Forming Bonds
Landscape
Private-Public Partnerships Boosting Behavioral Health Access - Behavioral Health Business
Psychedelic Made Me Feel Safe for the First Time - Oprah Daily
Is ‘Integration’ Always the Right Term? - Ecstatic Integration
Higher Acuity, AI, & Ozempic: The Challenges Facing the Eating Disorder Industry in 2024 - Behavioral Health Business
Lesson
The Behavioral Health & Holistic Wellness Ecosystem
The primary mission of Flourish is to work with a diversity of behavioral health and holistic wellness providers on their growth and goals. This involves helping providers market and convey their visions to clientele currently receiving similar services, across modalities. It is inevitable that these services will over lap - clients receiving one modality will transition to another to another, creating a recurring ecosystem of referrals within these modalities.
This graphic is intended to provide a visual of the relatedness of each of these modalities, illustrating how they all fit and can serve the mind, body, and spirit. This is intended to provide a general understanding of where these modalities usually land - there certainly can be cases made for different locations for some of these practices within this graphic.
And at the center of it all, we have Meditation.
Below The Ecosystem, we provide definitions for each of the modalities displayed.
Definitions
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) - a short-term form of psychotherapy based on the idea that the way someone thinks and feels affects the way he or she behaves. The goal of treatment is to help clients identify, challenge, and change maladaptive thought patterns in order to change their responses to difficult situations.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) - a structured program of psychotherapy with a strong educational component designed to provide skills for managing intense emotions and negotiating social relationships. The “dialectic” in dialectical behavior therapy is an acknowledgment that real life is complex, and health is not a static thing but an ongoing process hammered out through a continuous Socratic dialogue with the self and others.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) - a psychotherapy technique designed to relieve the distress associated with disturbing memories. It involves recalling a specific troublesome experience while following a side-to-side visual stimulus delivered by the therapist. The resulting lateral eye movements are thought to help reduce the emotional charge of the memory so that the experience can be safely discussed, digested, and stripped of the power to trigger anxiety and avoidance.
Breathwork - encompasses a range of breathing exercises designed to enhance physical, spiritual and mental health. Breathwork works to clear the lungs, thereby improving lung capacity and respiration. It is also thought to oxygenate the blood, thereby energizing and healing the body's cells. Mentally, breathwork promotes focus and concentration.
Sound Healing - a powerful therapy that combines different healing sounds, music, and sound healing instruments to improve our multidimensional well-being by creating a beautiful experience where all layers of our luminous energy field (body, mind, soul, spirit) are awakened gently and lovingly. Sound Healing is highly effective at triggering our relaxation response, which counters the many symptoms caused by chronic stress, while helping to balance our whole being.
Somatic Therapy - a form of body-centered therapy that looks at the connection of mind and body and uses both psychotherapy and physical therapies for holistic healing. In addition to talk therapy, somatic therapy practitioners use mind-body exercises and other physical techniques to help release the pent-up tension that negatively affects a patient’s physical and emotional wellbeing.
Massage Therapy - involves rubbing and kneading the soft tissues of the body. The soft tissues include muscle, connective tissue, tendons, ligaments and skin. The massage therapist varies the amount of pressure and movement. Massage is part of integrative medicine. Medical centers often offer it with standard treatment. It can be used for a wide range of medical conditions.
Reiki - a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing. It is administered by "laying on hands" and is based on the idea that an unseen "life force energy" flows through us and is what causes us to be alive. If one's "life force energy" is low, then we are more likely to get sick or feel stress, and if it is high, we are more capable of being happy and healthy.
Meditation - considered the foundation of most healing practices, Meditation is a practice that involves focusing or clearing your mind using a combination of mental and physical techniques. Depending on the type of meditation you choose, you can meditate to relax, reduce anxiety and stress, and more. Some people even use meditation to help them improve their health, such as using it to help adapt to the challenges of quitting tobacco products.
Transpersonal Therapy - addresses mental, physical, social, emotional, creative, and intellectual needs, with an emphasis on the role of a healthy spirit in healing. Transpersonal therapy integrates spiritual traditions and rituals into modern psychology. It emphasizes positive influences and role models rather than concentrating on negative experiences. The holistic treatment is based on the idea that humans are more than just their mind and body, but are also composed of intangible, or transcendent, factors that make up the whole person.
Life Coaching - a type of wellness professional who helps people make progress in their lives in order to attain greater fulfillment. Life coaches aid their clients in improving their relationships, careers, and day-to-day lives. Life coaches can help you clarify your goals, identify the obstacles holding you back, and then come up with strategies for overcoming each obstacle.
Microdosing - involves taking very small doses of some popular psychedelic medicines. Importantly, this is a very small dose of the psychedelic that is not enough to produce a “trip” or experiences often associated with these medicines. Proponents of microdosing report that taking these psychedelics in small, measured doses benefits the mind, making them think more clearly or feel more open throughout the day.
Psychedelic Assisted Therapy - a type of healing practice that involves ingesting a psychedelic substance as part of a psychotherapeutic process. In psychedelic therapy, the use of psychedelics is typically combined with talk therapy. A range of consciousness-altering psychedelic medicines are currently being used or researched for therapeutic purposes in both clinical and nonclinical settings. Some are derived from plants, like psilocybin (mushrooms), DMT, mescaline, ayahuasca, and ibogaine. Others — including ketamine, MDMA, and LSD — are chemical compounds. While Indigenous communities have used psychedelics in therapeutic and religious settings for centuries, psychedelic therapy is relatively new in Western clinical settings.
Plant Medicine Ceremonies - a designated space and container for the group facilitation of sacred plant medicine healing. These ceremonies typically include natural psychedelic medicines such as ayahuasca, mescaline, psilocybin, ibogaine, kambo/bufo, among others. Ceremonies are multi-day immersive experiences, led by a group of facilitators, typically with a lead shaman/medicine man/woman. These containers honor ancient traditions while incorporating variance depending on the healers and needs of the group.
Life
Hearing the soft hum of my refrigerator. Feeling my heat kick in. Being back in my apartment. After seeing some friends.
There is a beauty, a rush, a chemical descent after returning home from socializing. Grabbing coffee in the afternoon. Sharing dinner. Trying a new bar. Seeing a concert or making multiple stops.
There are many versions of this which lead back to the simple dynamic we all face - our external and internal relationships.
Fostering a strong internal relationship means holding boundaries. It means being okay with being by yourself, having nothing to do. Having nothing to do AND allowing yourself to actually do nothing. It is also how you speak to yourself. The tones you use. The support or feedback you may give yourself - warranted or not. It’s the stories we tell ourselves, about life and our expectations.
We all treat ourselves a little harsh. It’s natural to be harsher on ourselves than we are to others. I think the goal is to be a little less harsh on ourselves. However we can measure that …
Having our strong internal relationship allows us to get more from our external relationships. My favorite nights are when I return home from a night out with friends or even at a work conference. I let the energy settle down. I kick off my shoes, peel off my socks, and lay down on my back for the first time in hours. I allow the blood to rush to the different parts of my body. I lay in gratitude, as I smile and laugh at what was said and the energy that was exchanged.
I let these memories play in my head like a movie.
A movie only I can watch.