In Western medicine, vitalism declined in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the ascendancy of scientific thinking, though today it is still a central tenet of naturopathic philosophy. The premise of vitalism considers the human body and psyche as being animated by the vital force, which starts flowing at the moment of conception and which ceases with the death of the body. The flow of vital energy through the body nourishes, heals, develops and sustains the body. This flow of vital force is synonymous with the emotional experience of the person, whereby each individual emotion is seen as a particular wave form within the flow. For example, love creates a smooth, comforting, nourishing and harmonizing flow, in contrast to anger, which generates a spiky, intense, spasmodic and disruptive flow.
Every emotion has thereby a direct effect on the body's physiological function.
The author of this article, Dylan Warren-Davis, emigrated to Australia from Britain four years ago. Since completing his herbal training, Dylan has been involved in further research of his own rediscovering the lost European metaphysical teachings, upon which Western herbal knowledge is based. He has been engaged in the commercial production of herbal tinctures and has been a consultant on the manufacturing of herbal tinctures to the herbal industry in Britain. The vital force is also seen as the substance out of which all ideas are formed. Accordingly particular mental attitudes influence emotional responses which, in turn, affects physiological function.