Healthy Living Defining Together With Treating The “Whole Person”

In this post, I verbalize over how the 4 interacting components of a "whole person"—one's mind, body, emotions, together with "spiritual force"—affect human wellness together with wellbeing.

Let's get-go yesteryear considering 2 articles published inwards the yesteryear few months well-nigh mental illness, which convey to lite the staggering costs of not treating psychological problems (i.e., problems rooted inwards the mental together with emotional components) because our lodge consider physical (i.e., body) wellness to last much to a greater extent than of import than psychological health.

In May 2008, a New York Times article, titled "The Murky Politics of Mind-Body" discussed scientific prove showing that mental (psychological) problems such every bit severe depression, addiction, together with schizophrenia accept a physiological base, including encephalon abnormalities, problems inwards encephalon circuitry, together with genetic factors. In the yesteryear I've written well-nigh this number at this link.

Note, however, that this intersection betwixt heed together with trunk truly includes to a greater extent than than emotions, such as:

• The effects of our beliefs on our physical health, which I've discussed this inwards an before serial of weblog posts starting at this link.


• The connectedness betwixt thinking together with doing, i.e., how our thoughts atomic number 82 to specific actions, which may last salubrious together with adaptive or unhealthy together with maladaptive. In healthcare, this connectedness includes your powerfulness to depict your symptoms to your doctor, your doctor's powerfulness to examine your trunk together with diagnose a problem, also every bit your powerfulness to empathise how to create produce chronic conditions.

Now to the large oval—the "Spiritual Force" (aka "life-force," "inner-self," consciousness, "soul," "qi/chi")—which encompasses the whole person … mind, body, together with emotions. From a philosophical (cosmological) perspective, the spiritual forcefulness enables us to have a mind, trunk together with emotions. In other words, this cosmic liberate energy gives us the powerfulness to last aware, to sense together with perceive the footing to a greater extent than or less us. It allows us to create, limited ourselves, feel, accept intuition, remember, speak, move, think, grow, etc. It's the forcefulness that builds our bodies from genetic information, together with that transforms the electrical activity inwards our nervous systems into thoughts, emotions, together with behaviors. At its most basic (and abstract) level, the spiritual forcefulness tin last idea of every bit life itself, which gives us the potential to prepare our minds together with bodies. Some mightiness fifty-fifty country it is a "piece of God" inside each of us.

While for sure Eastern (e.g., traditional Chinese) medicines attend to the spiritual forcefulness when treating patients, Western medicine generally ignores it because this forcefulness cannot last observed or measured scientifically (see this link for a comparison of Eastern together with Western medicine, together with this link for to a greater extent than well-nigh complementary together with option medicine).

So, is in that place a meaningful connectedness betwixt the iii components of the whole person—mind, emotions, together with body—in which each components affects the others? YES!

Is in that place existent value inwards treating the whole mortal yesteryear seriously considering the interactions betwixt these iii components? YES!

And, if you lot desire to teach philosophical, is it reasonable to conclude that a spiritual forcefulness gives rising to all thoughts, feelings, together with physiology? YES! As such, mightiness it last beneficial to a ameliorate agreement of how this forcefulness tin last applied to healthcare inwards the Western societies? YES!

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