13 Advantages Of A Holistic Perspective (2024)

True well being comes from a combination of your love and contribution to what you do each day, your feeling of security, the quality of your relationships and vibrancy of your physical health.

The medical approach sees these areas separately, however in reality they’re completely intertwined and cannot be separated.

Read on to learn about the advantages of a holistic perspective.

Let’s dive right into it.

Holistic Perspective
Photo by S Migaj on Unsplash

1. Expanded Point Of View

Holistic living gives us more skill and capacity from which to take action. We have a greater capacity for compassion, acceptance, understanding, strategic thinking and tolerance. 

There are more options available for us to consider because we can see more of the options that already exist.

2. Both The Whole And The Parts

When you have the whole picture of something, you have many perspectives (these are the parts of the whole).

This gives you a greater understanding of each of the perspectives and you understand how they make up the whole.

3. Emotional Health

Part of holistic health deals with human emotions. To be emotionally healthy is to be in total control of your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

It may not mean always being happy but being aware of emotions. Sadness, stress or anxiety are threats to emotional wellbeing, and the inability to cope with all these affects the health of an individual.

Emotional wellness is obtainable and plays a significant role in the life of an individual, in terms of productivity and performance.

4. Mental Wellness

Mental health is a state of wellbeing in which you realize your abilities, know how to cope with life stress, can work productively and are able to contribute to the community. 

Mental wellness is an important part of holistic health and is obtainable through understanding what’s involved in life balancing.

5. Physical Wellness

A state of physical wellbeing is the ability to perform in various sports sectors, or occupation and daily activities.

The focus here is proper nutrition, exercise and rest. These are essential to building endurance, flexibility, strength and fitness.

For holistic health, it’s important to be mindful that what you put into the body is life giving. Tobacco use, drug abuse, and excessive alcohol consumption are habits to be avoided.

6. Spiritual Wellness

A personal activity involving values and beliefs can provide purpose in your life, give you guidance and serve as a check for morals and behavior.

Meditation, opening to the capacity of love and forgiveness, prayer, and positive thinking are tools required for any person to achieve higher spiritual potentials.

These tools are antidotes to the very nature of depression, anxiety, and other factors threatening wellness in general.

7. Being Aware

Holistic decision making encourages us to be aware of our actions and their impact on the whole person.

It ensures that we take responsibility and accept accountability for the emotional, social and behavioral decisions we make and empowers us to be part of the ongoing process of change.

Here we have A Step by Step Guide to Making Better Decisions to help.

8. Improved Health

Most doctors in a medical setting tell you that serious health problems such as heart disease or kidney disease can’t be corrected through holistic health practices.

There are many practitioners and patients who claim their health has improved drastically as a result of holistic living.

9. Holistic Learning

Education of any complex subject matter with a holistic perspective is concerned with the development of every person’s intellectual, emotional, social, physical, artistic, creative and spiritual potential.

It seeks to engage students in the teaching/learning process and encourages personal and collective responsibility.

Holism
Photo by Alex Lvrs on Unsplash

10. Holistic Health Benefits

A holistic approach means health care for the entire body, not just parts or certain aspects of an individual’s life. This is why holism holds great appeal.

  • Improved habits and lifestyle changes
  • A fortified body that can withstand the onset of disease more easily
  • An improvement of the natural healing abilities of the body
  • The prevention of various diseases and disorders
  • Reduced stress and anxiety levels
  • The lessening of depression symptoms
  • A thirst for happy and healthy living

11. Early Childhood

Holistic approaches to child development and education recognise the connectedness of mind, body and spirit of the person at a young age.

When early education and childcare workers take a holistic approach, they support the children’s physical, personal, social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, as well as their environment and cognitive aspects of learning.

12. Speech And Language

This aspect of development is an important focus for children’s holistic development.

Through the development of speech and language, children will learn to socialise and express their preferences and needs, and be able to make some sense of their world.

13. Psychology

The holistic approach allows researchers to assess multiple factors that might contribute to a psychological problem. Rather than simply focusing on one small part of an issue, researchers can instead focus on all of the elements that may play a role. 

This approach to treatment can ultimately help them find solutions addressing all the contributing internal and external factors that might influence the health care of an individual.

This theory is sometimes more effective than focusing on smaller components individually.

What Is Holistic Perspective?

The reality is that wellbeing isn’t just about being happy, wealthy/successful or in good physical health. 

So many factors make up who you actually are.

Holistic refers to the way your entire life is interconnected with other people, places, thoughts, feelings, and experiences, which constantly influence who you are and who you become.

The holistic approach focuses on how your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs link to one another to provide your human experience.

Traditional medicine has been very effective at treating certain ailments, but over time, it’s become clear that it doesn’t solve the complex aspects that have influenced those ailments.

American psychiatrist, Dr. George Engel first expressed the need for a new medical model in 1977 suggesting that physicians not divide reality by separating the body from the emotional makeup and adopt a biopsychosocial model.

His theory was that it was important to have the perspective that resists isolation and instead examine all areas of life, not just their illness.

Related: Ways To Live A Holistic Lifestyle Without Regrets

What Is Holistic Perspective Point Of View?

