The integral framework holds that healing and wholeness are intimately interconnected. As the etymology suggests, the Greek word holos is the common root of the terms: healing, health and wholeness.
- Human beings have a natural right to, and an innate potential for, wholeness; and urge toward wholeness is the primary motive in human life;
- This essential wholeness is already present at the innermost core of the human psyche and our evolutionary challenge is to manifest this wholeness in our embodies existence;
- Healing is the process of restoration of wholeness
- Reality is more than a mental construction–it is non-dual and multidimensional
- Mentally constructed categories and labels about mental health or illness are not always capable of representing the more complex reality of lived experience. To fully understand human developmental growth and its impediments, one must take into account the uniqueness of each individual
- Mental disorders are not ultimately separable from physical, emotional, and spiritual problems; therefore, diagnoses and interventions must take into account the whole person; often symptoms manifested at one level have roots originating at another level.
- Psychological disorders may be multi-faceted and their causes are not always reducible to physical (genetic or biological/biochemical) factors.
- We need to have viable models for understanding human health and wholeness, rather than the current clinical models that tend to use only pathological categories for clinical assessment and treatment.
Excerpt from: Shirazi, B. (2011). Integral Education: Founding vidions and principles. Integral Review, 7(1), 4-10.