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Chinese culture holds the perspective that human beings are an integral part within the fabric of the universe as opposed to an entity separate and distinct from it. This “macrocosm within the microcosm” theory is at the center of Daoist medical theory and proposes that everything is interdependent and mutually interactive. The idea of a holographic universe implies that the entirety of the “whole,” i.e. the universe, is represented, precisely or symbolically, in each of its parts. The ancient roots of Chinese medicine are based onthese Daoist principles which explore the fundamental and universal laws of our existence in the natural world. The science of Chinese medicine attempts to understand the functional process of nature as it exists within the human being.  “Processes are seen as permeating both nature (the macrocosm) and the human being (the microcosm) and extending from one to the other in an unbroken chain.”i Lonny Jarrett writes in Nourishing Destiny: The Inner Tradition of Chinese Medicine,

“In this primal state of dao all things are “formless,” existing only as potential.  The potentiality of all things is interpenetrating, as the dao is implicit in all things, all things are implicit in one another.  This state in which the dao “pervades all,” and every “thing” contains an implicit image of every other “thing,” is the basis of the holistic model that is foundational in the quality of thought contained in the inner tradition (of Chinese medicine).”ii