 Dr. Andrew Weill writes:
"Human beings are bodies, minds and spirits. Health necessarily involves all of those components, and any program intended to improve health must address all of them. Conventional medicine pays almost exclusive attention to our physical bodies, giving lip service to our minds but not really taking them seriously, and totally ignoring our spirits. In spite of a great deal of research demonstrating the causative role of stress in illness and the interplay of emotions and immunity, most medical researchers and practitioners assume that physical causes can explain all diseases and the physical treatments—drugs, usually—are the only ones that count. I include under the heading ‘mind’ our thoughts, beliefs, fantasies, and emotions; if medicine neglects the importance of these factors as influences on health, it hasn’t a clue about the relevance of our spiritual ones." 8 Weeks to Optimal Health, p. 24.
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| Similarly, Wataru Ohashi, in Reading the Body, writes:
"In the Orient, the human body is viewed as a finely balanced unity of interdependent parts. More important, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
"You are a living entity that is composed of mind, body and spirit. An Oriental diagnostician views all three realms as one. There is no separation, only unity.
"In Oriental diagnosis, we see the body as an orchestra whose music is the soul. Remove any instrument, or change the way it is played and you alter the music entirely. To bring out the full breadth of the spirit, you must finely tune each organ as if it were aninstrument. It must function optimally, as if it were being played by a virtuoso. You must never forget that each organ must blend harmoniously with the rest of the body—all the other pieces of the orchestra—to bring forth the most complete and beautiful being, which is you.” (quoted in Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, pp. 391 and 394.)
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