As a holistic health practitioner, it is through the prism of holism that I am viewing Covid and its continually unfolding consequences.

Taking a holistic view of health requires looking at it in a way that is both deep and wide. And when I look both wide and deep at the Covid situation, I’m left asking two questions; how did we get here and how do we get away from here? Now fully ten months into the pandemic, we have been taken over, not so much by a virus, but by a level of personal dis-empowerment that is hard to fathom. Intermittently locked down by our government, we’ve been given no useful health advice, but instead required to adhere to life-changing policies based on maths over facts, whilst simultaneously overwhelmed by a news media broadcasting fear and death statistics.

The answer to how we got here lies in an unquestioning belief in the current health care paradigm. A health care model that for decades has overshadowed and neglected all other paradigms of healing. One that is rooted in fear of disease and not in the understanding that we have an innate healing power within each of us. It’s called the immune system.

This outdated fear-based paradigm has dictated the near-universal response to dealing with Covid. Wider humanitarian values have been traded for medical dogma. When did we become so disconnected? Humanity is part of the whole of planetary life, not separate from it? There is no ‘us and them’ in nature. We are one system of co-dependent and co-creative organisms sharing this Earth.

Modern medicine has made nature into the enemy, something to ‘kill’, ‘attack’ and ‘defeat’ at any cost. It’s a road that takes us far away from understanding the nature of true health and disease. We naturally co-exist with a plethora of fungi, bacteria and viruses; they, like us are part of the interconnected and diverse eco-system of life on planet Earth. They live within us and outside us, the micro-biome and the macro-biome, constant companions since the origin of man, playing a vital part in the evolution of our immune systems.

Covid-19 is no different in this respect, it is part of life too. Just as the weeds in a neglected garden are opportunistic, so are viruses. If we don’t regularly tend to our ‘soil’ (our internal and external biome) and keep it healthy, then viruses and infections will grab the opportunity to thrive. When the balance tips and a disease thrives, it’s a signal, a red flag that we need to bring our health and environment back into harmony. Yet, we reach for the weed killer rather tend to the soil. We need to understand that disease is a consequence, not a cause.

The bigger problem isn’t the virus, it is our underlying state of health, both individually and environmentally. Our system of health care isn’t healthy either. Like for us, the computer-generated model warned of it becoming overwhelmed. It is time to awaken to the truth that the NHS is chronically unhealthy and unsustainable. Covid is showing us this under a glaringly harsh spotlight. So let’s not miss the opportunity to really think, deep and wide, and transform our health care going forward.

Traditional and complementary medicines have so much to offer; some have been used for thousands of years, yet they are not included in our health system. Holistic health puts the emphasis on keeping the body healthy, supporting the whole person to heal. We should be given the choice of acupuncture over Aspirin. Freedom of choice and an all-embracing health system is the cure for the failing NHS. If we can just open our minds and understand the deep connection we have with all of nature, then we can see that the hubris of scientists using computer projections to understand disease for what it is; breathtakingly misguided and myopic. We have given our power away to artificial intelligence and the promise of artificial cures at the expense of self-empowerment and freedom of medical choice. 

The magic bullet culture has taken over from self-healing. People don’t trust in their incredible immune systems which have protected humankind since its emergence. That trust has been eroded by the Holy Grail of a medical solution in a pill or injection with the current rally cry of ‘only a vaccine can save us’. Really? Something manufactured in a lab is going to make us healthier? We already have the innate ability within us to protect against and overcome viruses. The vast majority of people who have been infected by Covid have self-healed. Yet, we have been ‘trained’ into believing that we don’t have the power to heal ourselves by an over-reliance on a system of medicine which has dominated the developed world for well over 100 years.

It’s time to move away from outdated beliefs around health and healing. We have so much greater self-healing powers than we know. We can be much more responsible for our health than we are. We can eat better, eat less, exercise more, develop a spiritual practice, connect with nature, and clean up the environment. We can become more self-empowered in our health choices and treatments.

Covid has brought with it an opportunity for change. We can create a new medical paradigm. This is the way out of here. To create a health care system which is inclusive, not exclusive. Let’s not only peer down the microscope at an experimental new vaccine, let’s also look at the success of vitamin C, zinc and selenium. Let’s welcome the success of traditional Chinese medicine and western herbalism. It is time to evolve and transform our system of medicine to be wider and deeper, inclusive of natural and traditional modalities, for us to support and embrace the healer within.  

To live life fully, we need to take greater personal responsibility for our health, support our immune system to thrive and in doing so become personally empowered again. This is truly living in the world, not hiding away. We have reached this choice point. What’s your choice?