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The Sphere of Health

Oneness in health promotes a model of healing in which personal relationships and emotions, as well as meaning and belief systems, are viewed as fundamental points of connection between body, mind, spirit, society, and nature. Oneness medicine embraces the recognition that human beings possess emotional, spiritual, and relational dimensions that are essential in the diagnosis and treatment of disease and the cultivation of wellness.

Like in matters of science, some fundamental questions that arise around questions of health are: who is the healer and who is the healed? Science now confirms that the two are never separate. The scientist is never separate from that which he/she observes. Inevitably these questions also deal with aspects of power, and unfortunately, with this, also harm.

Oneness in health is an opportunity to consider what the statement “All healing is self-healing,” and what the 2,000 year old Hippocratic Oath, “Do no harm to your patients,” really means. Those who developed the oath would have realized that of all the power that a physician has (much of which is undoubtedly beneficial and positive), there is also the unprecedented capacity to harm a person, legally. It was also understood that there were two ways to do harm: sins of commission and sins of omission. A physician can harm a patient with what he knows; but even more so, with what he does not know.

On the positive side, the aim of considering Oneness in health, healing and medicine is to utilize as comprehensive an approach as possible in treating any illness — while, of course, remaining fully cognizant of the many economic and pragmatic realities and constraints. Although Oneness in health recognizes and includes the pioneering “holistic,” “allopathic,” “alternative,” and “complementary” approaches, Oneness health/medicine is much wider in its reach and more grounded in empirical research, and more effectively related to comprehensive models of human psychology and consciousness. Oneness includes the enduring and effective elements of both complementary and conventional medicine, while launching something completely new.

In the carving of a new Oneness health/medicine model, typical traditional challenges and dilemmas are considered:

• Desired level of involvement of the physician with his/her patient. For years medical students have been taught that it is not good to get emotionally involved with their patients as a sincere attempt to bring an effective, dispassionate and scientific approach to healing an illness.
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• The mind/body challenge that deals with the question that humans have some sort of consciousness and free will, while physical science proceeds as if reality is a closed, materialistic and physical system. The conventional medical approach more or less forces a physician to treat a patient as if the patient were essentially a biophysical or material system with one physical intervention after another physical intervention. This happens while neither the patient nor the doctor perceive themselves as something purely physical.
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• The question of the effectiveness of conventional medicine in the absence of patient compliance.
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• The major dilemma of where to locate the illness – the entity itself, as well as its cause. This question is especially relevant in the field of mental health.