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This is the website of Vincent Di Stefano, author of Holism and Complementary Medicine. Origins and Principles. It offers an exploration of the nature of healing in all its dimensions, personal, spiritual, social, institutional, political and planetary. It also provides a wide range of resources for all with an interest in the nature of deep healing, especially for those who would become skillful and compassionate agents of change in the present time.
The material presented herein has been gathered over three decades of work as a practitioner, teacher and advocate of complementary medicine in Australia. I have throughout that time maintained an active practice in osteopathy, Western herbal medicine and naturopathic medicine. I have concurrently served as an educator and advocate of natural medicine, at both institutional and community levels for most of that time.
Healing is a mysterious process. It partakes of more than linear and rational interpretations. Although biomedicine has plumbed the depths of materiality, it seems to have somehow missed the mind and often dismissed the soul that underlies and oversees our material vicissitudes. As has been shown by so many throughout history, we live by more than bread alone. Our thoughts and actions, our unions and estrangements, our joys and despairs, our dreams and our nightmares all infuse and influence the reality that we inhabit.
About This Site
Much of this site is dedicated to providing a scholarly and cultural resource for all who have an interest in the healing process in all its dimensions. It is more qualitative than positivist in orientation, being committed to the paradigms that inform both holistic consciousness and complementary medicine. It draws upon historical, cultural and artistic perspectives in addition to those that relate to personal, social and environmental healing. The materials presented on this site offer an integrative and holistic view of both healing and of the world within which we find ourselves.
Although Holism and Complementary Medicine provides a foundational pivot for this site, there is much material here that ranges far beyond the ideas presented in the book.
THE BOOK page offers three downloadable sample chapters of Holism and Complementary Medicine. These will give some idea of the book’s style and intellectual content. This page also offers links to a number of published reviews of the book.
THE THESIS page will be of particular interest to research students in the natural medicines as it reproduces my M.H.Sc. thesis presented at Victoria University in December 1998, “The Meaning of Natural Medicine. An Interpretive Study” in its entirety. The thesis itself carries much material that does not appear in the book. As an interpretive study, the thesis focuses more on the explication of depth discussions with educator/practitioners of a number of modalities of natural medicine than on providing a conceptual framework of the principles that underlie the practice of holistic and complementary medicine.
The ARTICLES page carries links to number of articles, interviews and audio productions that have been published or presented over the past 30 years. It is hoped that these may provide a useful additional resource for interested readers.
The BOOK REVIEWS page begins to range a little further than the domains circumscribed in Holism and Complementary Medicine. This page offers reviews with selected excerpts from a number of literary sources that have been influential both in the making of the book and, in a more personal sense, the development of an holistic view of life. It is hoped that these reviews will encourage readers to seek out the original texts wherein lies the greater nourishment.
The REALNEWS page continues where the final chapter of Holism and Complementary Medicine leaves off. REALNEWS was produced on a bimonthly basis from July 2008 to June 2010. It addresses planetary rather than personal healing. It offers reflective commentary on contemporary events and their implications and explores the idealisms, the cynicisms and the pragmatisms that colour this time of collapsing certainties. The 12 editions of REALNEWS produced to date are archived on this page.
THE HEALING PROJECT BLOG page continues the work commenced in REALNEWS. It offers a more interactive and leisurely exploration of many of the ideas that underlie The Healing Project.
The POETICA page serves as a more expressive medium for the articulation of the more subtle elements that are central to this project. Poetry and spoken word encompass the vast domains of intellect, spirit and emotion. This page offers both written and mp3 audio reflections on the deeper and often more perplexing strata of human experience.
Take some time as you explore The Healing Project. You will find herein much nourishment and pause for reflection. We trust that these offerings will enable you to identify more clearly your own role in the great work of healing that is called for in the present time.