Today, neuroscience treats consciousness as a process that is confined to the brain, as something that makes us aware of information that would otherwise be unconscious. This view is underpinned by an assumption: that consciousness is a self-contained and self-governing mechanism, a hidden entity waiting to be located and explained.

My own research initially followed this line of thought, treating consciousness as a cognitive program created by particular areas of the human brain. However, the problem with thinking of consciousness as something tangible is that we cannot actually “locate” it.

Researchers have dubbed this the “hard problem of consciousness”: how is it possible that physical mechanisms are subjectively experienced rather than being merely unconscious?

Ancient Chinese medicine views consciousness in a totally different way. It does not see it as a mechanism or entity, but as a “light” that shines when our inner-universe is in harmony.

Under this view, consciousness cannot be located, extracted and studied in isolation – be it a brain in a vat or a program in a computer. Instead, it is more like a quality that a person can have, similar to notions like health or beauty. Just like health and beauty, consciousness can come and go, but its light shines brightest when the whole body-mind is in balance.

Ancient Chinese consciousness

The earliest references to the concept of........

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