At their Greek roots, the words integrity and healing are both about wholeness – being whole and making whole.

Looking at life through a spiritual lens we see the single thread in the big picture that connects us all, that we are all one, part of a whole. People make reference to a person’s integrity, the integrity of a work of art and the integrity of a structure. Healing professionals focus on restoring people to wholeness.

One way of working with the idea of integrity is coming from a place of wholeness to create or restore wholeness as it relates to both wellness practitioners and artists.

Ethics and Beyond

While there are countless codes of ethics designed to keep public officials, businesses and service providers and even individual wellness practitioners on a path of integrity, we often find ourselves in scenarios that correlate more to minimum standards or narrow legal interpretations of ethical behavior, rather than the big picture of conducting ourselves with true integrity.

My own modality of practice, Reiki, stresses integrity in the ethical codes adopted by both the Reiki Association and the Reiki Alliance.

Article four of the Reiki Association’s ethics code states; “We conduct ourselves in a courteous and honorable manner, with integrity, sensitivity and tact.”

The Reiki Alliance, an international membership of Usui Reiki Masters, also addresses integrity in its ethics codes. Principle One includes the statement, “I value honesty and integrity in relationship.” And Principle Eight states, “I respect the property of others, maintain my professional integrity and refrain from the misuse of money.”

In an interview with Oliver Klatt in Reiki Magazine in October 2003 (www.reiki-magazin.de/e67/e690/e2768/e4001/index_ger.html), Paul David Mitchell, Head of Discipline for The Reiki Alliance, discusses the importance of not only practicing Reiki with integrity but also the responsibility Reiki Masters have of upholding the integrity of Usui Reiki’s spiritual lineage as handed down by founder Dr. Mikao Usui.

“One image I use is that of ‘wholeness.’ We have a sense of our physical wellbeing, of the wholeness of our bodies. It is free from pain and functioning well. When we are not well, we long for healing, for a return to our natural integrity.” said Mitchell.

“The root of the word ‘healing’ in English comes from the Greek and means, ‘to make whole.’ So I would say that the goal of this practice is wholeness.”

Counseling Professionals

In Maine, the state requires social workers and counseling professionals to receive four hours of ethics training every two years as part of its licensure process.

With 30 years of experience in human services, Jeri W. Stevens, Ph.D., is herself a licensed clinical professional counselor (L.C.P.C.) who also has two decades of ethics experience in her related fields.

“I teach ethics based on the Hippocratic oath. Fostering (client) autonomy and independence, doing good work, being fair, honest, and doing no harm is a great guide for establishing the therapeutic relationship while being mindful of minimal and aspirational ethics,” said Stevens.

The original oath, she noted, did not have "do no harm" in it, but over time, it became necessary to clearly state this. “Most counselors think of the oath as ‘do no harm.’ I teach them that the Hippocratic oath is much more than this and is a great tool for guiding us to practice mindfully and respectfully.”

Through her Chandler Bay Resources practice in Waterville, Stevens provides ethics training to counseling professionals that meets Maine’s ethics requirements for the profession.

Essentially, she teaches people how to think outside the box, or beyond the state code, when it comes to ethics. “I used to teach specifically to the codes but I don’t do that anymore,” she said. “You have to absolutely know the code. It can’t be the only thing that drives you but you need to know them.”

In training counseling professionals and instructing students at Husson University, Stevens says her aim is to get counselors “to be thinking at a higher level.” Her work focuses on teaching how to think aspirationally. “I teach best practice.”

Boundary setting is also key to a healthy counseling relationship, said Stevens. When providing intake with a new client, she verbally reviews the informed consent and disclosure contracts that are provided. “You’ve hired me to do a job,” she tells them. Because a client is sharing the most intimate details of their lives with a counselor, there is sometimes a tendency for them to want to bond with the professional as a buddy. Setting a clear professional boundary at the outset helps avoid future problems, the therapist noted.

Seeking peer consultation and professional supervision are important tools therapists can use when they find themselves experiencing a question or having a dilemma in their practice. Most people have a sense when something is going awry, Stevens observed, and should not be making decisions in isolation. “When in doubt, ask,” she advises.

Questions she suggests counselors ask themselves when looking at client scenarios are, “What are the risks and what are the benefits?”

Stevens observed that there are definitely more client complaints today. “I don’t believe people are doing more bad things than they used to,” noted the trainer. Instead she points to a more educated consumer who knows their rights and the processes at their disposal for resolving conflict.

Conflicts develop when people are not thinking, acting too quickly or not understanding one another. People resort to complaints when they feel they are not being heard or understood.

Different scenarios may require different rules, noted Stevens. For instance 10 or 20 years ago, you could never have a dual relationship with a client. Because of factors like community size, such as Maine versus an urban environment, a counselor may very well have a dual relationship with a client by, say, serving on a committee with them. “Today it may be beneficial. You have to think about it.”

