In an earlier post, I raised the question of the mind healing the body. We know that this is possible because of the placebo effect, in which patients obtain relief even though the doctor has given them only a sugar pill, an injection of saline solution or some other innocuous substance. The placebo effect, contrary to widespread suspicion, is a “real” cure. Pain is diminished; symptoms are alleviated. However it depends upon deception. The doctor knows that he is giving a harmless substance; the patient doesn’t.
So the issue comes down to triggering the mind-body connection without being deceived. Is there a way for each person to influence his body consciously? We do this all the time, of course. You can’t lift a finger, throw a baseball or drive a car without translating a mental intention into a physical response. But when it comes to disease symptoms, the mind-body connection feels weak or nonexistent. Every sick person wants to get well. How can the mind help?
- The mind contributes to getting well.
- The mind doesn’t contribute to getting sick.
- The body is in constant communication with the mind.
- This communication benefits both the physical and mental aspects of being well.
When the placebo effect works, it’s clear all four aspects are involved. The patient’s mind cooperates with the treatment — trusts it. The body is aware of this trust. There is open communication, and as a result, cells throughout the body participate in a healing response. The healing system as a whole is incredibly complex and all but impossible to explain as a whole. We only know parts of how it operates, such as our knowledge of antibodies and the immune response to infection.
How to Use Your Mind-Body Connection for Healing!!!!
Yet somehow, for all its complexity, the healing system can be triggered by a simple intention of the mind. To be your own placebo, then, requires the same conditions that apply in a classic placebo response:
- You trust what is happening.
- You deal with doubt and fear.
- You don’t send conflicting messages that get tangled with each other.
- You have opened the channels of mind-body communication.
- You let go of your intention and let the healing system do its work.
Clearly, everyone finds it easy to let go when a problem is small, such as a cut finger or a bruise. The mind isn’t interfering with doubts and fears. But both play a major role in serious illness, which is “why” a practice like meditation or going to group counseling can be a great help. Sharing your anxiety with others in the same position is one way to begin to clear them.
It’s also helpful to follow your instincts. Most of us deal with illness through misleading processes like wishful thinking and denial. Our fears lead us into the blind alleys of false hope. In such cases, the mind isn’t really alert to what the body is saying, or vice versa. The atmosphere is clouded. To trust what your body is telling you implies that you will take action to give it what it wants. Each body … wants different things … at any given moment, but at the very least our bodies do best without tobacco, alcohol, excessive medications and various chemical adulterants.
Discovering Good Health … the Laws of Your Mind!!!
It’s also helpful to follow your instincts. Most of us deal with illness through misleading processes like wishful thinking and denial. Our fears lead us into the blind alleys of false hope. In such cases, the mind isn’t really alert to what the body is saying, or vice versa. The atmosphere is clouded. To trust what your body is telling you implies that you will take action to give it what it wants. Each body wants different things at any given moment, but at the very least our bodies do best without tobacco, alcohol, excessive medications and various chemical adulterants.
How to use your mind to deal with illness ….
One way to become more aware of your body is to sit quietly with your eyes closed and simply feel the body. Let any sensation come to the surface. Don’t respond to the sensation, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Relax and be aware of it. Notice where the sensation is coming from. There won’t be one sensation or feeling only. You’ll find that your awareness goes from place to place, one moment noticing your foot or your stomach, your chest or your neck.
This simple exercise is like a mind-body reconnection. Too many people are in the habit of not paying attention to anything but the grossest signals from their bodies, like extreme pain, stiffness or discomfort. What you want to do is to increase your sensitivity and your trust at the same time. Your body knows at a subtle level where disease and discomfort are. It sends signals at every moment, and these are not to be feared. Even if you consciously ignore what is happening in your cells, there is a level of conscious information that is being exchanged just below the level of awareness.
Indeed every cell in the body knows, through chemical messengers, what every other cell is doing. By also bringing your conscious mind into the loop, you are adding to this communication. How? The body operates through two compatible aspects of the nervous system. One is involuntary…. and takes care of every process…. that doesn’t need your awareness. The other is voluntary, meaning that it responds to your awareness. These two aspects of the mind/brain are connected. You can switch from one to the other.
For example, if you are stuck in traffic and feeling stressed, your heart rate can increase involuntarily. Yet you can choose to go running, which increases your heart rate as the result of your intention. We know from research experiments: advanced yogis can alter involuntary responses at will, such as lowering their heart rate and breathing to very low levels or increasing skin temperature in a very precise way. As it happens, you and I have the same abilities, although we don’t consciously use them. You can be led through an exercise to make a spot on the palm of your hand grow warmer.
One can venture that the placebo effect falls into the same category. It’s a voluntary response we could use if only we learned to. The healing system seems to be involuntary. You don’t have to think in order to heal a cut or a bruise. Yet the fact that some patients can make their own pain go away when given a sugar pill they think is aspirin implies, very strongly, that intention makes a difference in healing. And we aren’t talking about positive thinking, but a deeper mind-body connection.
Your body and mind are meant to be a whole, and to ensure that they are, your whole existence is based on feedback loops. Body listens to mind; mind listens to body. Awareness is the link. Make no mistake: Every cell knows when you are unhappy, anxious or stressed. A cell’s awareness is expressed in chemical reactions instead of words. No matter. The message comes through loud and clear.
