The morning after I finished Chapter 14, I sat at the window of my Cusco lodging drinking tea and thought. I looked back over the terrain of thought I had walked through these last three weeks.
The question that began at the great stones of Sacsayhuamán. The circular terraces of Moray. The five-hundred-year flow of Tipón. The Spanish cathedral atop the Coricancha. The massacre at Cajamarca. The silver of Potosí. The English laborer's tea and sugar. The storm of the Imjin War. And the long diagnosis that closed with the comparison of the destinies of three civilizations.
It had been a long diagnosis. An anatomy of the form, the operation, and the historical results of Wetiko. An unfolding, one by one, of five hundred years of wounds. Sometimes too heavy, sometimes suffocating, sometimes infuriating — many times in the writing of these chapters I had to stop.
And yet — this book cannot end with diagnosis.
Diagnosis is the condition of healing, but diagnosis is not healing. Knowing the name of the illness does not by itself cure it. A different path is needed. There must be an ontology of being that operates as Wetiko's opposite. We must show — not just theoretically but as something that actually works — that this way exists.
That is the task of Part 4.
And I have chosen, as the first guide for that task, a single word.
Perichoresis.
The word comes from eighth-century Byzantine theology. It was invented, more precisely, as the technical concept of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. But this concept names something that cannot be confined within theology. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, thinkers from many fields — theologians, physicists, psychologists, feminists, ecologists — have rediscovered this word. Each in their own field. And remarkably, they have brought the word back to say the same thing.
This convergence is the subject of this chapter. What perichoresis is. Where it comes from. Why it is being revived in many fields at the same time. And — why this book, today, needs this concept as the opposite direction of Wetiko.
I first met this word in conversation with three pastors. Pastors Hong Won-pyo, Gu Bon-u, and Jin Hee-kyung. One evening, I had been at length explaining the concept of Wetiko. How a spiritual cannibalism that feeds on other beings' life force has worked itself across five hundred years of world history, and how deeply our society today is sick within that structure. My talk stayed at the level of diagnosis. The anatomy of the disease was getting refined — but I had not yet found a language for what the opposite of the disease was.
It was then that the three pastors handed me a single word.
Perichoresis.
I had never heard it. Hard to pronounce, abstract in meaning, far from daily life. But as the three of them unfolded the concept, something fitted into place inside me. If Wetiko was "a structure of devouring one another," then perichoresis was "a structure of dwelling within one another while remaining oneself." A precise symmetry. The language of healing waiting on the other side of diagnosis had already been made in the eighth century, and had been waiting for thirteen hundred years.
That evening was — the beginning of an enormous understanding. One sentence the three of them quoted has stayed in my body especially. A line from the eighth-century theologian John of Damascus.
"The three persons dwell in one another. Without confusion, without separation, completely passing through one another. Like dancers."¹
Like dancers. The phrase stayed in my body. Not as theological argument but as image.
Since then, this word has continued to grow inside me. I sought out books, established the concept academically, began to use this language in lectures and writing. Through that process the structure that places perichoresis at the antipode of Wetiko grew clearer and clearer. And in the communities of the North American plains — when I watched, in the circular formations of traditional ceremony, people physically dancing — John of Damascus came to mind every time. If he had known these two scenes spoke of the same thing, he would not have been surprised. He had said: like dancers.
This chapter is an attempt to record that dance.
First, unfold the word itself. Perichōrēsis (περιχώρησις). It comes from two Greek roots.²
Peri (περί): "around," "about" — the etymological root of English "peripheral" and "perimeter."
Chōreō (χωρέω): here the meaning becomes double. There are two words spelled the same way.
The two roots combine to form the meaning of perichoresis. "To pass through around" + "to dance together" = "a movement of passing through one another while dancing together."
Which of the two roots is more dominant has been debated since antiquity. Latin translations were attempted in several forms. "Circumincessio" (passing around), "circuminsessio" (sitting around), "perichoresis" (the original Greek). But the richest meaning contains both roots.
They pass through one another. At the same time they remain separate. The relation itself is a dance.
The concept was never simple geometry. It was a metaphysics of relation.
Perichoresis was systematized as a theological concept in the work of John of Damascus (c. 675–749), in his De Fide Orthodoxa.³ This book is regarded as the encyclopedic synthesis of Byzantine Orthodox theology. In it, John of Damascus systematically uses this word to clarify a difficult point in Trinitarian doctrine.
