Finding Warmth in Holistic Healing

Holistic Health Practice seal
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Just two blocks from the steel sharp elbows of the Chicago redline and honk-happy drivers heading off to overspend on Michigan avenue – The Holistic Health Practice on Superior street grabs its patients away from the bustling noise of the unforgiving city, providing a “safe haven for physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual transformation”.  Acupuncture, massage therapy, spiritual guidance, nutritional consultations, and even holistic financial planning are some of the many services offered, helping people discover their best selves by addressing multiple aspects of their health in mind, body, and spirit.  Enter through the practice doors and a calming scent of fragrant incense hits your senses along with a warm hug from colorful abstract paintings and candied caramel lamps lighting the rooms.

It’s a different world in this office.  A time lapse to quiet and stillness.
“A lot of the patients that come to me…its because they’ve tried all other types of medicine or therapy and I’m sort of their last resort,” says Matthew Berean, a certified Rolfer at the Holistic Health Practice who treats physical ailments of the body by incorporating a combination of bodywork and movement integration.  “After using pharmaceutical drugs, a lot of my patients come to me for an alternate method of healing mostly because they don’t like the side affects of particular pharmaceutical drugs previously prescribed.  Using a holistic approach, I treat my patients by asking how they got to where they are now.  What is it that they’ve been doing that has lead them to this point, and what we can do together to let the body heal itself.”

Founder of Holistic Health Practice-
Kurt Hill (https://www.facebook.com/
pages/Holistic-Health-Practice/75344525818)

“Holistic healing is a combination of mind, body and spirit,” says founder Kurt Hill in the Holistic Health Practice online video interview by Peter Dolan from Media Beyond.  “We treat them all.  We also engage with allopathic medicine, which is MD medicine, so we’re not isolating ourselves - we’re involving ourselves in the totality of the healing community.”

Though Berean’s rolfing practice has helped produce dramatic results in many of his patients, he’s quick to point out that he’s not a “healer”, but a source of guidance for people to heal themselves.

“Holistic healing is hard for many to grasp as a source of ‘medicine’ because it’s not something scientists or doctors can measure,” says Berean with a smile.  “You cannot measure meditation or spiritual counseling and how many times it takes for one to do so and they’re cured.  It differs for everyone.  And people, especially doctor’s, are very sensitive when you combine ‘spiritual healing’ to one’s health.  It crosses the territory of ‘religion’ and creates a very gray area as opposed to black and white.”


Holistic healer, Tara Sullivan, a Thai massage therapist and energy healer at HHP, often finds a disconnect between her patients awareness of the mind and body, treating them both as separate entities, and not as a whole.

Matt Berean demonstrating his rolfing practice on a patient.

“90% of my patients that come in, there is something underneath, mostly spiritual, that comes with their physical or emotional pain.  We forget many of times that our entire being...the emotional, spiritual, and physical…its all connected.  You cannot fix one and not the other.  It’s all one piece.  And we all have to treat ourselves as one piece, not bits and pieces of the problem.  That’s only hitting the surface.”                      

Holistic Health Practice massage room
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If one word could define the atmosphere of the Holistic Health Practice it would be – love.  Corny as it sounds, love is the only general yet simplistic description of the energy flowing through each room, each practitioner, and each patient that walks through the door.  Love in a sense of compassion, empathy, and guidance.  Love that extends beyond each practitioner’s textbook advice, and into genuine concern and care for their patients and co-workers well-being.  By keeping negative energy at a far distance, the Holistic Health Practice hopes their guidance will continue through each patient and extend to those around them who may need help as well.


Leaving the Holistic Health Practice office, the bitter cold of the Chicago winter is particularly noticed.  The weather channel reported yesterday “sunny and warm for the notorious Chicago winter season tomorrow” but the pushed wind chill from the subway tunnels suggests otherwise.  Head down and glove-covered hands in wool coat pockets is the theme on the streets as locals and tourists alike walk steadfastly to their next destination of warmth and solace.