What is holistic health?

What Is Holistic Health? And What Does It Mean to Be a Holistic Person?

More and more people are looking for alternatives to the allopathic model of medicine. I often hear people say they want a “holistic” doctor or “holistic care”, but what does that actually mean?

Is it simply adding herbs or supplements to your current lifestyle?
Is it swapping pharmaceuticals for natural remedies?
Or is holistic care something deeper than that?

The word holistic is defined as relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts.

That definition alone tells us something important. Holistic health is not just about what you take. It is about how you understand the human body, human health, and human experience as an interconnected whole. Not only how the parts of the body relate to one another, but how the body itself exists within larger systems: family systems, environmental systems, seasonal cycles, and the natural world itself.

To practice or seek holistic care requires a different way of seeing.

The difference between parts and people

In much of modern Western medicine, the body is treated as a collection of independent systems. One specialist for digestion, another for hormones, another for skin, another for mental health, and so on. Often there is little communication between them.

This model has undeniable strengths. Emergency medicine, surgery, trauma care, and acute infection management save lives every day. But when applied to chronic or recurring issues, this fragmented approach often falls short.

When the body is divided into parts, we lose sight of the person living inside it.

• 🧠 A headache becomes just a neurological issue

• 🧴 A skin condition becomes just a dermatological issue

• 🍽️ Digestive discomfort becomes just a gastrointestinal issue

What is often missing is the question:
Why is this happening in this person, at this point in their life?

Multiple people can experience the same symptom and arrive there through completely different paths. Treating those symptoms as identical often leads to temporary relief without lasting resolution.

Holistic health begins where fragmentation ends.

Two paradigms of care

At the root of this difference is not a disagreement about science, but a difference in worldview.

These are not competing moral positions. They are different lenses. And the lens you use determines what you are able to see.

Symptoms are not the problem. They are the message.

One of the most important shifts in holistic health is how symptoms are understood.

In a symptom-focused model, symptoms are treated as errors or malfunctions. The goal is to suppress, override, or eliminate them as quickly as possible. Relief becomes the finish line.

Holistic health takes a different approach.

Symptoms are communication. They are the body’s language. They are how the body expresses stress, imbalance, depletion, excess, or adaptation.

I'm not saying that symptoms should be ignored. Pain matters. Inflammation matters. Fatigue matters. Relief matters. But in holistic care, relief is not the end of the conversation. It is the beginning of understanding.

From a holistic perspective, symptoms are rarely random. They are adaptive responses. The body is doing the best it can with the information and resources it has available.

When symptoms are silenced without being understood, the message does not disappear. It often resurfaces somewhere else, or in a different form.

Holistic care asks different questions:

• 🔍 What is the body trying to compensate for?

• ⚖️ What has been missing, excessive, or overwhelming?

• 🔗 What systems are under strain and influencing each other?

• 🔁 What patterns keep repeating over time?

The body is a connected system, not a collection of failures

The human body is a living system made up of many interdependent subsystems. 

Digestion influences hormones. > Hormones influence skin. > Skin reflects immune activity. > Immune activity is shaped by sleep, stress, nourishment, and elimination.

When one system is strained, others adapt.

Because of this, the same outward symptom can arise from very different internal imbalances, depending on the person, their constitution, their environment, and what systems have been under the most pressure over time.

This is one of the main reasons symptom-based care so often falls short.

When we focus only on what is showing up, without asking why, we risk treating the visible expression while missing the deeper pattern that created it.

Natural systems teach us how health actually works

If we look to nature, this way of thinking becomes intuitive.

In ecosystems, nothing exists in isolation.

• 🌱 Soil health affects plant vitality

• 💧 Water flow affects nutrient distribution

• 🔥 Excess heat dries and damages landscapes

• 🪨 Stagnation leads to decay

The human body follows the same rules.

This is why holistic systems use elemental language. Not as metaphor, but as a way to describe observable forces that govern all living systems.