The problem was this. Christian faith asserts at once "one God" and "three persons" (Father, Son, Spirit). How is this not a contradiction? How can one be three?
The Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries (Basil, Gregory, and others) answered this with the distinction between "ousia and hypostasis" (substance and person). God has one ousia (substance). But that substance manifests as three hypostases (persons). With this distinction, some logical explanation became possible.
But a question still remained. What relation are the three persons in? Are they separate? If so, they are three. Are they fused? If so, they are just another name for one. A middle was needed. John of Damascus named that middle perichoresis.
The three persons are:
This structure — is not merely logical. It is almost poetic. Theologians themselves admit it cannot be fully explained logically. The concept operates at the limit of language. It points to a relation that cannot be expressed in everyday speech.
And yet — why does this concept matter? Why does the resolution of a theological puzzle have meaning for us? The answer is — that perichoresis touched something beyond theology. That is also why it has been rediscovered in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
To understand the depth of this concept, we must look at three core features.
The first feature of perichoresis is the paradox: "two beings are within one another and yet remain themselves."
In daily life we mostly experience two types of relation. Separation or fusion. Two people exist apart (separation). Or two people become one (fusion). These two seem to be all the relations that are possible.
But — these two are in fact two faces of the same thing. Separated entities relate from outside. A fused being loses its individuality and so loses relation. Neither is true relation.
Perichoresis is a third path. Two beings dwell in one another. They remain themselves. The two are simultaneously possible. In Eastern mystical traditions and in certain Indigenous thought, such a relation is sometimes described (we will return to this). But in mainstream Western thought this relation is almost invisible. The West has thought largely in terms of the separation model (subject-object) or the totalitarian fusion model (the individual absorbed into the whole).
Perichoresis avoids both. Mutual interpenetration while preserving individuality. Is this possible? What sort of worldview makes it possible?
The second feature is that "being is not a noun but a verb."
We usually think of being statically. "This table is." "That person is." "I am." Being is taken as a state. The way English uses the past participle of "to be" ("been") reflects this static sense. "It has been..." — as a past state.
Perichoresis sees being as movement. The three persons do not "remain" within one another, but are continually moving through one another. The dance-etymology of perichoresis captures this exactly. Dance is not static. If the dancer pauses, it is not dance. It must keep moving, must remain in relation, to be dance.
Extend this view — and all being becomes the movement of relation. Being is not what is but what happens. It is unceasing movement, dancing through one another with other beings. It is not that separated subjects come first and relation appears later. Relation comes first, and within relation the subjects are continually generated.
This view resonates remarkably with parts of modern science. In quantum field theory, a particle is no longer "a small ball." It is a particular vibrational mode of the field. In biology, an organism is an open system that continually exchanges matter and energy with its environment. In neuroscience, the self is a dynamic process in which the various regions of the brain and the entire body relate to one another. All the sciences — each in its own domain — are converging on the insight that "being is not a noun but a verb."
The third and most challenging feature. Perichoresis is not mere metaphysics, but ethics.
For John of Damascus and later theologians, perichoresis was the concept that explained the love of the Trinity. The relation of Father, Son, and Spirit is — not just a structural relation but a relation of complete mutual love. Each person completely loves the others, and that love — without any lack or deficiency — is continually exchanged in mutuality.
This point is decisive. Perichoresis is not cold structure but warm relation. And the essence of that relation is love.
Translated into modern secular language — this becomes the claim that "the fundamental structure of being is love." The claim that the universe is fundamentally not indifferent matter but fundamentally relational and loving. This is a large claim. Hard to prove. But — many of the deep wisdom traditions of various civilizations make this claim. The Christian "God is love" (1 John 4:8). The Buddhist jabi (慈悲, compassion). The Hindu bhakti (devotion). The Jewish hesed (faithful love). The Sufi mahabba (love). Each tradition — in different languages — speaks of the priority of relation.
If this insight is right — Wetiko is a distortion of the fundamental structure of being. It reduces relation to transaction, love to utility, mutual indwelling to domination. That is, Wetiko goes against reality. And therefore — it cannot be sustained. It runs into the resistance of the real.
This may be the deeper reason why five hundred years of Wetiko have not won outright. The structure of the real opposes Wetiko. Inca descendants still pour chicha to Pachamama, Cree grandmothers still offer tobacco to the river, Korean mothers still set out a bowl of pure water on the soy-jar terrace — these small gestures are acts attuned to the deep structure of reality. Wetiko calls them irrational, but perhaps — it is Wetiko that is irrational with respect to the real.
