The Association for Holistic Health: A Historical Perspective Interview with JoAnn Axton, RN, PhD candidate, President and Founding Member, AHH by Gail Seymour, MSA, Communications Vice-President, AHH, dated Feb. 16, 2003. © AHH logo and articles. All rights reserved.

"In 1975 we had a conference called The Physician of the Future where the 900 participants designed a model holistic health center. I did an item analysis of the responses, and although there were innovative techniques and modalities, we hadn't bothered to define what the well person is or what the end result was to be. So I became interested in what the well person was and is - body, mind and spirit. I also became interested in what the difference was between holistic and traditional medicine and what the role of a holistic practitioner vs. a traditional physician would be."

"Basically, with traditional (medicine), I would go to my doctor on Friday, I would check my body in and I would say, "Give me a lube job and I'll be back to pick it up on Monday." With holistic (medicine), a doctor is a resource. I might go to the doctor and he would say, "You're obese and you'll die if you don't get on a diet and lose some weight." And I can then say, "I don't want to go on a diet." And that's that. Or I can ask for his assistance in terms of knowledge, awareness or skill building. He might, for example, tell me that the research shows that a vegetarian diet for children doesn't produce as healthy a child as having a small amount of fish and chicken in the diet every month. He might refer me to a support group where I could gain some skills in eating healthy and understanding the motivators that stand in the way of me developing a healthy body for myself - the pros and the cons.

Holistic health is more than prevention.
It's also growth and achieving one's optimal
or peak performance, moving from ego
status, where we are today, to ego ideal,
where we would like to be.

• It's about values and having our values and our behaviors match up. This is part of the spiritual aspect.
• It's about physical detoxification and alimentation.
• It's about assessment. In fact, my business card had a stethoscope for the Heath Optimizing Institute as a symbol of the importance of proper assessment.
• It's based upon doing sound research, contrary to what some people have attributed to holistic health, to find the least invasive way to achieve the most optimum results.
  
• It's directed toward maintaining and improving existing health or wellness. The emphasis is on health vs. disease.
  
• It emphasizes the need for prevention to increase the need for crisis intervention.
  
• It's concerned with the individual as a dynamic changing being desirous of growth.
  
• It's also concerned with healing and restoration to a state of balance. For example, research that I did for my doctorate in biorhythms show that our bodies are involved with a flow. Circadian rhythms are entrained to 24 hours. If a person were to "free flow", one individual's rhythms might be every 28 hours and another's might be every 20 hours. Research has shown that it's not light vs. dark or activity vs. rest that entrains us to 24 hours - it's socialization. One person's rhythms are compacted, another person's are expanded. 17-hydroxy corticosteroid levels typically begin to rise at 3 AM in a person and peak at 6 AM, meaning they would be a good surgical risk for 7 AM surgery, since their body would then be at its peak physiologically. If, however, your 17-hydroxy corticosteroid levels didn't peak until 9 AM, you might be better off working the 9 AM to 6 PM shift, or even an evening shift, when your alertness level and your physical performance level would be at their peak. Hormones and enzymes within our bodies flow and ebb with the time of day. Why is this important? Scientists tested mice with toxic doses of medicine and found that if the medicine were given at one time of day they would die. But if it was given at another time of day, they might get sick but they wouldn't die. Likewise, if a food, nutrient or drug is adjusted to the time of day, it can be more fully utilized in a beneficial or less toxic way to the body. Temperature, for example, normally thought to be normal at 98.6 degrees actually fluctuates normally during the day with a low around 4 AM (the time when one is more apt to make errors in judgment) and peaks at 4 PM, with variations in between. Therefore, holistic health recognizes that health is on a continuum and is a matter of balance. It is a process of harmonizing, synthesizing, integrating, incorporating, detoxifying, and vitalizing and is concerned with this restoration to a state of balance.
• It identifies the holistic health practitioner as a client resource - providing information, skill and awareness experiences to the client primarily - and as a healthcare deliverer secondarily. It respects free agency, the right of individuals to make their own choices, be they enhancing or non-enhancing. It encourages the individual to assume responsibility for his choices.
  
• It respects individuality: the right of the individual to grow at his own pace and to have his own awareness, values, attitudes and behaviors. Environment, lifestyle, social responsibility and relationships are taken into consideration when creating optimum health.
  
• Holistic health promotes positive attitudes, including love, harmony, responsibility, self-acceptance, forgiveness, healing, growth and a sense of meaning and purpose.
  
• It's open to a variety of methods for finding the highest level at which balance can be restored, utilizing traditional and intuitive methods. It recognizes what works.
  