Elemental qualities in nature and the body

These qualities are not good or bad. They become problematic only when excessive, deficient, or stuck.

Health is not the absence of heat, cold, dryness, or movement. It is their appropriate balance.

The roots of health

Holistic health recognizes that certain foundations must be supported for balance to be possible. These are often described through elemental roots.

• 🌍 Earth relates to nourishment and physical vitality. Diet and digestion determine whether the body has the raw materials it needs to build, repair, and sustain itself.

• 💧 Water relates to hydration, oils, flow, and adaptability. It governs lubrication, elimination, hormonal signaling, and emotional buoyancy.

• 🌬️ Air relates to sleep, breathing, and mental clarity. Rest and respiration regulate the nervous system, hormones, and repair processes.

• 🔥 Fire relates to movement, metabolism, and transformation. Appropriate activity supports circulation, detoxification, and energy production.

• ✨ Ether relates to purpose, meaning, and direction. Humans require orientation and alignment. Chronic disconnection or burnout creates physiological stress over time.

These roots are not optional. When one or more is chronically unsupported, the body adapts, and symptoms often follow.

Why the same symptom can look completely different in different people

A symptom is not a diagnosis. It is an expression.

Fatigue, acne, dry skin, anxiety, bloating, headaches, and inflammation are shared languages the body uses when balance is disrupted upstream.

Those upstream drivers often include:

• digestive imbalance and impaired absorption

• hormonal dysregulation

• nutrient deficiencies

• blood sugar instability

• impaired elimination

• chronic stress and nervous system overload

Because these systems influence nearly every tissue in the body, imbalance in one area can surface in many different places.

😴 Fatigue may reflect poor sleep, inflammation, depletion, or nervous system exhaustion.
🧴 Skin issues may reflect digestion, hormones, elimination, stress, or barrier depletion.
😰 Anxiety may reflect psychological stress, but also blood sugar instability, mineral deficiency, or chronic sympathetic activation.

The symptom is the same. The internal terrain is not.

Skin as a reflection of the whole

Skin is not a separate system. It is a boundary organ. It reflects internal balance and internal strain.

Dryness may reflect dehydration, lipid deficiency, or depletion.
Inflammation may reflect excess heat or immune activation.
Congestion may reflect stagnation or impaired flow.
Sensitivity often reflects nervous system strain as much as topical irritation.

This is why topical treatments alone often help temporarily, or not at all. The skin is responding to internal conditions.

How holistic health informs holistic skincare and formulation

The same principles that guide holistic health guide thoughtful formulation.

Holistic skincare does not attempt to overpower the skin. It recognizes that skin, like the rest of the body, is adaptive and responsive.

Rather than forcing change, holistic formulation asks:

• 🧠 Is the skin depleted or overstimulated?

• 🔥 Is there excess heat, dryness, or stagnation?

• 🧴 Is the barrier compromised or overwhelmed?

• ⚖️ What does this skin need to restore balance on its own?

This is why restraint matters, gentleness matters and why more is not always better.

Just as herbs can be used allopathically or holistically, skincare can be formulated to either suppress symptoms or to support the skin’s innate function.

Holistic formulation respects natural laws. It works with the system rather than against it.

Holistic care looks upstream

Holistic health does not ask, “What do we use for this symptom?”

It asks:

• What systems influence this symptom?

• What has been chronically strained or under supported?

• Where is the body compensating?

• What patterns have been present over time?

This is why two people with the same symptom may require completely different support.

The symptom is the same.
The system state is not.

Holistic health is about relationship, not control

At its core, holistic health is about relationship.

• 🤍 Relationship with food

• 😴 Relationship with rest

• 🚶 Relationship with movement

• 🌿 Relationship with environment

• ✨ Relationship with meaning

• 🫶 Relationship with the body itself

Rather than forcing outcomes, holistic care works with natural rhythms and laws. It recognizes that the body is not broken.

It is responding.

When we understand those responses, we can meet them with clarity, gentleness, and respect.

That is what holistic health really means.