The Integrative Health Centre in Port Elizabeth, RSA, was established to meet the growing need for a holistic health care service, integrated with mainstream medicine. Charles Wildervanck is a medical doctor with many years of experience in the hospital services, including hospital management, and private practice.

During 1998 a profound experience in his family life led him to explore a holistic approach to medicine and methodologies, which currently still fall outside of mainstream medicine. Subsequently, Charles became more and more aware of the limitations of mainstream medicine, leading to his conviction that an integrative approach, based on the philosophy of holism, is the way forward in medicine.

Charles is also an artist and musician. He is married to Jean and they have three sons.

At the Integrative Health Centre the key principles of such an approach to medicine are:

• inclusive
• safe
• health-effective
• cost-effective

The basic philosophical premises are those of holistic, or systemic thinking. Briefly, in health care these premises include:

• The human being is an integrated system of processes, which are in dynamic balance. Body, mind, emotions, and soul are all interconnected, always interacting with the environment. When part of this complex human system becomes diseased, the whole system is affected. Therefore symptoms cannot be addressed in isolation.
• The holistic approach relies on the body’s inherent intelligence / wisdom to heal itself. It is far more concerned with processes than with underlying pathology. The emphasis does not lie on symptoms and disease, but on health and function.
• There are many causes of any single disease, hence the importance of the ‘terrain’; e.g. flu is not caused by a virus, but by a weakening of the immune system.
• The holistic approach recognises many variables, both physical and non-physical and unique to each person; hence outcomes cannot be predicted. Human beings are not statistics.
• The absence of symptoms is not a sign of health. Health is the ease of flow: the dynamic balance of all energies in the human system.
• Man is a spiritual being having a physical experience and disease is part of this experience. Disease does not just happen by chance, is not just an enemy. It can, indeed should serve as a wake-up call and become part of a Healing process. Primarily it indicates the need for a shift in intentions.