Healing practices are those which help others achieve a sense of wholeness, intactness, personal integrity . . . Healing is a process. It involves a complex series of human experiences that lead a person from feeling not well, not at one within himself or herself, to a sense of feeling whole, mended, no longer broken, once more able to live a meaningful life. Healing is most appropriate to nursing because nurses have always committed to helping people with every aspect of their health. To ignore any one dimension is to compromise the others in the personal search for healing.
Healing encompasses a rich array of human realities.
It may be as simple as healing a biochemical imbalance such as a drug reaction, healing an organ such as the heart, or healing a system such as the musculoskeletal system. It can also, however, involve bringing into some sort of congruence the social dimension of existence, such as dealing with violence in a school and relating that to the emotional wellness of the children who experience this environment. It can involve the healing of a family, perhaps one dealing with a death of a member. It can involve a specific group of people, such as a support group for diabetics or for women with breast cancer. It can even involve a whole community in something as simple as an immunization program for children or in something as complex as a crisis intervention program after a natural disaster.