Many of us, particularly those of us from Western cultures, are in the habit of considering the mind and body as entities separate one from the other. Sir Ken Robinson, for example, in one of the most widely watched TED talks, describes an academic as an individual who employs the body to move their head from one meeting to another. In a less amusing example, this from medicine, mental illness is considered different, somehow, from physical illness, and the many aspects of care, coverage and chronicity reflect this. Has Descartes’s mind-body dichotomy outlived its usefulness? Continue reading