Mind, body and soul: the holistic approach

Today, everybody talks about the connection between body and mind. It’s just as common as speaking of weather when learning a new language. It is an important premise we were finally able to include in the Western medicine, which has always used a more curative approach (versus a preventive one). But, on the other hand, it also sounds like old news, too often semplified.

According to the holistic wellness approach, mind and body are not separate entities. The mind is just a part of the body, an organ with its specific duties, like all the others. What the body perceives with its senses is the echo of a symphony composed by emotions and thoughts, while what we elaborate with our mind is the mirror of the body functions.

Stress is the result of a unbalanced communication between these two elements. Socially speaking, we tend to relate the stress and the production of cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine to causes like work, moving, or a loss.

But the real bug that causes stress or pressure is the lack of communication between body and mind, generating what in Classical Chinese Medicine is known as a “space-time fracture”: the two dimensions are unable to contain each other.

While the mind can potentially work endlessy, the body recognises an excess of stimulus, and it is capable of stopping when necessary.

However, the holistic wellness approach is more than the cooperation of the body and the mind. A third part is included, the “Shen”, the soul, the whole human being, the place where thoughts, emotions and stimulus are integrated according to the Classical Chinese Medicine. The “vital spirit” is born in the embryonic stage and it’s a combination of psyche and body.

Any disease or disconnection is therefore to be attributed to an inequitable distribution of energies between these three components, and to imbalances between the three of them. It is necessary to nurture the Shen, reaching awareness in the rediscovery of individual health and changing the lifestyle day by day with every part of the self.

Speaking about subconscious, doing fitness activities or listening to music has the invisible power to inhance the union of these forces: the body moves faster while the mind slows down and the spirit feels free to breath.