In the last post in this series, we explored the idea that thoughts, emotions, and perceptions have measurable biochemical effects. In this light, “spirit” as conscious awareness becomes a placeholder for a vitalistic, embodied aspect of health. Now, let’s take a more nuanced dive into that connection.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) teaches that humans are composed of five distinct spirits, each corresponding to one of the five elements and major yin organs. Of these five, the spiritual energy of the Heart has the closest resonance with what might be called superconscious awareness. This essence, called shen in Chinese, is the spiritual aspect of the self that receives inspiration from a greater source of awareness.

The Liver energetic houses the hun spirit, akin to what Western metaphysics might define as the astral body or soul—our ego consciousness as an individuated self, in contrast with the transcendent Self of the Heart-shen. Think of the hun also as dream consciousness that gives rise to insight.

The Lung energetic contains the po spirit, or the etheric body. This is the energy body that TCM practitioners work with when performing acupuncture. The po animates the body at birth with the first inhalation and returns to the earth with our last exhalation. Its expression is the subconscious mind, experienced viscerally as intuition or gut instinct.

The Spleen energetic embodies the yi, or intention, while the Kidney expresses zhi, often translated as will. It’s helpful to discuss these two together because of how they interact: intention is baseless without the will to bring it to fruition, just as will without focused intention lacks direction and purpose.

To put it all together with an example: an insight is received in a dream (hun-Liver). Before being acted upon, the idea needs a clear sense of its “rightness.” This confirmation comes through intuition (po-Lung), which then sets intention (yi-Spleen) in motion. That intention must be fueled by will (zhi-Kidney) to be brought into being. Overseeing it all is the superconscious awareness of the (shen-Heart), like an emperor on the throne, ensuring each official carries out their duty.

Image by Sora, OpenAI

A nuanced understanding of these spiritual energies is a helpful delineation precisely because its aids diagnosis of spiritual imbalance. Each aspect of consciousness can be disrupted in different ways. Overthinking, worry, and anxiety damage the yi-Spleen energetic, impairing our ability to hold clear intention. Grief, alongside poor diet and lifestyle, weakens the po-Lung energetic, leading to fatigue and a disconnection from the body’s intuition. Fear, fright, and shock disturb the zhi-Kidney energetic, making it difficult to summon willpower and move forward. Anger, frustration, and exposure to emotional or environmental toxins compromise the hun-Liver energetic’s capacity for rationality and insight. Trauma and dissociation cloud our connection to the Self of the shen-Heart energetic—and ultimately, to the eternal source of being.

With this primer in place, the next stop on our journey through spiritual medicine is to examine how these imbalances in the subtle realm give rise to the myriad biomedical diagnoses that afflict humankind. Whether mental illness, cancer, or autoimmune disease, it will become increasingly clear that working upstream, within the spiritual dimension, can unlock novel treatments and deep healing.