Body & Mind connection

The truth about the Body-Mind-Spirit connection

For centuries, healers have pondered the connection between mental and physical health.

In recent years, science has begun to recognize the powerful connections through which emotional, spiritual, and behavioral factors can directly affect health outcomes.

Emotions and thought patterns can contribute to imbalances within the body, and therapies like hypnosis, visual imagery, meditation, and yoga are being used to re-establish balance and promote health.

One way to effectively express and get your feelings out is to talk about them.

This can be done out loud by speaking with a trusted friend, or on paper through a journaling practice.

Meditation is another valuable mind-body practice for becoming more present and centering the mind.

Regular meditation practice is a particularly effective way to help the body modulate emotional responses and the accompanying neurochemical patterns that can otherwise flood the body with harmful stress hormones.

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you will start having positive results.

The beliefs you hold about yourself and the world, your emotions, your memories, and your habits all can influence mental and physical health.

These connections between what is going on in your mind and heart, and what is happening in your body, form the psycho-emotional roots of health and disease.

The body-mind connection happens on both a physical and chemical level.

The brain is the hardware that allows you to experience mental states that are labeled the “mind.” This concept of the “mind” encompasses mental states including thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and emotions.

Different mental states can positively or negatively affect biological functioning.

This occurs since the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems share a common chemical language, which allows constant communication between the mind and body through messengers like hormones and neurotransmitters.

You may have experienced this aspect of the body-mind connection when you feel butterflies in your stomach when you feel nervous, or when your heart feels like it is pounding out of your chest when you are under intense stress.

These influence the maintenance of health or the development of disease.

For example, emotions like anxiety can trigger increased stress hormones, which may suppress the immune system and set the stage for the development of infections or cancer.

Thoughts and emotions also carry vibrations that impact your biochemical, cellular, and overall physiological state.

At a physical level, the body is made up of atoms and water, which are in a constant state of motion.

The type of movement or frequency at which atoms within a cell vibrate creates a form of wave energy that influences their structure and function.

Science demonstrates that thoughts, words, and feelings can change the crystal structure of water and cells, which can change their function.