• It is more interested in the correction of causal factors of imbalance than in symptoms amelioration (elimination). While it does not rule out the use of surgical intervention and medication, preference is given to the most natural and gentle forms of healing available, after evaluating time and effectiveness factors.
• It is systematic in approach. The practice of holistic health includes a comprehensive assessment and diagnosis of states of balance and imbalance, strengths and weaknesses, a goal oriented plan and evaluation of results in terms of effectiveness.
  
• It believes in utilization of scientific research to more fully test out, evaluate and substantiate or invalidate new approaches that appear to be working.
  
• It is democratic and tolerant, rather than authoritarian. It respects free expression. It is open to a variety of approaches and methods. It utilizes the group process. Example: The techniques and modalities that were utilized in the above-referenced conference by the 900 participants will continually be expanding. They're only limited to the creativity and further research of mankind. There will always be new and better ways of doing things.
  
• It also means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If, for example, you build a team to accomplish wealth, the input of all the participants as a group would expand upon the input of each individual and would encourage group members, expand awareness, motivate, and in the end, achievement would be greater for the group than for any one individual operating totally on his or her own. A word of caution, however: The quality circles advocated in Japan, which are achieved by building group consensus, tend to stifle individual creativity in favor of a mediocre group consensus.
  
• Holistic health recognizes unique talents and ideas that often rise above group consensus. The holistic health practitioner does not see himself as a complete self-contained resource center, but rather believes in integration, synthesis, coordination and cooperation.
  
• The giving of loving care and concern is the basis of delivering holistic health care.
  
• The results of holistic health is an even higher expression of potential, fulfillment and joy.

As a result of the initial conference in 1975, the Association for Holistic Health, a non-profit organization, was formed. AHH conducted annual conferences for the next 10-plus years, utilizing experts, nationally and internationally, and studying the movement throughout the world. AHH's education committee, of which I was chairperson, wrote the first core curriculum in holistic health, which later found itself in the medical schools. Health Optimizing Institutes were created with the emphasis on such areas as anti-aging and encouraging individuals to tailor their wellness programs to their individual needs and desires in terms of diagnostic tools, food supplement and nutrients. Example: one can now obtain a CAT scan, MRI or any number of diagnostic tests, without a physician referral, from any number of centers at reasonable prices, and have these interpreted by a physician practicing holistically.

Things have changed drastically since the 70s. Most physicians pride themselves on implementing many of these holistic practices within their care delivery. In addition, modern science now has enabled us to make major headways in disease exploration, including mapping the human genome. One can now look more closely at the DNA construction of the particular individual and locate gene placement that may by altered to prevent or correct disease or to foster wellness and health.

My wish list includes the following: (1) I would like to see a user-friendly format for research results in which the layperson would be able to assess the validity and results of a particular study, and (2) that these studies would be compiled in a meaningful way under the disease entities i.e., cancer, stroke, arthritis, etc. that they address. (3) I would like to see the public have access to these key individuals, with detailed information about what their approaches entail in terms of performance (what is required of their clients in terms of a program for recovery and wellness), costs, geographic locations of these various treatment programs and the results (mortality, cures, problems encountered, good documentation). Some of these programs are in the US and are being considered for substantial grants. Others are international.

In the mid-80s the Health Optimizing Institute attempted to establish a destination resort hotel, conference center and Health Optimizing Institute in New Zealand. Unfortunately, the project lacked sufficient funding and never materialized. The time is now ripe for this to take place, not in New Zealand but in Portugal, where potential funding is already in place. (This will be elaborated upon in a later interview). Transformation 2000, a project of the Health Optimizing Institute, was developed as a bridge to the future by AHH. Its goal is international cooperation in addressing global concerns such as environmental issues, health care, education, producing nutritional food and providing for basic needs of the world inhabitants, the sharing of scientific discovery, space exploration and sharing of culture. One project entails addressing the three actions that would make the biggest impact for good in each area, coordinating efforts worldwide of such magnitude that there would be project completion.

Moving from international scope to domestic within the boundaries of our own country, there is currently a movement to establish centers in key cities with each center developing its unique focus. For example, the center Palm Beach County, Florida plans to focus on a model for developing community within a transient area. Other major cities also under consideration are Boston and Atlanta. An obtainable goal is to have a center in each county of each state in the United States within the next five years.

As you can see, holistic health is a dynamic growing entity that encompasses both individual society and the world as a whole. It involves physical well being as well as mental, emotional, spiritual, societal and environmental well being. It invites all who would wish to make a contribution to step forward."

To get in touch with JoAnn Axton, President,(2003-08), please
write to Gail Seymour, Communications Vice-President.

The newly-elected president (2009) is Cheryl Harris Geer, M.D.

Return to Articles | Return to Just Relax... (home)

The Association for Holistic Health: A Historical Perspective - Part II The Foundation of the Healthcare of the Future - An interview with David J. Harris, Founder AHH - Holistic Life Magazine - Fall, 1981 © AHH logo and articles. All rights reserved.