It is useful here to draw a map. Long teaching and writing on the subject of this book as an exercise-medicine scholar has given me the habit of arranging four frames in a single comparison table. Each frame is a distinct grammar for interpreting the human, health, and society. And — placing them side by side, the place perichoresis occupies becomes clearest.
The four frames are these.
| Axis of comparison | Wetiko (recognition of toxic culture) | Pathogenesis (origin/center of disease) | Salutogenesis (origin/generation of health) | Perichōrēsis (mutual indwelling, non-confused union) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core question | "How do I win and survive?" | "What has gone wrong (cause/lesion)?" | "What creates and sustains health?" | "How does being co-arise?" |
| View of the human/other | Other = means, obstacle, resource (objectification) | Patient = bearer of problem/risk (object of management) | Person = subject with resources and capacities | Other = a 'relational being' who co-constitutes existence with me |
| Worldview | Zero-sum, hierarchy, survival mode | Defect-correction model, removal of risk factors | Resource-generation model, strengthening recovery and adaptation | Non-confused union: becoming together while preserving difference |
| Meaning of relation | Competition/transaction (high cost of trust) | Therapeutic relation (clinician-led), easily reduced | Support/connection as health resource (GRR) | Relation is not 'addition' but a condition of being |
| Definition of health | Health is the privilege of the winner (success = health illusion) | Health = absence of disease/symptom (or normal values) | Health = process on a continuum (regulation, adaptation, recovery) | Health = process in which body, mind, and relations co-arise within mutual indwelling |
| Definition of disease | Failure/incompetence of the weak (stigma) | Pathology (lesion), result of cause/risk factor | Result of resource depletion / regulation failure | Seen as 'relational collapse' (fixed disconnection) |
| Core mechanism | Objectification → distrust/isolation → chronic stress | Risk factor → pathology → treatment/correction | Resources (GRR) → SOC → adaptation/recovery | Mutual indwelling, non-hierarchical, co-arising (becoming) |
| Core resource/indicator | Competitiveness, performance, comparative advantage | Biomarkers, diagnosis, staging, complications | SOC (comprehensibility, manageability, meaning), function, resilience | Quality of connection, flexibility of boundary, shared rhythm |
| Sense of time | "I must win now" (chronic urgency) | Acute event/onset-centered (after-the-fact response) | Life course, accumulation, time of recovery | 'Becoming' — continuous attunement |
| Systemic outcomes | Burnout, isolation, polarization, widening health gap | Rising medical costs, overtreatment/post-treatment bias | Prevention, self-efficacy, community recovery, cost efficiency | Social immunity/resilience strengthened (relational infrastructure) |
| Style of intervention | Strengthening control, selection, hierarchy | Diagnosis → treatment, removal of risk factors | Resource expansion + environmental design + education | Design for connection-restoration (time, space, rhythm, recognition) |
| Message to the individual | "Step on others to rise" | "If you are sick, fix it (problem-solving)" | "Generate health (manage the process)" | "Live together while preserving difference (ethics of connection)" |
| Typical failure mode | Loss of empathy, instrumentalization of the other | Reduction of lifestyle to individual responsibility | Hard to sustain without changing structure | 'Penetration' may be misread as identification/boundary collapse |
| Korean expression (example) | Internalization of college admissions / promotion / performance hierarchies | Treatment- and check-up-centered, prevention only as slogan | Restoring daily rhythm (movement, eating, sleep, relation) | "Mutually indwelling health" (connection of body–mind–society–future) |
Sit long with this table — and one thing comes into view. The Perichoresis column is of a different category from the other three. Wetiko, Pathogenesis, and Salutogenesis are all interpretations of phenomena. What health is, what disease is, what competition is. But Perichoresis — sits at a layer prior to that. It answers how being itself stands.
And at this layer, perichoresis has three marks. The three axes I have most emphasized in establishing this concept.
First, mutual indwelling (相互 內住). Beings dwell within one another. My being is in you, and your being is in me. This dwelling is not metaphor but structure. The microbes in my gut dwell in me, and their metabolites dwell in my brain — this is a small example of mutual indwelling. The microbes and I are not 'connected'; we dwell within one another.
