Asian Perspectives on Health & Wellness

The separation of Body from Mind is a predominantly Western cultural pattern, one that permeates American thinking and diffuses into contemporary models of health and wellness.
Asian and other traditional worldviews do not invoke this schism, this dichotomy, as necessary.
Those systems of Being (Identity) include societal systems of care that implicitly support Integrative Health.
For them, the human being has always been a part of their societal and environmental matrix. and hence, is both Aware and Responsible.

Is America’s unsustainable handling of our expanding mental health a reflection, a karmic consequences if you will, of societal hubris demonstrated over the last few centuries, and even more intensely in the last 50-70 years.?
Are they the residue of governmentally sanctioned and centuries long pogroms that stained our Constitution? They operated under imprimaturs like Manifest Destiny (White Man’s Burden), Jim Crow, KKK, and guide the police directed violence towards marginalized (e.g., BIPOC) communities that continues to this day.

One mortality outcome, one hard to neglect, affects both American men and women. For over a decade more Americans are now dying sooner than their contemporaries in the EU.  Americans most affected by this troubling statistic are in the 20-60 y.o range.

 

Known as Diseases of Excess (TCM),  industrial societies face mounting internal threats from the widespread consequences of endemic poorly managed metabolic and neuroimmunoregulatory dysfunctionalities. It is a public health crises that we look away from and point to guns.

These include our widespread and unresolved patterns of Cognitive Overload, manifest as Mood (Mental Health) Disorders, and the increasing prevalence of Metabolic Diseases that don’t get fixed pharmacologically without huge financial investments.

These conditions don’t exist in preindustrialized societies, teaching us to consider the influences of contextual factors known as Set & Setting in creating these nightmares.
Current American societal health outcomes suggest that we, The People, need to become more personally engaged in developing and maintaining our health.

Medical doctors (MDs) are unable to clear their plates, so to say, and their patient lists (responsibilities)  continue to grow just as their success rates decrease.
My assessments suggest that American MDs will need direct public assistance, i.e., our help, to get their job done, in addition to their yearly compensation of ~$500 000.

WE can do this. Engage more with the world that we are creating for ourselves, and for future generations. Pay attention.

Our Medical Industrial Complex prefers that we don’t wake up.  More people on drugs = more profits.

To each, their own path.

 

Bipolar Disorder, TCM Perspectives

TCM’s perspective on the etiology of Bipolar Disorder, a serious and complex mental health disorder, is rather straightforward. It recognizes that imbalances at the Yang and Yin aspects of our bodies are at the root and can predispose us to both high and low energy states of existence.

For those who practice the Way of the Open Hand, the challenges are to advise and consult with the patient with regard to 1) how they see themselves, and 2) identify the most accessible and easy methods, i.e., lifestyle choices, to recreate the balance.  As with the Western model of care TCM emphasizes long term support for patients, more to manage than cure.

There are some suggestions that personalized chi kung techniques, with their focus on movement, may alleviate the distress associated with intense shifts in states of Mind.

As I have noted before, these paths of Self discovery are open to those who see themselves as they truly are. The shifts in personality will take time. Supportive family members and neighbors and an accommodative atmosphere at work can be very helpful.

Be disciplined and committed to long term wellness and healthspan, as if investing for the long term in a personally directed retirement plan.

What else is there to do with our longer lives than to improve our healthspan daily, as a cognitively rewarding self directed activity?
Watch TV? Experience new operant conditioning brain hacking protocols? he he