Healing, Health & Wholeness: The Etymological Link & Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy
Are Healing, Health, & Wholeness Related?
In conversation with a friend and men’s circle facilitator and therapist I began exploring the origins of the words wholeness, healing and health.
So, what do these words have in common?
A connection between these words traces back through to Proto-Germanic roots. As found on the website Etymonline.com
The Etymological Link:
Health (n.) comes from the Old English word help, which literally meant “wholeness, a being whole, sound, or well.” It was formed from the adjective, related to “whole” plus an abstract noun suffix.
⦁ Heal (v.) comes from the Old English verb haelan, meaning “to cure, save, make whole, sound and well.” The underlying literal meaning is to “make whole”.
⦁Whole (adj.) ultimately derives from the Old English word hal, (meaning “entire, unhurt, uninjured, safe, healthy, healed, sound). While the spelling was later influenced by the Old Norse word heill, its meaning is a direct reflection of the ancient concept.
Health as wholeness is not a modern innovation, but is encoded within the very history and origin of the word itself. To truly heal, in this sense, is to return to a state of wholeness.
I personally am intrigued by what it means to relate with the wholeness of the human body? And what does it mean to explore this sense of wholeness, where health is not left out?
Similar to the modalities of Family Constellations and Internal Family Systems which focus on psychological wellbeing, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is a somatic (body-based) approach. Commonly referred to as a bottom-up approach. Where-as psychological approaches are often referred to as top-down approaches.
Here, in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, we are acknowledging the body as a kind of somatic cosmology. In this way, therapists approach the whole entirety of the person, rather than just the symptoms alone.
Which does so much to assist in developing a greater sense of ease, even when health conditions are present.
Life experiences and a journey to health can sometimes be a bumpy. In-fact, health and it’s arrival through a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy approach is supported with receptivity and appreciation of a persons wholeness.
Naturally, a skilled therapist acts as a reference for health. A brilliant resource particularly when health conditions surface that may make it challenging to feel or sense healing and feel an embodied sense of our wholeness.
During these times, it’s not uncommon to encounter discomfort, tension, hesitancy and resistance. Which, if they accumulate and are left unattended can destabilise the bodies immune systems and capacities for healthy functioning.
A skilled therapist attentively listens and assist the clients whole body to recognise and familiarise with what operates and animates the body, what the tingling sensation that channel health feel like.
Eventually, disturbances settle, and the animating principles of life become accessible.
By cultivating a relationship with the body and its innate intelligence, we get a sense of this wholeness, that can remarkably reveal how health is actually our nature.
In this way Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapists relate with a clients body in a way that allows whatever needs to be acknowledged, heard, felt and witnessed.
Client’s frequently get a sense of being unconditionally held on such a deep level that the body (and mind) begin to open and express health as tension, disturbances and patterns can are released when the body feels safe.