The Theory of Holistic Perspective is designed to provide a framework for understanding reality using the three concepts of:

  1. Existence, immaterial as well as material existences
  1. Interaction, reflexive and relativistic interactions
  1. Interrelation, how we relate to ourselves, each other and all around us

It is an open and inclusive model, a theory of everything.

A holistic point of view gives you a chance for acceptance, tolerance and compassion for others, especially those who don’t share your same point of view.

That means that you can have useful conversations with people who don’t think like you do. 

This is especially important in working with teams. If the entire team thinks alike, there are many solutions the group cannot and will not ever see.

If you have a diverse team, where each of the individuals is unique and truly has a unique point of view – each of the various points of view will open up different pathways – and different pathways mean the potential for different action and therefore different and more creative outcomes.

What Is Holistic Perspective Example?

One area of wellbeing can actually be detrimental and lead to feelings of frustration and even failure. 

A good holistic perspective example of this is weight loss. We are quick to buy into diet and exercise programmes that promise to help us lose weight but will likely give up if they conflict with other areas of our lives. So the diet approach does not offer holistic health since it doesn’t treat the whole person.

Another example, in the US, where politics are very much dividing people right now, having a holistic political view could mean that you might understand the various positions and platforms that US and global citizens hold.

Then you may be able to have compassion for the people who hold those positions, understanding how the various parts are necessary to each other and how they all make up the whole.

Even if you don’t agree with various positions, when you fully understand their view, you can understand why, from their point of view, that position makes sense.

Learn how to Outthink Your Thoughts and see other perspectives.

Holistic
Photo by Mishal Ibrahim on Unsplash

What Is The Importance Of Holistic Perspective?

The importance of Holistic Perspective is that it helps us understand human nature. It helps us become more self aware beings able to live together in an integrated system.

The Holistic Perspective brings great value in terms of taking social factors into consideration. 

We communicate and understand better what is being considered and discussed and what characteristics each one assigns to the object of discussion.

How we see, interpret and react to our environment is different from person to person, species to species and situation to situation.

Our awareness level and information processing are context-dependent.

Look at these TIPS How To Change The Story You Tell Yourself and gain clearer understanding.

What Is Holistic Perspective In Philosophy?

A holistic approach means to provide support that looks at the whole person, not just their mental health needs.

It is an ontological map. Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of existence and reality.

Support should also consider their physical, emotional, social and spiritual wellbeing. A holistic approach focusses on a person’s wellness and not just their illness or condition.

Example Of Holistic Perspective In Philosophy

The theory of holistic perspective describes different kinds of interactions, and important aspects of how we as self-aware beings perceive reality.

The definition of holistic living is relating to the idea that things should be studied as a whole and not just as a sum of their parts.

In the process of doing philosophy, it is critical to have a holistic point of view—the perception of looking at all aspects of a situation first before making a conclusion.

Partial points of view only promote limited knowledge on the situation. This leads to wrong conclusions in philosophy.

Holistic Perspective Characteristics

Having a holistic view is that all aspects of people’s needs, psychological, physical and social, should be taken into account and seen as a whole.

A holistic approach is usually an all encompassing approach. So say within psychology a clinician might take a multi- disciplinary approach, working across paradigms.

Here are five key elements to consider when developing a holistic learning and development function:

  1. Create a learning and development strategy
  2. Enable a culture of continuous learning and development
  3. Align with talent management
  4. Deploy a learning and development infrastructure
  5. Leverage learning management technology

Importance Of Holistic Perspective

The theory of holistic perspective helps us understand what is going on and what we really mean or refer to when we interact and communicate with each other.

We can understand what we mean when we speak of or think about different things.

Holism in general terms (whether in science, sociology, economics, linguistics or philosophy) is the idea that all the properties of a given system cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone, but the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave.

Example Of Holistic Perspective And Partial Point Of View

Holistic thinking refers to a perspective that considers large-scale patterns in systems. Looking at the “big picture” when describing and analyzing a situation or problem.

Partial thinking focuses on specific separate aspects of a situation.

As “The Parable of Blind Men and the Elephant” teaches, a holistic perspective states that a limited standpoint does not possess the monopoly of truth.

Instead, while one’s personal take about something may be true, it may not be the absolute truth, for others’ take on the same reality may also be true.

A partial perspective theory, in contrast, focuses on just some aspects of the whole in such a way that the whole is overlooked or discounted.

Any holistic treatment takes your whole reality and environment into consideration. If you’ve already begun your journey into holistic wellness, or it’s new to you, always reach out to accredited professionals.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, I invite you to forward it to people who you feel could benefit.

Related Posts

13 Transformational Vocabulary Tips – How Words Can Change You Life

Improv Coaches – 17 Best Improv Techniques To Be A More Effective Coach 

12 Insights in Neurocoaching – Complete Guide

About The Author

Bijan Kholghi is a certified life coach with the Milton Erickson Institute Heidelberg (Germany). He helps clients and couples reach breakthroughs in their lives by changing subconscious patterns. His solution-oriented approach is based on Systemic- and Hypnotherapy.

Bijan