Posted on

Elliott Dacher on Integral Health

I’m still savoring Elliot Dacher‘s excellent new book, Aware, Awake, Alive. Obviously, I’m interested in the whole notion of Integral Health in general, and Dacher has perhaps done more than anyone to articulate just what an integral vision of health means, distinguishing an integral approach from both conventional medicine and complimentary/alternative (CAM) approaches. Here’s how Dacher puts it in Aware Awake Alive:

The word “integral” means unitary or one. It refers to a far-reaching health and well-being that addresses all of the important aspects of our lives. There are four components of an integral health. They correspond to the four central aspects of our life. The first two are highly personal — our physical and mental well-being. The second two relate to our interaction with others — our interpersonal relationships and our relationship to the larger culture and planetary community. […] A concern for each of these [interconnected] aspects of life is essential if we are to resist and recover from disease, optimize well-being and reach towards our full human potential.

Dacher points out that conventional medical science does indeed acknowledge the fact — supported by both research and common sense — that multiple factors impact our health. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard folks who embrace some vision of holistic health crow on about how modern medicine is completely ignorant of the well-established connections between physical, psychological and cultural aspects of health and illness. One need only talk to the medical professionals in one’s local area to be disabused of this simplistic notion. Certainly in my experience at least, the vast majority of healthcare professionals are quite aware of the complexities involved in maintaining health and treating illness. The problem, as Dacher describes it, is not the lack of information supporting a multidimensional view of health, but rather “that our singular focus on biology keeps us from implementing this knowledge.”

The main point that Dacher stresses again and again in the book, and the main thing that distinguishes an integral approach to health from both conventional and CAM approaches, is that inner development is both the basis for and the driving force toward the attainment of integral health. Most CAM approaches promote alternative remedies, treatments and therapies, which is fine as far as it diversifies and optimizes the toolkit that healthcare practitioners have at their disposal. However, what characterizes a truly integral approach is:

the turn inward and reliance on our inner capacities, rather than on remedies and therapies. The reliance is on ourselves rather than on practitioners. So [the important distinction is] between a variation on biological medicine, which merely increases our medical tool kit, and an authentic vision of integral health that results from inner development.

This vision of an integral health resulting from a focus on inner development is precisely what is described in detail in both Aware, Alive, Awake and in Dacher’s previous book, Integral Health. I highly recommend both of these books. Perhaps some day soon I’ll actually finish reading Aware, Alive, Awake in its entirety so that I can write a proper review!

Posted on

Elliot Dacher on the process of entanglement with mental activity

I’m savoring an excellent book right now: Aware, Awake, Alive by Elliot Dacher. Dacher’s previous book, Integral Health, outlines and describes one of the main models of Integral Health that has inspired my work on this site. I will do a proper review of Aware, Awake, Alive once I’ve had time to read and process it all. For now I’d just like to share my enthusiasm for the book, and to post a snippet for discussion.

I’ve read many, many books about mindfulness and meditation practices, but Dacher has a way of framing and explaining things that I find to be particularly lucid and helpful. Here’s how he explains the process of becoming entangled with mental activity:

As soon as we are enmeshed in mental activity we further elaborate it by superimposing upon it old perspectives and stories stored in memory. In this way we turn simple, unadorned, and brief mental movements into complex mental events which are largely imaginary, and more old than new. What was once a momentary neurological blip appears to assume a life of its own.

I like how Dacher uses the term “mental movement” to talk generally about all aspects of automatic mental activity (thoughts, feelings, mental images, and sensory impressions). This concept fits very nicely with the general theory of Somatics that Thomas Hanna has articulated in the context of his work in neuromuscular re-education (I’ve been long interested in how somatics, psychology, and spirituality can be integrated in a single model of personal transformation). Dacher goes on to explain how enmeshment in mental activity continues to hijack our attention and cloud our minds:

Once we elaborate a mental movement we then add feelings and emotions […]. That leads to a proliferation of further mental activity which includes fear, anxiety, anger, desire, aversion, and so on. Then, we act out this personalized and imaginary story in the outer world through our speech and actions. A small mental blip, which would naturally come and go, becomes our life, and the life that is actually happening in the moment is lost.

Dacher offers several perspectives and practices that help us to undermine this habit of mental entanglement, and more generally he articulates a vision of optimal health and human flourishing that, while based in ancient wisdom teachings, is also framed in terms that make perfect sense in the context of modern healthcare. For whatever reason, I find Dacher’s vision to be particularly powerful and compelling as I continue to engage with various integral health practices. I’ll dive into all this in much more detail once I finish the book!