These are all primary things to pay attention to. Yet on a subtler level, bodies like to be spiritual. Bliss and ecstasy don’t belong in the souls of saints alone. They course through the body, bringing a sense of ease, lightness, alertness, energy and exuberance. Your cells feel all these things and want you to feel them too. How? By learning, day by day, to pay more attention to what your body is saying. As the layers of indifference, judgment and denial peel away, the underlying joyful life will emerge.
One of the most basic ways to be aware is by grounding yourself in the body. There is no mystery to it. Simply feel your body whenever you’ve been distracted. Let’s say you’re driving a car, and somebody cuts you off. Also your normal reaction is to be agitated or angry; you jump out of the calm, relaxed focus that connects you to the mind-body field. Instead of being overshadowed by this disruption, just go within and feel the sensations of your body. Take a deep breath, it’s an easy way to come back to body awareness.
Keep your attention on these sensations until they disappear. What you’ve done is cut off the stimulus response with a gap. A gap is an interval of non-reaction. It stops the reaction from fueling itself. It reminds the body of its natural state of harmonious, coordinated self-regulation. And that grounds you. It’s easy because harmonious self-regulation is the body’s ground state. Stress pulls you into another state of heightened biological response that triggers a flow of hormones, increased heart rate, hyper – vigilance of the sense and many other linked reactions.
But all are temporary; they are emergency measures only. If you allow the stress reaction to become a habit, however, disharmony enters the field of mind and body. The normal state of relaxed awareness tries to co-exist with the disrupted, agitated state of the stress response. The two don’t mix; they aren’t meant to exist at the same time.
Anytime you’re feeling distracted, overwhelmed, stressed or overshadowed, there’s a tendency to escape. The state of denial is an escape. Distracting yourself through overwork is an escape. Altering your mind with drugs and alcohol is an escape. What they all have in common is absence of awareness. You numb or distract yourself under the false belief that unawareness will help you, while being too aware will only increase your pain. In reality, the opposite is true. Awareness heals…. because awareness is the only thing that is truly whole and healing is fundamentally a return to wholeness.
Problems with diet, weight and body image begin in the mind, but as the body carries out the bad messages coming from the mind, it begins to mirror those messages and the beliefs that lie behind them. That’s why supermodels often get no happiness from their physical “perfection.” Indeed, the better their bodies look, the more obvious it is to them that they don’t deserve to have such a body or that it will betray them.
SO what can you do to start listening to your body? The most basic elements are as follows:
— Feel what you feel. Don’t talk yourself into denial.
— Accept what you feel. Don’t judge what’s actually there.
— Be open to your body. It’s always speaking. Be willing to listen.
— Trust your body. Every cell is on your side, which means you have hundreds of billions of allies.
Value spontaneity. Emotions change, cells change, the brain changes. Don’t be the policeman who stops the river of change by blocking it with frozen, fixed beliefs.
Enjoy what your body wants to do. Bodies like to rest, but they also like to be active. Bodies like different kinds of food that are eaten with enjoyment. Bodies like sex and pleasure in general.
In the book The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, these issues are dealt with in detail. The section on body awareness ends with three practical things you can do today. To get on the path to increased awareness, say the following to yourself and then carry your words into action:
1. I will make choices to maximize the energy in my body. My body is my connection to the infinite supply of energy in the universe. If am feeling lack of energy in any way, it means that I am resisting the flow of this infinite supply. I will ask my body what it needs and will sincerely follow its advice. The ideal state is to experience such lightness that I do not feel bounded by my body. It and the world are one.
2. Before I act on any emotion, I will consult my heart. My heart is a reliable guide when I trust it. It monitors the emotions of others around me. This helps me experience empathy, compassion and love. The heart is the seat of our emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence allows me to get in touch with my deepest self. It nurtures all relationships by reminding us to see ourself in others.
3. Lightness of being in my body will be my indicator of happiness. If I feel heavy or dull in my body, I will pay attention … because these feelings are signs that I am inertia and the dreariness of habit over the potential that every moment has for freshness and new life (NOTE: does this mean sense? he is the dreariness of habit?). The best way to replenish our body is to give it what it needs most, whether it’s sleep, rest, life-giving nourishment, the joy of movement or communion with nature.
Deepak Chopra is the author of more than 50 books on health, success, relationships and spirituality, including his current best-seller, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, and The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, which are available now. You can listen to his show on Saturdays every week on SiriusXM Channels 102 and 155.
Having Faith is Having Trust that GOD won’t put you in a situation you can not handle. Also remember when your in a traffic jam of LIFE…. slowly but surely wins the race. Remember to keep LIFE is perspective …. it is what it is and happens for a reason. Maybe sometimes when your in line waiting… it because it’s meant to allow you time to listen to those around you. And it can be found either in that line talking to someone or something might be on the radio that you need to be listening too.
The Rock of Ages is a precious corner stone; which, as it is both for the beauty and strength of the building, so it knits, cements, and keeps the parts together. The Rock is a tried stone; Some render it, “a stone of trial”, or “a trying stone” (t); by which men are tried, and discovered to be what they are, whether a true believer or unbeliever. For those that believe will be saved