Holistic Practitioners & Scope of Practice: What We Actually Do

When people hear that I work in the holistic health space, they often assume I’m anti-doctor or even anti-vaccine. On the contrary, I would never discourage anyone from seeking emergency care or preventative conventional care, whether that’s antibiotics used appropriately and not overused, IV drips, blood transfusions or highly necessary surgeries. What I don’t believe in is treating the body like a machine that can simply be patched up, while ignoring the whole person and overriding the body’s natural healing mechanisms over a long period of time.

A mother once came to me deeply worried about taking her child in for a vaccination. She had heard the rumors about a link to autism and felt torn between wanting to protect her child from illness and fearing what might happen after the shot. Her pediatrician reassured her that vaccines were safe and routine, but left it at that. She was left anxious, pressured, and uncertain, carrying questions that never felt fully answered.

When she came to me, I didn’t tell her what choice to make. I didn’t dismiss her fears, and I didn’t feed them either. What I did was listen. Together we traced her child’s patterns, how certain foods led to fatigue or irritability, how stress and the environment in the household showed up in her son’s immunity, digestion and sleep, and how the child’s body had been signaling areas that needed extra support. We explored terrain based nutrition, herbs, and lifestyle adjustments to strengthen resilience, so that if she chose vaccination, her child’s body would be more prepared to handle it smoothly.

This kind of preparation is just as important as the choice itself. If a child, even an adult, goes into a vaccination with low grade inflammation, a dysregulated nervous system, high toxic load and weakened reserves, the body may struggle more with processing the intervention. This can amplify side effects, prolong recovery, or leave the person feeling “off” for longer than expected because It’s not the vaccine “causing illness” per se, but rather the body showing how strained it already is when asked to mount a response. So if those reserves are strengthened ahead of time, the experience is often less disruptive and recovery goes more smoothly. That’s the essence of holistic practice, honoring the whole person and guiding them back to balance.

So What Is It That We Do Exactly?

There’s a cultural problem that needs unpacking. Our system often glorifies medical intervention as the only “real” medicine, while dismissing the slow, layered work of holistic healing as optional or even foolish. I find that extremely unfair, especially for those of us, myself included, who have studied deeply, trained rigorously, and dedicated our lives to understanding the terrain of the human body in ways that extend far beyond symptom suppression.

What we do is about education, guidance, and support. This includes teaching clients how whole foods, hydration, and eating habits influence health; sharing recipes, seasonal strategies, and food-as-medicine wisdom that make daily choices more nourishing; and introducing the traditional uses of herbs as supportive allies, with guidance on how to safely integrate them into daily life. It also means helping people set realistic goals around sleep, stress relief, and gentle movement because these foundations of health are often where true healing begins, and when neglected, imbalance usually follows.

Beyond that, we may guide simple practices like breathwork, grounding, and relaxation as everyday tools for self-care, while also helping clients prepare thoughtful questions for their doctors, understand lab results more deeply, and feel confident as they navigate their health journey. Unfortunately, not all who call themselves holistic are truly practicing in a holistic way. Some practitioners unintentionally mirror the allopathic model by simply swapping pharmaceuticals for supplements or herbs, trying to treat symptoms with quick fixes (symptom chasing) instead of addressing the deeper imbalances beneath them. While this approach may provide temporary relief, it misses the heart of holistic medicine: looking at the whole person, the underlying patterns, and the root terrain that shapes our health.

Holistic practitioners with knowledge of traditional medicine stay true to the roots of holistic care. Practitioners like myself don’t just look at isolated symptoms, we pay attention to the patterns that lie beneath them. These patterns might show up as stagnation, dryness, tension, and other subtle patterns that shape how the body functions day to day. Rather than chasing symptoms, we explore ways to bring balance back into the system by matching remedies, foods, and practices that shift those underlying patterns. This approach honors the body’s natural intelligence and supports long-term healing, not just temporary relief. If you want to learn more about this approach, read this blog post on the physiological terrain patterns.

While much of holistic health is about education, balance, and prevention, some herbs can also be potent, even lifesaving, when used wisely. For clients who are interested, I can provide education on how herbs have been traditionally used in this way, not as a replacement for emergency services, but as a “just in case” option when those services are not available. I also understand why many people, especially those without herbal education may feel uncertain about using herbs in this way because herbs have garnered a reputation as “weak”, “unreliable” or merely “secondary” to pharmaceutical drugs. In reality, those well-versed in herbal medicine know just how powerful herbs can be and that confidence comes from proper knowledge, experience and respect for the plants.

Wrapping Up

Holistic medicine is not about rejecting doctors or denying the value of modern interventions. It’s about filling in the spaces that medicine was never designed to cover and listening deeply, preparing the body for resilience, and supporting recovery when answers are limited.

Whether it’s supporting someone through post-vaccine fatigue, restoring someone’s energy after an illness, helping a new mother regain balance after birth, teaching how to use food as restorative medicine, teaching an elder how to strengthen their vitality as they age, helping a client notice how stress shows up in their digestion, guiding better sleep rhythms, teaching children to feel grounded in their bodies, or offering herbal wisdom that’s been trusted for generations, holistic practice always returns to honoring the whole person.

My hope is that more people will recognize holistic medicine as a vital partner to conventional care, one that restores context, dignity, and long-term balance. Because the body is not a machine to be patched, it’s a living, intelligent system that deserves to be honored and supported at every stage of health.