Thoughts, Emotions, Enlighten, Develop
What is the Mind-Body Connection?
The easiest way to think about the mind-body connection is that when you think a thought, the body reacts to it. This is why when you are panicking about being late for work, your body becomes stressed and you feel an emotion about it. Whether that be anxious, angry or confused, your brain releases a hormone depending upon the thoughts you think. This process is more commonly referred to as the fight, flight or freeze response.
It is interesting in society that the Mind-Body connection is believed when referring to the above and when thinking about food, your mouth will salivate. This belief comes from the evidence you have received by experiencing the responses in your own life. What is not more commonly believed is that their is always a Mind-Body connection happening in all areas of your life. For example, your body will react when you think about money, relationships, career etc. and you will respond to this based upon your beliefs.
Enlightenment through Developing Awareness
The first step in being mindful is to intentionally notice first-hand, in your own personal life experience, that your thoughts and emotions are impacting your body. It is to become aware of how your body responds to the thoughts your mind is thinking. Our mind-based thoughts are all linked to our beliefs about something.
If we believe someone is loving, we will then think thoughts about them that create a positive feeling in the body. If we believe someone is not loving then we think thoughts about them that are not so positive and thus create a very different feeling in our body. Therefore, becoming aware of your thoughts and how these impact the body will help you develop your Mind-Body Connection.
A great little exercise is for 24 hours, write down in a notebook any time you noticed that your body reacted to the thoughts you were thinking. This could be the ones I mention above around food or being stuck in traffic. You could also create situations like thinking about a difficult relative and jotting down how your body reacts or when you are relaxing by the pool on holiday. You should find that with one, your body relaxes and with the other the body contracts.
What you should find the most interesting, which I do, is that you are not actually experiencing these situations. You are just thinking about them and your body still reacts. Therefore, your body does not need the actual situation to be happening, it just needs your mind to think thoughts about it to react. This is ultimately what the Mind-Body connection is-a thought (mind) and a reaction (body).
How Beliefs Affect the Mind-Body Connection.
I mentioned before that our mind thinks thoughts based on our beliefs. Our mind and body adapt to our environment; we make beliefs based on this environment and on what we believe will keep us safe and happy. Many of these beliefs are created in childhood when we needed others to survive. Survival is the number one priority of the mind and body. These beliefs are not always healthy or needed as we grow and can survive by ourselves. We must find them, heal them and adapt them.
By changing your beliefs and how you perceive life, your mind and body can adapt again, but this time by functioning in a more desirable way. Symptoms many consider to be physical problems are often your body’s best attempt at adapting to survive. When we restore these beliefs and sub-consciously raise our awareness to our present-day reality. We realise these protective behaviours and beliefs are no longer serving us and we can re-wire the mind to what is protecting and serving us now.
Scenario:
For instance, taking the stuck in traffic scenario I mention above. There can be two different beliefs that we can choose to adopt, which will give you two different reactions in the body.
Belief number one: I am going to be late for work, get in trouble and possibly lose my job. The mind then goes into a spiral of scenarios. We end up in fight, flight or freeze and the body responds with anxiousness, tightness and frustrated emotions.
Belief number two: I may be late for work but I am appreciated for my other efforts and everything will be fine. The mind then thinks about all the other efforts you put into your work and how appreciated that is by your boss (or should be) and the body responds by feeling relaxed.
The outcome will be the same in both situations as you cannot control the reason for the traffic. The experience you have can either be a relaxed drive to work or a frustrated panicked one with a tight body the whole way there. What we need to see here is that we cannot control the traffic but we can control our responses to it.
The 4 Way’s to Develop your Mind-Body Connection
Step 1
- Awareness
As stated above, aware is key and the first step. The more aware you become of your own specific reactions that your body makes when you think thoughts about something. The more in tune you and aligned you will become. You will begin to realise that your body is responding to unwanted/unhealthy/untrue thoughts or you are feeling emotions based on the thoughts you have been thinking or believing about something.