Second, mutual interpenetration (相互 浸透). If mutual indwelling is static dwelling, mutual interpenetration is dynamic passage. You within me move. The me within you moves. Two movements pass through one another. This is the dimension John of Damascus pointed to in "like dancers." Not a fixed exchange of places, but a continual movement of passing through each other.
Third, mutual non-confusion (相互 非混合). This is perichoresis's most distinctive mark. While dwelling within one another and interpenetrating one another, they do not mix. I remain I, and you remain you. Not dissolution, not merger, not absorption. Union that preserves difference. Without this, perichoresis becomes nihilistic fusion. Because of this third mark — perichoresis is different from totalitarian "we"-imposition and different from the romantic illusion of merger.
In the world of Wetiko, all three marks have collapsed. Mutual indwelling has been replaced by mutual externalization (placing the other outside as a resource). Mutual interpenetration has been replaced by one-way extraction (I pass through you to take). Mutual non-confusion has been replaced by absorption or exclusion (mix and erase, or expel).
The recovery of perichoresis is — the work of re-establishing these three marks as structure. In personal relations, in community, in medicine, in social policy, and — in being human in the age of AI.
The concept of perichoresis began to come back to life from the late twentieth century. Not in one field but in many fields at once. This convergence is the central claim of this chapter.
First, the revival within theology itself.
John Zizioulas (1931–2023). Greek Orthodox theologian. Metropolitan (archbishop). His 1985 book Being as Communion brought a revolution to modern theology.⁴
Zizioulas's core claim: "It is not that being precedes relation, but that relation precedes being." This overturns a long premise of Western philosophy. Western philosophy has mostly given priority to substance. Individual substances exist first, and relations among them follow. Aristotle's categories follow this structure.
Zizioulas found a different model in Byzantine patristic theology. The way the Cappadocian Fathers and John of Damascus understood the Trinity. There — relation is foundational. The Father and the Son cannot exist without relation. Each constitutes the other. Perichoresis.
Zizioulas extended this insight to human being as such. The same is true of humans. One cannot exist without relation. A human alone — is not a human. Only in relation with at least one other human, more broadly only in relation with nature and the cosmos, do we become human. This claim — runs head-on against the central premise of Western individualism.
The German theologian Jürgen Moltmann (1926–2024) moved in the same direction. In his 1980 book The Trinity and the Kingdom, he extended the perichoresis concept into political theology.⁵
Moltmann's provocative claim: the perichoretic structure of the Trinity is not a hierarchical relation. The Father is not above and the Son below. The three persons indwell one another in complete equality. If so — what does this theology politically mean? If God is not hierarchical, then a hierarchical human society cannot be justified as "God's order." Monarchy, ecclesiastical clerical hierarchy, male-centered patriarchy — none of them can claim the support of Trinitarian theology. Rather, the Trinity is a model of egalitarian relation.
This was the moment when, within theology, perichoresis became a resource for political critique. Latin American liberation theology, feminist theology, ecological theology of the 1970s and 1980s — all adopted the perichoresis concept as their own tool.
The Croatian-American theologian Miroslav Volf (b. 1956) carried this lineage further. In his 1996 book Exclusion and Embrace, he proposed perichoresis as a model for resolving ethnic conflict.⁶ Volf had experienced the horrors of the Croatia-Bosnia war. The essence of war was peoples excluding one another. The opposite of this is embrace — to receive the other into oneself while preserving one's identity. This is precisely the perichoretic structure.
Volf's formula: "Identity and otherness must be compatible." The Croat remains Croat, and yet makes space within himself for the Serb and the Bosnian. Is this possible? Volf answers — it must be possible. Otherwise humanity is left with endless wars of exclusion.
While perichoresis was reviving in theology — a similar insight emerged in an entirely different field. Quantum physics.
David Bohm (1917–1992). British theoretical physicist. A contemporary of Einstein and Heisenberg. The book he published in 1980, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, is a classic of contemporary philosophy of science.⁷
Bohm's problem was this. The strange phenomena of quantum mechanics — non-locality, entanglement, wave-particle duality — are not explicable within the existing physical worldview. Classical physics described the world as separated entities interacting in space. Newton's world. But quantum mechanics shows — that the world is not separated in that way.
Bohm's solution: distinguish two levels of order. What we ordinarily experience, the "explicate order," is the surface of phenomena. Beneath it lies the "implicate order." In this implicate order — everything is folded into everything. The very concept of separated entities is an approximation. In reality, the entire universe is folded into each point.