Scenarios need to be considered on a case-by-case basis. In rural Canada, for instance, Stevens has heard of psychotherapists who actually need to stay overnight at client homes when they go into the field to provide services. With varying factors, including cultural and population differences, professionals have unique considerations to make.

Right Relationship

Stevens mentioned a study that determined the modality or discipline a counseling practitioner applies is less important than the relationship between the client and the professional. “The client will get better because it is a good counseling relationship, not because of a specific modality,” she explained.

In her experience, Stevens said, people are looking for a relationship that includes compassion, empathy, trust and mutual respect.

When seeking a counselor, a spiritual teacher or adviser, or any type of wellness practitioner, only we know if the relationship feels right for us. Not following our instincts may result in money misspent, cause frustration and, at times, even do us harm.

Professional and word of mouth referrals, Internet research and interviewing holistic and service providers are good tools for establishing right relationship. But the best gauge is our gut. If something doesn’t feel right, it usually isn’t.

Sometimes the safeguards and people who are charged with the responsibility for ensuring services are delivered with integrity fail. We need to work as our own advocates. In my own life, when I was doing my Master level work my Reiki teacher was not acting from a place of integrity in regard to me, and it became clear that I could not continue with her. About a year later, I did find the appropriate teacher and became a Reiki Master.

Something to keep in mind, when it comes to not only professional and teaching relationships but personal ones as well, is that if we are not coming from a place of being complete or whole, it is difficult for us to treat another with integrity. We cannot give someone what we do not have.

Right-Brainers Rule

A key ingredient involved in acting with integrity is our capacity for empathy. Everyone from the schoolyard bully, to psychopaths and murderers lack empathy – obviously in varying degrees. Empathy is mighty important. It helped our species climb out of the evolutionary muck. And now that we’re upright and bipedal—the big animals on campus—it still helps us get through the day. Empathy allows us to see the other side of an argument, comfort someone in distress, and bite our lip instead of muttering something snide. Empathy builds self-awareness, bonds parent to child, allows us to work together, and provides the scaffolding for our morality,” writes Daniel Pink in his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

Pink claims it is the right-brained among us who will prevail and flourish in the 21st Century. He hones in on a set of aptitudes, or what he dubs “the six senses” powered by the right-brain that will be crucial in “an economy and a society built on the inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities of the Conceptual Age.”

It is the right brain, says Pink, that is the playground where artists and writers spin design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning to create intuitive, nonlinear and holistic tapestries that heal and inspire.

“Empathy is impossible for computers to reproduce, “ writes Pink, who points out how important this right-brain quality is to those in the healing professions. When we talk about a doctor’s bedside manner, it is really his or her capacity for empathy we are referring to.

The board that accredits medical schools now makes communicating effectively and empathetically with patients a factor in a student doctor’s overall evaluation. While Pink acknowledges this to be a commonsense action, he observes that in the heavily left-brained medical profession “it’s a sea change.”

Another example cited by Pink is Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, which has developed a tool to measure empathy – the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE).

Integrity in Fiction

Writers are always dealing with the matter of integrity when it comes to creating story. But as novelist John Grisham has said, a writer can only get away with so much preaching in fiction. Story crafters have to rely on showing rather than telling the reader what they are trying to convey.

In his nonfiction book This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley states that transformation is ever present in fiction. Writers chart the fall or redemption of their fictional heroes and heroines as a result of life circumstances and interaction with other characters – just like real life. It is in this way a writer can illustrate integrity for readers.

At work on Air Apparent, the third book in her Gaia Girls series featuring young girls with superpowers they apply to saving the planet, author Lee Welles says she has “felt the pressure to not preach” in her books.

“When it comes to environmental issues it is more important to show the richness of the world and to show the potential for the destruction of it and let reader to come to their on conclusions,” she said.

Her intention, the author explained, is to “plant a seed of caring” about the environment through her fiction. “If you have a passion for something you are not going to sully it.”

Like the “integrity of a piece of cloth with no breaks in it” Welles observed that personal integrity is the unbroken streak that runs through us. “People who feel broken are those who are more likely to compromise their integrity.”

“In my first book I was afraid to have a flawed character in a way but that gets boring. It’s just like in life, we don’t want people to see our flaws," she explained.

“I think integrity is a muscle you can exercise over time,” Welles noted. An author can illustrate integrity through character evolution in a fictional work just as in life we can “sometimes move through things quicker by being flawed than being perfect,” offers Welles.

Speaking to how integrity fits into the big picture of our lives however, Welles said, “You lose your melody when you disconnect or when you’re not acting out of your own integrity.”

© 2008 by Teresa Piccari

Teresa Piccari is a writer and teacher living in coastal Maine. She is the proprietor of The Village Scribe, a writing and editing business located at The Wellness Center, 71 Elm, in Camden. She runs The Ducktrap Writers Roundtable. She teaches writing workshops including Creative Writing, Mythic Structure, Writing & Healing and Memoir. Correspond with her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 207.344.7070.