Step 2
- Choice
Then you have the choice to believe it or not. We often believe our thoughts are not a choice because we have become so conditioned to believe our thoughts are us. The average person has 10-20K thoughts a day. Therefore, we cannot be our thoughts otherwise we would change 10-20K time a day. Again the more aware we become of the thoughts we are thinking, we can stop and then choose to think something different. When we choose to change our thoughts, to something more positive and in alignment with the outcome of what we want. Our body will naturally respond to this, as it believes we are now safe or happy, and can relax.
Step 3
- Control
Depending upon the circumstances and the environmental stresses we are experiencing. We can often feel we have no control over what is happening but we always have control. We have control over what we think, how we feel and how we respond to a situation. You may not be able to control a situation but you can control the 3 things above. It takes practice to learn how to control our responses, our thoughts and our emotions. This is something I implore you to start practicing and below are a couple of exercises you can do to begin that practice.
Exercise one:
Bring the focus back to the present moment. Wherever you are, become aware of something you can see that you did not notice before. Then become aware of something you can hear that you did not notice before. Then become aware of something you can feel that you did not notice before (possibly the feeling of your feet on the ground or you legs against a chair). This brings you back to present moment, it gives the mind something to focus on instead of your thoughts and it brings you back to your body.
Exercise two:
Focus on the breath. Belly breathing is something most people do not do. I am also a singer so I trained to breath this way many years ago and did not realise that most people breath up instead of down. This is a good thing because it will be so different from the way you normally breath that it will help you relax further. When you inhale, count to 5 and try and get your belly to push out as you breath in. When you breath out also count to 5 and draw your belly in. This focusing on a in and out and counting will refocus the mind and tune you into your body.
Both exercise create a moment of stillness. They relax the nervous system and calm the mind so you can get off the thought spiral and make clearer choices about how you want to respond to your environmental stressor. We enter our more develop part of the brain and use reasoning to respond rather than our more primate part of the brain that is responding for survival purposes. (Check out my blog on how the mind has developed to read more about this).
Step 4
- Beliefs
My favourite step is to become aware of your beliefs around how and why your body is responding the way it is. I am a big believer and practitioner of self-inquiry especially around beliefs. This is why I trained as a Mind Calm Master and Mind Detox Practitioner. Understanding that the mind thinks thoughts based on its beliefs about something helps us understand that we have more control than we think we do. We have the power to change these beliefs and thought patterns.
Quick Tip
Staying with the traffic scenario and the beliefs I mentioned before, if you inquire why you are panicking and you find it is because you are worried you will lose your job, you can ask your mind- What is the worst that can happen?
My Experience
When I did this in the past about the traffic scenario what I discovered was that I was worried about my financial situation. Money in this world has been linked to power and survival, so of course our body is going to react in fight, flight or freeze. This is the go to when we are fearing for our survival.
However, when we calm ourselves, take control and come from the place of reasoning and ask ourself this question. We begin to see that the worse case scenario may not happen at all. We can see that no matter what happens with a job, we will survive. Digging deeper and finding the belief behind the bodily reaction, you may find there is an unhealthy belief that you can then change. For me, I flipped the script by realising I have been fine in the past when I have changed jobs and that my skills remain no matter the situation.
Want to Change your Beliefs?
If you find there are unhealthy beliefs you would like to remove then check out Mind Detox Therapy and how it gets to the root cause of issues and transforms them to healthier beliefs.
Products to Develop the Mind-Body Connection
Meditation App
Meditation brings you back to the present moment. It calms the mind and body by increasing a sense of peace, stillness and awareness to being clear and here.
Bath Salts
Taking a bath is a wonderful way to calm the body and bring a sense of peace. It allows an instant connection to the body and feels like you are receive a warm hug. Epson Salts have magnesium in them which helps remove toxins from the body and helps restore muscles.
Journals
Journaling is a wonderful way to tune into ourselves. It allows emotions and thoughts to be released instead of them ruminating around our minds all day/week or month. Once we have been heard and seen by ourselves through journaling, it usually makes the body feel more relaxed as it adds a sense of completion to what we have experienced. It also helps us to see our thoughts and whether we want to change these or even believe them.
Music App
Listening to music can be amazingly uplifting or relaxing depending on what the genre of the music is. We focus on what we hear and certain songs can inspire positive memories. Music will help you practice a shift in focus and will develop the Mind-Body connection as you will choose to be in a state of calm and joy.
