Master of Arts in Integrative Health and Healing The Graduate Institute

Overview

The Master of Arts Degree in Integrative Health and Healing is a 36-credit degree program which examines health, wellness, and illness from a holistic perspective. This approach involves comparing, connecting and integrating conventional, alternative and complementary approaches to promoting health and wellness as well as towards prevention and healing.

This program offers a unique and extraordinary opportunity to study the best of Eastern and Western medicine and psychology in a hands-on, interactive learning environment, providing not only up to date scientific knowledge but also experience and practice of many diagnostic and healing techniques focused on treating the whole person. This enables students who already are health professionals to learn and apply integrative models and methodologies that address health and wellness promotion and/or healing. In addition, the program also aims to expand the knowledge of non-medical “lay-learners” who choose to enroll in the program to develop a better understanding of integrative, alternative and complementary models and treatments and learn how to select and manage them according to their specific cases and needs.

The Master of Arts Degree program has three major components:

First Component:

Students are introduced to the historical origins and the theoretical and methodological foundations of the integrative holistic approach to health and wellness.

Special regard is given to the basic holistic assumptions that:

a) The human being is a complex system, comprised of several interrelated mental and physical sub-systems (cognitive, emotional, neural, endocrine, immune etc.). At the same time, humans are encompassed in social and natural supra-systems (family, society, ecosystem etc.), which influence the functioning of the sub-systems and are subsequently influenced by them, and

b) Physical, mental and social well-being are not separate factors but, on the contrary, are interdependent ones.

Second Component:

Students explore a wide variety of Eastern and Western medical and psychological concepts, theories and tools. In this part of the program, some of the approaches we examine are:

• Mind-Body Medicine
• Chinese Traditional Medicine
• Ayurvedic Medicine
• Acupuncture
• Homeopathy
• Integrative Psychotherapy
• Mindfulness-based Methodologies
• Yoga Postures
• Pranayama Breathing Techniques
• and many others.

Study emphasizes the need to gain knowledge in various modalities, to integrate diverse perspectives on how the body functions, and to develop a holistic medical model in order to achieve health and wellness. The program also provides explanations, experiences, and practices of many diagnostic and healing techniques focused to treat the whole person, thus enabling students to design and apply personalized models of health, wellness and (eventually) healing.

Third Component:

In the third part of the program, students learn why and how the integrative health and healing approach is spreading across our community, due to both its effectiveness (in many cases much higher than that of conventional approach) and its way of managing the relationship with patients (taking a much more human and empathetic approach instead of the conventional impersonal approach). Regarding effectiveness, students will learn that by treating the health of the whole patient – physical, mental, interpersonal and transpersonal/spiritual and not just the immediate symptoms of a specific organ or dimension -- the efficacy of integrated holistic treatments is more long-lasting and with a lower regression rate. Regarding the relations between health professionals and patients, students will learn that the official biomedical model - considering body, mind, spirit, society, and environment as separated factors - entrusts the care of the body to doctors, the care of the mind and the emotions to counselors and psychologists, and the care of the spirit to ministers and priests. This results in no one taking care of the whole person and on the contrary considers the patient as a soul-less machine. Today more and more people are tired of being considered as bodies separate from minds separate from the spirit and are speaking up about having their most elementary rights denied to them as soon as they enter a hospital. They instead want to be considered as whole human beings and treated as such. In this vein, students will learn practical psycho-social tools for managing communication and relationships with clients/patients.

It's important to note that many holistic and naturopathic treatments which have been traditionally considered un-reimbursable out-of-pocket expenses are now being offered within traditional medical establishments as a part of their overall care strategy. The integrative approach does not necessarily imply a higher financial cost of giving or receiving care, but it does open up opportunities for practitioners and patients to explore any and all modalities which may benefit them.