Practical Implications and Possible Adaptations
摘要
This chapter summarizes the deep problems that persist in dissecting the knowledge systems, which is one of Western biomedicine’s primary approaches to understanding diseases and solutions for diseases. We also highlight how Western biomedicine fails to consider or at least consider the importance of external factors, including the environment, and a few internal factors such as human innate immunity to confront and heal the illnesses. For this, we explore the practical realities and potential adaptations of health and wellbeing to the challenges of modern life around the world. These are some of the challenges and practical implications for adaptation of different epistemologies into the mainstream health and wellbeing discourse. To make these discussions, we invite the reader to consider health and wellbeing beyond the narrow framework of Western biomedical models by providing insights from medical traditions and philosophical bases from South Asia, especially through Hindu and Buddhist philosophies. Further, this is an attempt to push the readers to reconsider the centuries-old relationships between humanity and the natural world in the context of health and wellbeing. As noted earlier, the overall objective is not to promote certain medical traditions over others—instead, this chapter provides critical discussions into Euro-North American epistemology and insights into expanding consciousness and forming the ways for transformation by considering South Asian traditions.