“Body, Mind and Spirit”, most view these terms as independent from one another. This is especially the case with members of Western society. Growing up in the United States and have the great opportunity to be exposed to a rich Indian culture, I have seen, firsthand, how these words convey such different meaning to the respective societies.

I’m sure you are thinking what this difference in perceptions is. First of all, I’m going to include people of the East, specifically the Asian cultures, as one collective group. Though there are noticeable differences in their traditions, the understanding of these terms is mostly the same. Ofcourse, TCM naturally falls into this type of thinking.

To your typical Westerner, the “Body, Mind and Spirit” are looked upon as being distance from each other. This is easily seen in Western Medicine. A typical American goes to a doctor to help his bodily problems and goes to a psychiatrist to help him with problems associated with his mind and spirit. The most relevant fact being that the Western doctors are trained to view problems of the body and mind/spirit as having no correlation with one another. In fact, the psychiatrist rarely consults with the General practitioner to find some common ground.

In contrast, the majority of the people in the East look at these terms as being integrated. That is, they view the “Body, Mind and Spirit” as working with one another. In TCM, this means that the practitioner views even a physical ailment as having some correlation with the patient’s mental/spiritual state. The human body is seen as functioning an integrated whole and not in separate parts, as I just described above in the Western practitioner’s case.

The result is that from the Intake to the formulation of the treatment plan, a TCM practitioner will look to see any correlation between physical ailments and emotional ones and then formulates a corresponding diagnosis that envelops these correlations.