What does “holistic” mean anyway?

HolisticSurvival.comWe’ll be honest – in the beginning of this website there were those who warned us away from including the word “holistic” in the name. To summarize the general sentiment, “Holistic Survival,” they warned, “is going to make everyone think you’re a bunch of whack job granola heads.” In our opinion, it’s unfortunate that the word has been hijacked to be associated with the fringe element of survivalism.

What we do is not fringy at all. It’s about protecting the people, places, and profits you care about and who could be against that? Let’s look at the word itself. Holistic was a concept first used in the medical field to address the idea that patients were being shortchanged by physicians who only focused on the most glaring issue at hand when treating a patient. Holistic treatment prefers the idea that all aspects of a person should be taken into account during treatment – psychological, physical, social – because it is the rare case indeed that a medical problem is confined completely to the obvious.

So it is with Holistic Survival. Sure it’s important to be able to continue eating, breathing, living, and have the means to protect yourself but that should not be the entire thrust of survival. How about planning for the survival of the money you’ve accumulated over your life and finding ways to protect and increase it even when the economy is in tatters? Or educating yourself on what legitimate threats to your personal way of life might arise?

It’s not all about barricading yourself and family in a shotgun shack in Idaho and daring someone to knock on your door. Holistic Survival is about living, continuing to REALLY live and thrive, in the face of adversity.

The Holistic Survival Team

Flickr / Marshall Astor – Food Pornographer