This may sound metaphysical, but Bohm was a physicist. He explained the idea through the principle of holography. In a hologram, the entire image is contained on each piece of the film. Illuminate any portion of the film with laser light — and, blurrily, the whole image appears. The part contains the whole. This is the principle of holography.
Bohm sees the universe as such. Each point holds the whole. What is called "I" is a particular unfolding of the whole as folded at one region of the universe. There is not a separated entity, but rather different expressions of the whole that appear separate.
This is the physics version of perichoresis. Each being holds every other being within itself. But — they are not dissolved. They are distinguished. They unfold in particular ways at particular places. The principle of mutual indwelling is embedded in the structure of the universe.
Bohm had no connection to Christian theology. But his conclusion is — strikingly close to perichoresis. Science and theology arrived at the same point independently of each other.
Bohm's other contribution: the concept of dialogue. In his later years he studied how true dialogue between people might be possible. The model he proposed, "Bohm Dialogue," is — perichoresis in practice. The participants of the dialogue do not cling to their own opinions or dissolve into the others'. They allow the others' opinions to resonate within themselves. In that resonance — new understanding is generated together. This is dialogue as dance.⁸
The third site of convergence is psychology. Particularly the work of the Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler (1870–1937).⁹
Adler was a contemporary of Freud and Jung. The three worked together once, but parted over theoretical differences. Where Freud placed sexual desire and the unconscious at the center of human dynamics, Adler placed social relation at the center.
One of Adler's central concepts is Gemeinschaftsgefühl. German. Literally "community feeling," but — hard to translate. In English it is rendered "social interest" or "community feeling." Neither is complete. The concept means:
The state in which these four are simultaneously possible. This is Gemeinschaftsgefühl.
According to Adler, a healthy human being is one who has this capacity. Many cases of mental illness arise from the lack or distortion of this capacity. Extreme self-centeredness, social isolation, hostility toward others — all are absences of Gemeinschaftsgefühl. The goal of therapy is not to give a drug, nor to dig into childhood trauma — but to cultivate this capacity again.
The astonishing thing about this concept: it is identical with the perichoresis structure. "To enter the other while remaining oneself." This is the definition of Gemeinschaftsgefühl. And, according to Adler, this is the heart of psychic health.
Adler was not a theologian. His background was Jewish but secular. The insight he reached was, however — essentially the same as John of Damascus's. Adler thought this structure was the key to mental health. Zizioulas thought it was the key to being. Bohm thought it was the key to physical reality. Three men — independent of one another — touched the same thing.
Why this triple convergence?
My hypothesis is this. The twentieth century was the century in which the mainstream of Western thought — the intellectual ground of Wetiko — ran into its own limits. Two world wars. The Holocaust. Nuclear weapons. Environmental crisis. The collapse of mental health. The loss of meaning.
What these crises revealed in common — was that the thinking of separation and domination had reached a dead end. Cartesian dualism, Locke's theory of property, Kant's autonomous subject, Newton's mechanical universe, Freud's isolated individual — all these had pushed the West in a certain direction, and the ultimate result of that direction was the catastrophes of the twentieth century.
In response — thinkers in many fields began to look for a different model. Each in their own field. And, remarkably — they discovered something similar. Relation comes first. Mutual indwelling is the structure of being. Separation is illusion.
This appeared in theology as the rediscovery of perichoresis, in physics as the holographic universe model, in psychology as relational self theory, in ecology as deep ecology, in philosophy as post-structuralist relationism. All of them — under different names — were touching the same essence.
This convergence is an important intellectual turn of the twenty-first century. It has not yet become mainstream. The basic curricula of universities still teach the Cartesian worldview. The organizational logic of corporations is still mechanical. Political discourse is still individualist. But — fissures have opened. Into those fissures a new relational thinking is entering.
Here a serious warning is in order. Perichoresis is a concept easy to romanticize. "We are within one another." "We are one." "We are connected by love." These phrases — sound beautiful. But depending on the context — they are dangerous.
The language of perichoresis can be used to conceal power relations. Several examples.
Marriage: "We are one" has often served to legitimize the absorption of the wife's individuality into the husband. The wife having an opinion of her own was condemned as "separation." Feminist theologians have criticized this misuse.¹⁰
Colonial relations: When European missionaries entered Indigenous communities, they used the Christian language of "we are brothers." But that "brotherhood" was one-way. It was a relation in which the missionary "gave" Christianity to the Indigenous, not one in which the Indigenous "gave" anything to the missionary.
