Discussion: Metaphorical Helix of Health
consciousness and an increasing awareness
of the essence of the human experience of
“being.” From this view, the unique pattern
of one’s energy fields and one’s expression
of wholeness is manifested through a higher
personal and collective understanding of
the physical, emotional, mental, social,
and spiritual dimensions of health, a
homeodynamic view similar to that
espoused by Rogers (1983, 1992) in her
theory of unitary human beings. Important
to understanding integral health is the
understanding that various types of health,
such as mental health, physical health,
emotional health, and spiritual health, are
not to be viewed as separate and equal, but
as unique structural strands that create and
frame the wholeness and stability of the
metaphorical helix of health. The integral
environment consists of both internal and
external aspects. The internal aspects of
environment relate to clients’ feelings
and emotions, the meaning of events, and
the way in which the client enacts their
understanding of spirituality and caring.
Through flashes of memory, sounds,
dreams, images, and/or smells the internal
environment acknowledges and is
influenced by current and past relationships
with living and non-living people and
things, such as family members, pets, or
precious possessions. The external
environment consists of things that can be
objectively measured in the physical and
social realms of reality, such as one’s pulse,
the level of adrenaline present in one’s body
in a specific situation, skill development,
and anything one can touch or observe
scientifically in time and space. The
inextricable links between the internal
and external aspects of clients’ integral
environment shape the context in which
the client exists and help frame the meaning
of the reality of the client.
Patterns of Knowing
Rooted in Carper’s (1978) depiction of
the four fundamental ways of organizing
nursing knowledge and nursing’s pattern
of knowing—personal, empirics, aesthetics,
and ethics—the additional pattern of “not
knowing” proposed by Munhall (1993)
and the pattern of “socio-political knowing”
described by White (1995) create the six
patterns of knowing applied in the theory
of integral nursing. These six patterns are
superimposed on the quadrants of reality
and work to bring nurses to the fullness of
knowing and expression of being in each
caring experience. By acknowledging the
Exploring the Theory of Integral Nursing
292012, Vol. 16, No. 1
integration of science and aesthetics,
knowing and not knowing, and the influence
of socio-political knowing, nurses confirm
the value of patterns of knowing in clinical
practice. Through the patterns of knowing,
nurses are encouraged to develop a flow of
ethical experience through thinking and
acting in ways that promote self-assessment
and self-healing while generating a sacred
space for care that promotes client healing.
Quadrants
Quadrants in the theory of integral
nursing can be understood as dimensions
of reality that are permeable, integrally
transforming, and empowering to all other
quadrant experiences. Each quadrant is
intricately linked and bound to each other
quadrant, carrying along its own truths and
language. The language of “I,” “We,” “It,”
and “Its” that characterizes the concept
Exploring the Theory of Integral Nursing
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