The framework underneath everything I do is simple enough to state in a sentence and takes decades to use well: illness and injury exist on five levels at once — physical, mental, emotional, psychic and spiritual — and until you know which one is holding the pattern, you are guessing.
Here is what each one actually means, and how to tell them apart.
Physical
The body. Structure, tissue, systems, chemistry. This is the level our medical culture is superb at and the only one most people are ever assessed on.
It is also the level most likely to be correct and insufficient. A clean scan means there is no current structural cause. It does not mean there is no cause.
Mental
Thought patterns, beliefs, framing, the narration running underneath a day. Not intelligence — pattern.
The mental level shows up in health as the gap between knowing and doing. Someone knows exactly what would help, has been told plainly, agrees entirely, and cannot get themselves to do it. That gap is not weak character. It is a pattern, and patterns respond to being worked with. This is where NLP earns its place in a practice otherwise built on Eastern disciplines.
Emotional
What is held and unresolved. Note the word held — I am not talking about how you feel today. Transient feeling is weather. The emotional level is what has not moved.
It is the level most often skipped, because addressing it is uncomfortable and because our system has no obvious place to send it. And it will hold a physical pattern indefinitely without ever announcing itself as the cause. If you have read why some injuries do not heal, this is the third item on that list and it is there for a reason.
Intuitive / psychic
This is the one that costs me the sceptical reader, so let me describe it in the most ordinary terms I can.
It is the information you already have about yourself and are not consciously reading. You knew that job was going to end badly. Something in you knew that lump was worth checking a month before you made the call. You do not know how you knew.
You do not have to accept any particular explanation of that to notice it happens. What matters practically is that people are often carrying accurate information about their own condition that they cannot get access to, and that a lot of assessment work is simply getting it out of them. Muscle response testing is one way of asking a question and getting an answer that has not gone through what the person believes about themselves.
Spiritual
Meaning and orientation. What this illness is connected to, what it has interrupted, and whether the life it is happening inside makes sense to the person living it.
This is the level most likely to matter in serious or prolonged illness and the one least likely to be raised by anyone on the medical side. Not because they do not care — because the appointment is fifteen minutes and it is nobody’s assigned job.
The part that matters: they interact
If the five levels were independent, you could treat them in any order and the arithmetic would work out. They are not independent. They hold each other.
That is why a technically correct physical treatment can fail completely. If the emotional level is holding the pattern, then clearing the physical level removes the symptom’s current expression and the holding structure immediately rebuilds it. The treatment was not wrong. It was aimed at the wrong level, and it will keep being aimed at the wrong level for as long as nobody assesses the others.
It is also why the same complaint in two people needs two different approaches. The symptom is not the thing. The level that is holding it is the thing, and it is not the same level in both people.
How you find out which one is holding
You test all five, individually and against each other, and see which one the pattern depends on. That is what the two-hour Discovery Session is for — not treatment, assessment, ending in a plan built for what was actually found.
Often the finding is the useful part on its own. People have spent two years and considerable money aimed at one level, and simply learning that the pattern is being held somewhere else changes what they do next, whether or not they continue with me.
The goal is that you can do this yourself
I am not trying to build a dependency. A stated goal of my practice is that clients learn to read their own five levels, construct their own path, and apply the restorative techniques on their own — which is why standing practice gets taught, why group work exists, and why the Sole Guidance project is being built.
You are not a sick person trying to get well. You are a person ridding yourself of illness and returning to the Process of Good Health.
If this sounds like the kind of help you are looking for, tell me what is going on.
Rodney works with four to six clients at a time and reads every inquiry personally. He replies within 48 hours when he believes he can help. Request a session, or read what a Discovery Session involves.
This work supports the body’s own healing process. It is complementary to medical care, not a replacement for it. Rodney does not diagnose, treat or cure disease, and does not advise anyone to stop or change treatment prescribed by their physician. See the full disclaimer.
Last reviewed September 16, 2026 by Rodney Blount.