Wholing: The Embodied Integration of Meaning as Purpose in Illness and Disease and its Potential for Healing and Transformation is the title of my PhD project at Alef Trust.
How many people or patients nowadays suffering from physical illness go by without ever inquiring into the reason or purpose of their condition in their lives? In other words, how many physically ill people or health practitioners never even consider this as a valuable means or opportunity? That is, how many of us are “trapped in”, or tuned into, the mundane framework of “the condition has happened to me, and it might just as well have happened to someone else on the street! I have no cause or interrelation to it. I am separate or independent from it, or my body merely has or portrays a dysfunction – not me!”
Many, many people go by in this way and never face or take the opportunity to explore their illness and the potential healing effect this may have on the psychological and emotional aspects/counterparts of the body and the individual as a whole, such as their coping with it, or the integration of its presence or struggle in one’s life.
My PhD research or orientation takes this a step further, stating or assuming the position that exploring illness in this way and realising its underlying and interconnected purpose in one’s life, or its meaning, may lead to physiological shifts, reorganisation, or healing.
Rooted in a slightly different worldview or background of spiritual “all-is-consciousness” perspectives (physiology, mind, and emotion as different densities of consciousness), unified by quantum-physics-informed worldviews of subject–object / observer–observed inseparability (that is, what is known is inseparable from the knower and conjoined as the knowing — its mere witnessing already affecting it); with, as a further backbone, participatory frameworks in which participation continuously and inevitably changes what is participated with or perceived (being inseparable from the known, the way I engage with, direct, or respond to it can further radically alter or change it in reflection of my engagement/participation); and, as an outer skirt, biosemiotic perspectives where meaning organises mind, body, and physiology (for example, a placebo as a meaning-based sign or orientation of receiving treatment altering physiology correspondingly, as much as a nocebo — the anticipation of a negative effect of surgery or treatment). All of these approaches converge on a unified experiential field in which physiology, emotion, meaning, mind, and body are inseparable and mutually influencing.
Illness, then — happening in me, in my consciousness, as a part of me or a reflection of me (one that I can engage with and uncover or discover further through my conscious engagement — as human consciousness is often compartmentalized into conscious and unconscious parts) — has or holds a purpose for its happening, presence, or occurrence; one that is inherently interrelated to, or with, the self in which it appears. Its unfoldment, realisation, understanding, or purpose can be unlocked and granted through conscious participation, disentanglement, and embodiment, with attentive care and listening.
My research contextualizes such an approach through the body-psychotherapeutic method of Focusing, taking the position that exploring illness psychospiritually, in an embodied way, and integrating its inherent meaning or purpose for appearance or happening in one’s life, may promote physiological healing or a reorganisation of the self (as an interrelated whole or system comprised of psychological, emotional, physiological, and even external situational factors, etc.) as part of such a process – its moments of psychospiritual, embodied insight specifically, and their cumulative integrative effect across time or sessions.
When we are inseparable agents or reflections of a worldview that we both are and know, why wouldn’t we try, or why wouldn’t such an approach work? If the capacity to directly target, engage, and explore – to bring to conscious attention any aspect of one’s present experience, that one both is and knows – exists, in this case the experience of physical illness, inherent psychospiritual and physiological processes may occur.
In other words, illness is, or in this view can serve as, a psychospiritual catalyst for change and reorganisation of one’s life according to a greater, inherent purpose – life’s intention (transpersonal psychology). Like a seed planted or catalysing that change and reorganisation, its embodied engagement and the realisation of its inherent purpose may fulfil and allow an inherent psychospiritual–physiological process to occur, whatever that may be for an individual, acknowledging that for each person that is something different, as each is one’s own and has a different purpose in and as illness and its part in one’s life as a greater whole (process theory; the tree and its fruits are already inherent in the seed, and only require the right set of conditions to bloom, open up, and reveal their transparency).
For a more personal take; my approach is rooted, among other things, in the loss of my father to cancer at an early age, and in the aching heart and longing for a better tomorrow and better ways to treat and heal patients and people in need. Specifically, in ways that are more natural and heart-based, closer to, or inherent in, already present human nature’s healing capacities, as opposed to toxic and damaging chemotherapeutic approaches.
Moreover, it was my spiritual journey – which, you could say, my early experience further enhanced, made salient, or prompted (the search for meaning beyond) – that drew me toward, and collected, a wide range or spectrum of experiences, bringing out from them all that is interrelated and significant to this cause/purpose or orientation (amongst others), through the process of my maturation, interest, natural curiosity, and passion.
To help and to offer a helping hand to those in and/or times of crisis. To show there is a new way, that there is more than the general way that we know at present. And that this way is already present or inherent in our experience just as much as the other, but this time within a new or radically different worldview. In other words, how we know the world or ourselves may radically alter, promote, or change our approach to treatment and/or illness – its perception and regulation. I will add more on this in one of my upcoming or future posts!
So, prompting an evidence-based study that is a collection of many to come, that may help change policies in the future, support the integration of such approaches into conventional medical care as complementary, or, if nothing else, further substantiate itself in the field so that many people in need, or those who feel or have a calling for, or are in search of such more person-tailored, potentially evidence-based, and alternative approaches, can find and receive such treatment and care at their right time/moment when most needed, and that it may, with great hope, dedication and admiration – be beneficial.
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