.
• Mind Medicine: virtually all the typical symptoms of what the pathologizing medical industrial complex calls "mental illness" or "mental disorders" are actually signs that some one or multiple aspects of your complex cognitive system are disintegrated, or simply "out of whack." Restoring holistic energetic integration and alignment through somatic-based practices resolves these symptoms by addressing their root cause, in contrast to standard methods of psychotherapy that often provide only temporary relief by managing symptoms but not altering the underlying neurophysiological conditions manifesting as the unpleasant symptoms.
• Soulcraft: in this approach, "soul" is defined as an ecological mode of being/belonging, or simply eco-centric being as opposed to ego-centric existence. To live ecologically requires having a robust sense of the fundamental and ultimate interconnection and independence of all forms of life - it means living as and through a network of relations, not just an isolated, independent entity. Fascia is where we incorporate this sense of interconnection of inner-outer, individual-collective, self-other, singular-multiple. It is the basis of all the forms of cognition that we need to develop an ecological consciousness and ways of being (e.g., heart-centered cognition, reciprocal action and dialogue, mythopoetic imagination, etc.).