Just The Good, The True, and The Beautiful: Healing Humanity

PDF Version for Printing: The Four Quadrants of Whole-Person Healing

I have decided to start with a simple chart today reflecting on a more authentic map of our human experience that can create health, imbalance, or disease. I pull knowledge from my Internal Medicine training, Plato, Ken Wilber, Julia Cameron and dozens more.

The average Western physician reduces the person to one quadrant (It), allows insurance reimbursement and big Pharma to control the length of your visit, reducing your testing to a mere glimpse of what it could be. Then they prescribe a cut, burn, and poison approach to treatment as if it is the only scientifically valid approach. Then they will blame you if you don’t respond.

You need a better map. A better guide on your personal journey. Better questions to create more comprehensive answers. Reductionism is the disease of the adolescent male mind. You can only find partial truths when you look at parts only. Western medicine is “Disintegrative medicine” in that you get a specialist for all your parts and that doctor wins when you die from a different part not involved in their specialty.

Integrative medicine treats people, not just diseases that so happen to have people. It has been radically suppressed to the point that the average consumer believes only drugs can solve their problems. In general, Western medicine has created the most successful eradicate the symptom/ “shoot the messenger” medicine, ever. When symptoms are resolved, the inquiry ends.

Responsibility means the ability to have a creative response to any situation. Everyone needs a map to see themselves more clearly incorporating the inductive approach as well as the reductive approach. We also must see the collective and not just the individual.

Healing happens when we honor all four dimensions of being—spirit, mind, body, and interconnectivity.

For us to be truly well takes an exploration of all four quadrants of our existence, The Interior (Left) and Exterior (Right) of the Individual (Top) and Collective (Bottom). When we feel well or ill, the questioning must come from all levels of our existence. Otherwise, our answers are fragmented and incomplete. Below is a way to implement four quadrant inquiry.

Integral Healing Self-Reflection Worksheet

Use this worksheet to reflect on your healing journey through all four quadrants of health. Symptoms/imbalances/diseases guide us as teachers, something to learn from, not just to lead us to a new drug or supplement as an eradicator of the symptom. If we do not learn from our teachers, we will forever have that symptom, or some variant of that symptom, until we learn the lesson.

What has been lacking is a self-directed path of inquiry as to why. Not found by way of Google, WebMD, or your favorite AI program. But a path to uniquely “your” experience of whatever imbalance presents. Please dig deep and truthfully.

💜 The Beautiful (I)

What are you feeling? What beliefs or dreams are active in you right now? What gives you meaning? Does my imbalance exist at the level of “All Senses for Healing.” Yes, our senses are “real,” but “I” gives meaning to them. Do I fill my visual fields with beauty? Do I have conscious play lists, music that inspires me, nature sounds that heal me? Do I have enough healing touch, whether sensual or sexual? Do I consciously balance essential oils and aromas, balance tastes in the kitchen?

💚 The Good (We)

Who are the key people in your healing journey? Do my ethics align with my actions? Is there someone or a specific group that I need to spend more or less time with? Do I practice empathy and compassion or have I lost my humanity to ancient/current belief systems?

💙 The True (It)

What are the facts of your health condition? What treatments or measurements are involved? Do I have a Functional Medicine practitioner, or Naturopathic Physician, or Oriental Medicine Doctor to assess my functionality? Do I follow the Foundations of Health?

🧡 The Just (Its)

How do your surroundings, work, money, or access to care affect your health? How do I heal at the level of systems? Do I care for the environment, the LGBTQ community, people who may not look like me, the political environment, involve myself with caring for “others” as yourself?

Visit yourself and these quadrants of healing often and enjoy the experience of being a whole person having a human experience.

Your Journey in Health & Healing,

Gary E. Foresman, MD.

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