Some people who I have spoken to about Holistic Living think it just means eating your veggies and going to the gym, sort of just leading a pretty healthy life. But it's more than that. The word "holistic" is a cross between "whole" and "holy." Why "whole?" Or we could ask: what is not whole and needs to be put together again? Life consists of both the invisible and the visible, the spiritual and the material, soul/mind and body, thought and matter. These last few centuries we have been living as if the spiritual or invisible part of life (our emotions, beliefs, feelings, spirituality) did not exist. And we felt proud of it, proud of being "rational" and "analytical," proud of focusing on the "real" stuff we can see, touch, feel, smell and hear, not that wishy washy airy-fairy emotional stuff no one can see and that's not really "real."

Turns out, though, that that stuff we tended to push under the rug is pretty important. Without it we mistreat and rape nature (because we think it's separate from us), we make war (because we think "they" are different from us), we don't vote (because we think it makes no difference), we treat animals worse than things (because we think they are not sentient beings), we buy as cheap as possible (because we don't think of the people behind the product, i.e. Bangladesh) - or maybe we don't even think at all.

Holistic means putting the two sides together again, the way they belong, the way they are, the way we forgot they always were.