From mind to body:
Creating lasting changes
with a holistic therapist

Therapy has changed a lot over the last years and continues to do so.

From going to a professional expert that’s diagnosing and treating you accordingly we are moving more towards therapy that’s uniquely tailored to each client

– this is exactly what a holistic therapist does. 

What is a holistic therapist?

In holistic therapy there is nothing broken about you that needs to be fixed but your system needs to reshift into balance. And in order to do so your body, mind AND spirit need to be addressed.

A holistic therapist holds space for you as a whole person, a person beyond your symptoms, a person that is always part of something bigger.

Holistic therapists use a variety of approaches, these include a somatic approach, working with nervous system dysregulation and inner child healing, which we will have a closer look at now.

What sets a holistic therapist apart from a traditional one and how does this support lasting change?

  • Maybe you’ve been to therapy for years, got to know all your patterns and know your past like a story you’ve read over and over again – still somehow you feel stuck. 

  • You have talk after talk, process after process, often you feel exhausted and you wonder.. What’s the point in all of this?

Does therapy really help if I’m not feeling like I’m making lasting changes in my daily life? 

Maybe what you need is a different approach.
A holistic approach, taking you from mind to body.

You don’t create a different life through going over the same issues over and over again. 

You create a different life through feeling in your body what you once couldn’t process, then letting it move through, then reinforcing that change with specific action steps in your daily life.

Sometimes it helps to look at the past story behind it (most of us need our head to feel safe), and often the story isn’t necessary at all. 

This is exactly why a holistic therapist combines different methods and adapts them to your needs. 

Healing is a complex process. 

You are a complex being with lots of different parts and you are also not separate from your environment but part of something bigger. 

There is no one size fits all. 

A holistic therapist is always aware of that.

Defining what you really need: a holistic therapist or coaching?

This can bring up another question: Do you actually need therapy or is coaching the better option for you? Again, a complex situation that needs to be looked at individually. 

 

Generally speaking coaching is a bit more practical and more future focused than therapy which often goes deeper and focuses more on processing what couldn’t be processed in the past. Then again, it really depends on the therapist and coach. 

 

I am a trained holistic psychotherapist. And I chose to incorporate more coaching elements in my work because in my training I felt like the “actually-creating-a-new-reality-and-consciously-making-new-decisions-part” was missing. Still, therapeutic elements always merge into my containers. Often there is no clear boundary between the two.

What’s way more important than if someone offers therapy or coaching is whether they are the right match for you.

Ultimately the relationship between therapist / coach and their client (you) is the factor that really determines whether you can create lasting changes. 

A question you can ask yourself: Do you feel safe enough with that person so that you can trust them to guide you when something difficult comes up?

3 holistic healing methods that bring lasting changes

As I said before, lasting change is all about moving from just understanding it in your head to actually letting it land in your whole system. The following healing methods do exactly that:

1. A somatic approach

Your body is the vehicle that carries all your past. 

  • It remembers how you felt when you were five years old and noone around you could handle your emotions. 
  • It also remembers when you were too young to use words or were in your mothers womb and for whatever reason didn’t feel safe and welcome.

All this past imprinting is stored in your body, as tension, physical symptoms and emotions. The way forward leads you back into communication with your body and requires a somatic approach. 

Learning to listen to what your body actually wants to tell you. Making space for whatever got stuck in there to finally move through. 

 

In order to do that you need a compassionate other (therapist or coach) that can hold space for you. So that this time you feel safe enough to allow this old stuff to show itself to you and through that integrate.

2. Working with nervous system dysregulation

In your body lives your nervous system and it is your nervous system that decides if a situation is safe to you or not.

  • Your nervous system makes that decision based on your past experiences and without your conscious awareness. 
  • Before you can think a thought your nervous system is already reacting. 
  • When your nervous system feels like you don’t feel safe – again, based on your past experience, this does not have to be realistic to your logical brain – it pulls you into survival mode (= nervous system dysregulation).

In survival mode you don’t feel safe and you can not take new steps because
uncertainty and growth = unsafety.

This means in order for you to make lasting changes you need to get to know your nervous system and the survival strategies you go into (we all have them!) so you can come out of nervous system dysregulation. 

Only then can you recognise when you are in nervous system dysregulation and find ways to move out of survival and towards the changes you actually want.

3. Inner child healing

In your nervous system lives your inner child. Or let’s say your inner children because there are definitely a lot more than one of them. They are all these younger versions of you throughout different ages. 

 

They had experiences they weren’t able to process and then got stuck at that age. This wasn’t their fault, they needed a stable outside environment in order to process things because as children we can’t do this on our own. So we go into survival mode to be able to move on. 

 

These little children, often young and hurt, make themselves known to you through acting out. You can recognize them when you react to something in a way that feels a bit childish and over active.

Your job is to get to know your inner children.

To build up a relationship with them as the grown up person you are now and then hold space for the pain and burdens they are carrying so they loose their charge on you. 

 

Once you are being the loving adult you needed when you were younger – lasting change becomes possible.

Living in a holistic way: From the therapy room into your daily life

Hopefully by now you have a clearer understanding of what a holistic therapist is and how holistic therapy (or coaching) can support you to make lasting change. 

 

Holistic is a word that is used a lot these days. I think our real work is making sure that holistic – attending to body, mind and spirit in ways that actually support you as a whole being – is something that doesn’t stay in the therapy (or coaching) room. 

 

In the room we can get a first glimpse of what living in a holistic way actually means. 

We are then offered the opportunity to carry this into our daily lives. 

-> It’s this daily life integration that a holistic therapist should support you with so that over time you don’t depend on them to provide a container for you. Instead you can take more and more conscious steps on your own. 

 

Letting your body, mind and spirit inform your daily decisions and infuse your day with the aliveness you came here to experience. 

This is me, Helena, holistic therapist and coach.

Hi, I’m Helena, holistic coach and therapist.

I support sensitive women to unstuck themselves and take their place in the world: through thought provoking blog articles, intimate guidance in my 1:1 containers and community healing in my group programmes.