Holistic health is a non-traditional approach to life that includes multidimensional perspectives of health. It promotes people to identify the body as a whole self, including all the physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, and social components. This holistic health approach also recognizes the importance of the connection between mind, body, and spirit. Such holistic health practitioners do not believe in or promote the use of medications. Instead, they encourage a healthy diet and lifestyle, including nutritional supplementation, regular exercise, relaxation, and adequate sleep.

The major belief of holistic health is that all illness arises from the imbalance of energies at the physical level and psychological and spiritual levels. Chinese medicine upholds this view that there are four elements of which the human body is made up. Therefore, according to Chinese medicine, all illness arises due to either blocking or unblocking of one or more of these five elements. Some of the ailments that can be treated with Chinese medicine include chronic fatigue syndrome, asthma, depression, arthritis, heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney disorders, pain, stress, and ulcers.

Unlike conventional medicine, holistic health does not use invasive procedures, drugs, or medicines. Treatments are given to patients individually, and most commonly, the first course of action is dietary and lifestyle modifications. Chinese medicine also believes that the root cause of illness is an emotional imbalance. Therefore, the therapy focuses on correcting the emotional imbalance by counselling and exercising lifestyle changes. Chinese medicine differs from conventional western medicine in that it does not utilize medication or surgery. However, most Chinese medicine practitioners do recommend some forms of alternative therapies such as massage and acupuncture.