Corporate culture: A company culture of "we are family" — often becomes the mask of labor exploitation. "Since we are family, do overtime." "Since we are one, don't ask for a raise." This language conceals real power asymmetries.
Nationalism: The language "we are one people" — becomes a tool to exclude internal minorities. At the same time, it justifies hostility to outsiders. The two world wars of the twentieth century began with this language.
What all these misuses do in common is — to reproduce the structure of domination while wearing the mask of perichoretic structure. One-way absorption wearing the mask of "mutual indwelling."
On this problem, Latin American liberation theology provided decisive criticism. The work of Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, Elsa Tamez, and others.¹¹
Their core insight: love without justice is a lie. To say that two beings "dwell within one another" — is empty in conditions of extreme power asymmetry. Can the African slave and the white master be said to "dwell within one another"? Can the Spanish conqueror and the Inca prisoner at Cajamarca be said to be "in communion"? Can the Spanish overseer dismantling Sacsayhuamán and the Indigenous laborer carrying its stones be in a "perichoretic relation"?
Plainly not. In such situations the language of perichoresis is being misused. True perichoresis is possible only — in conditions where power asymmetry is minimized.
This insight makes the perichoresis concept stronger. Perichoresis is not simply a moral exhortation to "love one another." It is a claim about the conditions of relation that are actually possible. And those conditions — include structural justice.
This is what makes perichoresis a political concept. If we wish to dwell within one another — changing personal attitudes is not enough. We must change structures.
What obstructs egalitarian perichoretic relations:
All these structural problems are — the targets of work that makes perichoresis concretely realizable. This is not abstract philosophy but the matter of everyday politics.
So perichoresis carries — left-wing implications. Because in a society of severe inequality perichoresis is impossible. Because the struggle for equality is the work of building the conditions for perichoresis.
At the same time — perichoresis is also opposed to separatism. The solution "let's just live apart" is not it. The ideal of mutual indwelling requires density of relation. To meet, to influence and be influenced, to change together. This goes beyond the opposition of communitarianism and liberalism. Individual freedom and communal solidarity must — without excluding one another — deepen together.
This political vision is hard to realize at present. But — as an orienting point it is necessary. And when we recognize that the wisdom traditions we have — perichoresis, Cree wahkohtowin, Eastern Tao — are different languages aimed at the same orienting point, we can find a common vocabulary.
I owe a personal confession in this chapter. One of the reasons I have been drawn to the concept of perichoresis is — my experience as a medical researcher.
I have studied exercise medicine and physiology. For nearly thirty years. And in that time — I have witnessed firsthand a paradigm shift in research on the human body. That shift resonates remarkably with the concept of perichoresis.
When I entered the field of exercise medicine in the late 1980s, medicine was dominated by a model of separation. The body was divided into "systems." Cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, endocrine, musculoskeletal, neural, immune. Each system was studied separately. Textbooks were organized that way. Each chapter dealt with one system.
This model was efficient. Researchers could be trained in specialty fields. The diseases of particular systems could be deeply understood. Many achievements of twentieth-century medicine — antibiotics, vaccines, surgery, organ transplantation — were made possible by this model.
But there were limits. Chronic disease revealed those limits. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, depression, cancer. These diseases — are not problems of one system. Several systems are entangled. And — they are entangled with social and environmental factors outside the body. The model of separation could not capture this complexity.
In the twenty-first century — a quiet revolution occurred. Systems biology. The view that the body is not the sum of separated systems but a single integrated network.
Key findings:
The gut-brain axis. Gut microbes produce neurotransmitters. These influence the mood, cognition, and behavior of the brain. The brain's state, in turn — through the vagus nerve — regulates gut function. Two organs dwell within one another. They cannot be thought of separately.¹²
Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). The mind's state affects the immune system. Stress weakens immunity. Infection induces depression. Mind and body — not as a binary but as a single continuum — operate.
Epigenetics. The environment regulates gene expression. A mother's stress affects the gene expression patterns of her unborn child. A grandmother's experience of starvation links to her grandchild's risk of metabolic disease. Across generations, environment and gene dwell within one another.
The microbiome. Inside our bodies — there are as many microbial cells as there are human cells. They regulate our immunity, digestion, metabolism, even our mood. We — are not alone. Trillions of other living beings live inside us, and we live through them.
