Depending on which culture one is from the mind and the body are often thought of as having a connected symbiotic relationship, where the mind controls the movement of the body, and the body obeys the mind. In other cases that mind and body are two separate entities wholly independent of the other, where the body can control some actions of its own. .
The body is typically viewed as an "object of purely mental operations, a thing in which social patterns are projected" (Jackson 1983:329), thus the body has no control over itself. It is this view that expresses the body is just a vessel for the mind to use; a slow, lumbering husk for the quick and rational brain. Csordas states the idea that the body is "not an object that is "good to think" but as a subject that is "necessary to be"" (1993:135), thus completely throwing away the notion that the body has any control. .
However the body is fully capable of unconscious operations, such as the beating of a heart or the blinking of an eye. According to Jackson "Gestures and bodily habits often belie what we put into words, and give away our unconscious dispositions, betraying character traits of which our verbal and conceptual habits keep us in ignorance" (1983:328). Thus the body, in this case, is revealing more about a person then the person mentally is allowing themselves to show. So while the mind may have control, the body may also operate separate from the mind on a subconscious level. In which case the body and the mind are separate and independent factors of everyday life. .
These conceptions of the mind and body, either as two separate entities or as one whole one, vary from culture to culture. The various methods used by medicinal healers all over the world, show the uniqueness of cultures and values. For instance in many of the Western cultures chemicals, which is what medicine in pill form is at its most basic level, are the most common way to treat the body of illness, totally ignoring the mind and just focusing on the chemicals in the body.