Holistic Approach

A holistic counseling approach treats a client’s emotional, spiritual, physical, and cognitive challenges to help them develop the skills and tools to move forward with their lives. Holistic counseling works to address and improve a client’s overall level of well-being and promotes fulfillment and happiness.

A holistic approach to counseling helps clients heal by taking the entire human being and their life experiences into consideration for assessment and treatment purposes.

Three Major Components of Holistic Therapy:

• Mental/psychological: This includes looking at one’s level of stress, emotional regulation, cognitive processing, and relationships.
• Physical: One’s physical health includes diet, nutrition, sleep hygiene, and exercise.
• Spiritual: Holistic approaches take into consideration the spiritual side of life -this does not mean religion. Spiritual health focuses on connecting to your inner soul and/or something greater than yourself such as the universe, God, or nature.

Holistic approaches often include an aspect of mindfulness -helping clients to accept themselves as they are in the moment- to help them develop a deeper understanding of themselves. This self-awareness supports the development of self-acceptance and self-esteem. There are a number of different approaches that can be used to help individuals including bodywork strategies that work to promote the mind/body connection. Research has supported certain Bodywork approaches including yoga, breathwork, massage, and acupuncture.

Holistic therapy can be used to address several different mental health challenges and can be beneficial in the treatment of:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Emotional Regulation
• Stress
• Somatic ailments
• Trauma

Holistic approaches seek to help clients break out of destructive habits which leads them to enjoying a new and improved state of spiritual, mental, and physical health. This approach is often non-pathologizing meaning they work to connect patients to their inherent health and well-being.