When Medicine Recognizes That Your Body Isn’t A Machine

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) drives many doctors crazy. It helps people get healthier, but medical researchers can’t explain why it works. But now, an analysis in the journal Pastoral Psychologydisplays why it is effective: TCM fuses treatment of the body, mind and spirit to promote wellness.

TCM, devised in Asia thousands of years ago, doesn’t simply focus on treating illness or symptoms but emphasizes the wellness of the person as a whole.

The analysis by Lin Shi from Beijing Normal University and Chenguang Zhang from Southwest Minzu University in China shows that TCM takes a multi-pronged approach to wellness. For example, the authors detail how TCM considers the body, mind and spirit to be inseparable. You have to be spiritually healthy to be physically healthy.

According to the authors: “Good health and longevity are what we pursue. More and more people are concerned about ways to prevent disease and strengthen their bodies, which is the emphasis of traditional Chinese medicine. It pays attention to physical pains, and at the same time is also concerned with spiritual suffering. Therefore, TCM can teach people to be indifferent towards having or not having, to exist with few desires and feel at ease, to keep the body healthy and the mind quiet, and to achieve harmony between the body and the mind and then to achieve harmony with the world and nature.”

This analysis shows, among other things, that the underlying premise of Chinese medicine is that the mind and body of a person are inseparable. To be in good health, a person must have good spirit and pay attention to cultivating his spirit. Chinese doctors see “people,” not “diseases,” and equate “curing diseases” with “curing people.”