All these findings — converge on a single unified message. The human body is not the sum of separated systems. The systems dwell within one another. And the body itself dwells within the environment, and the environment dwells within the body.
This is perichoresis. Expressed in the language of medicine.
This medical paradigm shift leads directly into salutogenesis. The next chapter will treat it in earnest. Here it is enough to point out — that perichoresis is reviving in medicine as well.
And what I as a medical researcher have felt watching this transition — is that this is not simply scientific progress. It is a shift of worldview. And this shift — is turning back to what the Inca philosophy of yaku, the Cree wahkohtowin, the Eastern thought of Qi — what all these "premodern" traditions already knew. We are not discovering it anew. We are recovering it.
If this concept stays abstract its value is halved. The real power of perichoresis is — that it gives us a language to diagnose the reality we live in today. The most pressing application I have seen in clinical work and research is here. Many of the diseases of the Republic of Korea are not the failure of individual choice, but the result of the structural collapse of perichoresis — a state of toxic culture.
This is not rhetoric but diagnosis. In one sentence:
A substantial portion of disease in Korea is not stress alone but the result of complex toxic culture — life, relations, culture, and anxiety about the future entangled in a way that collapses the salutogenic system.
This toxic system operates not as one factor but as six axes that reinforce each other.
① Movement deprivation. A cram-school-centered life unintentionally sedentarizes children's movement, play, and autonomous physical activity. Sarcopenia, insulin resistance, autonomic imbalance, weakened emotional regulation. Lack of exercise is not a simple "behavior problem" but a regulatory failure of the brain–emotion–metabolism whole.
② Ultra-processed food exposure. Collapse of home cooking, spread of convenience-store, delivery, and cram-school meals. Rise in glycemic variability, decline of gut microbial diversity, increase of inflammatory tone, hyperactivation of reward circuitry. Food is not nutrition; it is neural, hormonal, and immune signaling.
③ Loss of family meal. "Not eating at home" does not mean simply that meals have gone missing. It means the disappearance of the intersection of rhythm, emotional safety, and social mutual indwelling. The result: failure of appetite regulation, emotional isolation, loss of stress-recovery pathways. The family meal is the intersection of physiological and social health.
④ Competition-internalizing education. A cram-school-centered system teaches priority over coexistence, comparison over cooperation, and treats failure as elimination. Chronic tension, self-worth = performance, others = competitors. This culture goes beyond psychic problems to undermine social immunity.
⑤ Job insecurity in the AI age + youth unemployment. The perception that "even effort can be replaced." Unpredictability of the future. Chronic anxiety, weakened capacity to plan, loss of meaning, burnout. This is not an individual failure of adaptation but a physiological response to a systemic failure of prediction.
⑥ Chronic stress — not cause, but result and amplifier. The point on which the previous five axes converge is chronic stress. The discourse that names stress as "the root cause" is wrong. Stress is not the cause but the symptom and the amplifier.
How do six axes produce disease? Three pathways operate together.
Biological pathway: chronic stress + lack of exercise + ultra-processed food → mitochondrial dysfunction → fixation of inflammatory state → increased risk of metabolic, cardiovascular, and psychiatric disease.
Neural-emotional pathway: hyperactive reward circuitry + reduced prefrontal regulation → rising impulsivity, rising depression and anxiety.
Social pathway: relational disconnection + internalized competition → reduced recovery resources → chronification of disease.
Translate this picture into the language of perichoresis, and the structure comes into view.
Body–mind–relation–future must dwell within one another to make health. But the present system is cutting these connections one by one.
This is the state in which perichoretic health has been converted into perichoretic breakdown. The three marks — mutual indwelling, mutual interpenetration, mutual non-confusion — collapse simultaneously. Self-care turns into self-exploitation, relation into transaction, the home into a function, the future into fear.
This diagnosis asks us to shift the question itself.
And the answer shifts accordingly.
Many of the diseases of Korea are not failures of individual choice, but the result of a toxic culture in which the deficiency of physical activity, the environment of ultra-processed food, the collapse of family and community, competition-centered education, and AI-age future-anxiety mutually reinforce one another. Therefore the solution, too, is not individual prescription but a salutogenic systemic transformation that simultaneously restores life, relation, culture, and meaning.
