Experiencing personal wholeness.

t i v a i t t p a t H n p f s l g n s r n T ake care” is often a parting phrase we use with our friends and family, noted Don Vickery, MD, a pioneer in self-care and coauthor of he groundbreaking book, Take Care of ourself, published over three decades ago. lthough the notion of taking care of ourself or that health is a personal reponsibility rather than professional one as controversial at the time, the book elped create a national movement that esulted in a 1981 statement by the sureon general that “you can do more for our health than any doctor, any hospital, ny drugs, any exotic medical devices.” ver the years, the concepts of self-care nd the mind-body connection have gained ainstream acceptance. In fact, the 2007 ational Center for Complementary and lternative Medicine’s survey on CAM se in the United States shows a substanial increase by the American public from 002 to 2007 in the use of mind-body herapies, including deep breathing exerises, meditation, massage therapy, and oga, and these self-care modalities comined accounted for more than one third f all CAM use. Self-care is one component of personal holeness that we at the Samueli Institute elieve to include the congruence of mind, ody, spirit, and energy. For the purposes f this column, we will consider personal holeness from the perspectives of emloyees and patients and how healthcare rganizations can support them in attainng their personal goals. From the humanistic psychology perpective of Carl Rogers, personal wholeess occurs in an individual who tends to ee congruence between their sense of ho they are (self) and who they feel they hould be (ideal self). Although no one ends to experience perfect congruence at ll times, the relative degree of congruence s an indicator of health. Herbert Benson, MD, highlighted the nseparable connection between the mind nd the body—the complicated interacions that take place among thoughts, the s