The Mind Body Connection. Real or Woo Woo?

This era of all kinds of alternative and “out there” self-help health information becomes confusing to people.  The internet is full of suggestions that are not evidence-based and grounded in science.  All of us have played “Doctor Google” and looked up medical issues we or our family members face.  If you are like me, you might have even bought an expensive product online that did absolutely nothing and sat in your cupboard until it expired.

Unfortunately, some holistic medicine approaches have received a bad reputation because of false claims and no research to back it up.  This has led some people to poo-poo the idea of a mind/body connection.

More Than a Body Beneath Our Necks

Often, we think that we have a mind in our head and a body beneath our neck but in medicine we know this is not true. In fact, we are mind/body operating together at all times.

Our minds are truly complicated. Neurologists are just now tapping into their power. In simple terms, they believe our mind has two aspects. The first is the conscious mind. The verbal part of you. But you don’t need to be speaking for your conscious mind to be working. It is the constant irritating chatter in your head.  The “monkey mind” is what I call it. I was explaining this to a lovely man who said, “”I get it!  Gail you’re healthy so you just have one monkey in your head. I was just diagnosed with cancer and I have a whole zoo of monkeys that won’t stop talking!” All of us can identify with periods in our lives where we have had all kinds of mind chatter.  

Yet, you have another aspect of your mind that is completely non-verbal. Let’s call it the subconscious mind.  Because it is non-verbal, it can’t talk back to you. So, if you give this part of your mind positive suggestions over and over again, research shows that you can change behavior. This is one of the reasons I love guided imagery. It’s a recording of someone’s soft voice giving your quiet mind the reinforcing suggestions that you need to help you with your personal challenges.

Stress and the Subconscious Mind

These two aspects of the mind are connected to the body through the central nervous system. So, when the monkeys start to chatter away, they tell the body to go into the Sympathetic Nervous system response. Perhaps you know it by another name, the Fight or Flight response.  Fight or Flight is practically miraculous. Small women can tear a car door off during an accident to get a baby from the back seat.  However, if your monkey mind is chattering away it actually tells the body to go into this fight or flight response, which in medicine we also call the Stress Response. Medicine tells us that a constant state of stress is harmful to the body in a number of ways.

Luckily, the quiet part of the mind, the subconscious mind is connected to the body through the Parasympathetic branch of our nervous system. I call this branch the Rest and Digest mode of my body.  This is where we can properly digest our food, sleep and the wisdom of our bodies can help us heal.

Will you have stressful thoughts?  Absolutely!  Just turning on the news can cause anxiety these days.  You are not a guru meditating in a cave 24/7. But understanding that stress is harmful doesn’t it make sense to find ways in your busy life to calm your mind and tap into the wisdom of your body? The mind/body connection is a simple and proven antidote to the stress that surrounds us.