Body perceptions identified among traditional chinese medicine patients and professionals from the Academic Health Center of Butantã

Abstract

The present study aimed to understand how health professionals and patients from Centro de Saúde Escola Samuel B. Pessoa (CSEB - Academic Health Center Samuel B. Pessoa), located in the city of São Paulo, perceive the body in the therapeutic contact with the Traditional Chinese Medicine. This investigation was developed by means of an ethnographic approach in the acupuncture clinic of the CSEB, from September 2008 to April 2009. The opposition healthy body versus unhealthy body was identified as central. The following dimensions were found, permeated by this opposition: ideas of body, body reactions and body techniques. It was noted that, from the experience with Traditional Chinese Medicine, people started to consider the possibility of a body in which the energetic and invisible states antecede the organic matter. The contact with the Traditional Chinese Medicine provides, in theory and in practice, a conception of body that is different from the one disseminated by biomedicine, and offers other explanations for the relations among body/mind/emotion/symptoms, in which diverse aspects of people's lives are taken into account, enabling transformations in their body care techniques.