Have you ever heard of holistic medicine? Maybe? Well, I knew nothing about it until I teamed up with Illinois State freshman Ryan Wexler. He told me so much about the details of this healing method, and I guess you could say that I’m pretty much an expert now.
Ryan has an ultimate goal of bringing holistic medicine as a new major to the ISU campus, and he has strategically set a plan to work his way to that point. Before telling you about all of the hard work Ryan is doing, you should first know what holistic medicine actually is.
“Holistic medicine recognizes that there are many parts of a person that contribute to an individual’s overall level of health (mental, emotional, spiritual and physical) that all play an important and integral role in someone’s healing,” Ryan said. Putting that into better words, Ryan gave a great example. “A basic example is over the counter drugs. When you take a cough medication, you’re taking a cough suppressant. Suppressant is the key word… meaning that it makes your cough supposedly go away,” Ryan said. “But it’s not really going away, it’s just being suppressed, so the cough still exists.” In this particular case, holistic healing would go deeper and try to find out what is causing the cough and fix that. Instead of just taking medication to get rid of the cough, it would look at dehydration, improper nutrition, any infections, and more.
So in order to bring more awareness to holistic medicine, Ryan is starting a Holistic Health and Wellness Club. He wants to bring students who are interested in the field together to educate others on holistic medicine and bring more classes for it to ISU.
“This will benefit the university by providing a new opportunity for students that was previously unavailable to Illinois State. If a program, or even a few classes like this existed here, it would attract a large number of people interested in what is starting to become a field that is growing quickly,” Ryan said.
He isn’t lying about holistic medicine growing. Although he is finding that a lot of people aren’t aware of what holistic medicine is, he is optimistic that he will be able to continue the growth of his group by working on educating people on his own time.
“I would like more classes at ISU is so there is an educational setting where people can learn about holistic medicine and come together in the club to connect with others through their interests.”
Until the time comes when holistic courses are offered, Ryan and a team that he has started will be doing all of the educating on their own. After Ryan came up with the idea to start this club, he already had seven members within a week or two without any type of advertising.
People have reached out saying that they would be interested in joining his club whenever the fall semester starts back up.
Ryan and the other seven members of the club have decided to participate in Festival ISU next semester to continue to bring people who are interested in holistic medicine together. Feel free to contact Ryan if you are interested at isuhhwclub@gmail.com!