What this transformation looks like — when perichoresis is translated into the language of medicine, policy, and education — what kind of intervention this concretely becomes. A perichoretic intervention model that ties exercise, eating, relation, and meaning into a single design. This is one of the projects I continue to refine as a scholar, and a topic that requires separate work beyond the scope of this book.
Here I want only to emphasize — that this diagnosis itself is already the beginning of healing. To see what one is inside of. To break Wetiko's self-concealment. And — to begin within it the small choices that restore relation one at a time.
What is structurally the same as perichoresis has been named by other civilizations in other words. The Cree word Wahkohtowin¹³ is the ontology of "everything connected as kin." Hunting, gathering, drawing water, picking medicinal herbs — every one of these acts is preceded by a gesture of thanks and asking permission. So as not to over-extract from kin. This sense — translates the three marks of perichoresis (mutual indwelling, mutual interpenetration, mutual non-confusion) into daily practice.
The circle dance, a common element in North American Indigenous ceremony, is also a bodily form of the same structure. People stand in a circle, the drum beats, and one by one the dancers step into the circle. The circle itself is the message. Connection without beginning or end, a structure in which no one is fixed at the center. When one steps inside, all watch him. And under that gaze he still dances as himself. Selfhood within mutual indwelling. What John of Damascus said in the eighth century — "like dancers" — was, in the actual gesture of these communities, being literally embodied.
Other civilizations already knew perichoresis. Only the names were different.
I have written this chapter. It was not easy. Perichoresis is harder to put on the page than any other concept. Because it is — fundamentally something to be lived, not something to be understood.
And yet this chapter was needed. Because — the diagnosis of Wetiko unfolded in Part 3 must not be left without a direction of healing. There must be an antipode of Wetiko. The name of that antipode — among many possibilities — is perichoresis. A Byzantine theologian's word, but — a word that can become a common vocabulary for many wisdom traditions of the world.
What this word gives:
These five together — point in exactly the opposite direction of Wetiko. Where Wetiko separates and dominates, perichoresis frees within relation. Where Wetiko devours the other, perichoresis dwells within the other — and remains itself.
But this chapter is not the end. Perichoresis is a concept discovered in the West. A product of Western Christian theology. And — for this concept to have global validity — it must dialogue with the wisdom traditions of other civilizations.
In the next chapter we listen to the East's response. Wonhyo's Hwajaeng (和諍). Toegye's gyeong (敬). Choe Je-u's sicheonju (侍天主). The yin-yang union of traditional East Asian medicine. And — Korea's particular relational concepts — jeong (情), uri (우리).
How these Eastern concepts resonate with perichoresis. And — how they at times differ. In particular, how the hierarchical Confucian tradition has used "relationality" to justify inequality. Including this shadow.
Eastern thought cannot simply restore perichoresis. The East too — has had its own Wetiko-like distortions. But — the relational wisdom at the root of Eastern tradition is still rich. It is time to look at it again.
And — for all of us — this dance is waiting. Each in our own place, each in our own form. In an Andean festival, in a Korean ganggangsullae, at the daily table. If only we will choose it.
¹ This citation from John of Damascus is the author's synthesis of his account of perichoresis in De Fide Orthodoxa. The original may be found in John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, trans. S.D.F. Salmond, in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 9 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), Book I, Chapter 8 and Book III, Chapter 5.
² On the etymology of perichoresis, see Geoffrey W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 1077–1078.
³ John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa (c. 743). Modern critical edition: Expositio Fidei, ed. Bonifatius Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973).
⁴ John Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985).
⁵ Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993; original German edition 1980).
⁶ Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996).
⁷ David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge, 1980).
⁸ David Bohm, On Dialogue (London: Routledge, 1996).
⁹ On Adler's concept of Gemeinschaftsgefühl, see Alfred Adler, Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind, trans. John Linton and Richard Vaughan (London: Faber and Faber, 1938).
¹⁰ On feminist theological reinterpretation of perichoresis, see Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992).
¹¹ On the integration of justice and love in Latin American liberation theology, see Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, rev. ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988); Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988).
¹² For a recent synthesis of the gut-brain axis, see Emeran Mayer, The Mind-Gut Connection (New York: Harper Wave, 2016).
¹³ On the Cree concept of wahkohtowin, see Fyre Jean Graveline, Circle Works: Transforming Eurocentric Consciousness (Halifax: Fernwood, 1998), chapter 3; Neal McLeod, Cree Narrative Memory: From Treaties to Contemporary Times (Saskatoon: Purich, 2007).