The Mind-Body Cure. Bal Pawa
an inner dialogue that is pro health rather than pro disease. Remember that thinking positive thoughts is not enough; only by trusting at a deep core level that there will be positive outcomes will our brain translate this message to all the cells in the body. This is the fundamental basis for long-term physical health, vitality, and longevity because positive thought patterns lead to healthy choices in behavior, which then become traits, and eventually turn into habits, which form the basis of what becomes your health-conscious personality.
Having a health mindset allows you to set specific, realistic health goals and achieve them. Instead of committing to “follow a healthy diet,” you are more likely to succeed if you write down your intention to “eat a boiled egg, one cup of berries, and one cup of oatmeal with shredded coconut for breakfast.” Having a tangible, specific, and doable goal engages your conscious brain and gives you a precise target to follow through on. Similarly, if you want to lose weight, engage your health mindset and declare, “I have confidence in my ability to walk briskly for at least thirty minutes daily, then add thirty sit-ups before I go to bed.”
In my own recovery, I initially underestimated the power of the mind, the inner dialogue, and the role of stress hormones on inflammation and healing. Healing does not occur overnight, and my journey continues today. I still occasionally get flare-ups of neck pain while doing certain activities, but I am better at body and mind awareness and can recalibrate faster. I still get the occasional terrifying dream of the accident, but I can recover much more quickly and not let it affect my day.
The difference is that the memory of the accident no longer triggers visceral anxiety and panic or emotions. More importantly, my perception (my story) has shifted from “Why did this happen to me?” to “It could have been much worse; I am alive and well now.” I have taken full responsibility for my pain and recovery rather than staying in victim mode. I have practiced forgiveness for the driver and for myself. I have become a better physician as I view treatment and health care differently. I view the accident and all I have become as a gift to live a new and better life.
CONCLUSION
As humans, we are products of what we think, believe, and feel—and the mind rather than the brain is at the center of these. Thoughts are the language of the mind. Established thoughts become beliefs, and they are the language of our mindset and the way we see the world. Feelings are the language of the body. To change how we feel, we must change our thoughts and beliefs.
Our mind manufactures 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day! Many of those are automatic responses embedded in our subconscious and they underlie our belief systems and our mindset. Think about that for a minute. If we could consciously harness all of those thoughts for health, just think how powerful that could be. The key to healing illness rests on staying alert and observing our automatic thoughts, and if these are negative, then we need to actively create new, better thoughts that serve our body. When repeated, virtually experienced, and “felt,” these beliefs become embedded in our subconscious mind and become our new automatic thoughts. This is the ultimate “shift” that occurs in mindset and sets us in motion toward healing or better health.
2. Mind Your Brain
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
SELF-ASSESSMENT
Our brain is designed to be efficient and to automatically streamline the activities of daily life, especially repetitive ones. We become creatures of habit: doing the same things, buying the same food, cooking the same way, and even sitting at the same seat every day. We are unaware that our brain is running things automatically with no conscious input.
Do you:
have a morning routine (for example, get up, go to the toilet, prepare your coffee . . .)?
have a favorite mug for your coffee or tea?
sit in the same seat at the table, at the movies, or on the bus?
walk into the kitchen and automatically open the fridge door?
eat reflexively when you see food ads?
go to familiar Internet or YouTube sites?
consistently buy the same colors and types of clothing?
run on autopilot and wonder why you ended up in a particular place or doing something you didn’t intend to?
rely on tried-and-trusted routines rather than explore new ones?
stick to familiar comforts rather than challenge yourself?
While our mind is busy creating thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and memories, the brain plays a central role in translating them into electrical and chemical signals that send complex communications to the rest of the body using hormones and neurotransmitters. It also consolidates and stores the memories of all our experiences. In addition to these roles, the brain’s main functions are to maintain balance within the body, be vigilant for external cues, be efficient, and above all keep us safe from danger. The brain is very busy!
Much of the time the brain can act automatically, which makes our lives easier and more efficient. It can memorize functions and habits, such as getting up in the morning and automatically reaching for a toothbrush and toothpaste or driving a car, allowing the conscious mind to be “offline” to focus on other things. However, our brain is hypersensitive to danger signals and perceives any disruption to its regular functioning as various degrees of stress. It is our mind that gives meaning to a situation after perceiving external cues and decides whether we react in fear or in trust. When we interpret a situation as dangerous, our brain turns on the fight-or-flight reaction instantly. Built-in protective mechanisms—such as an increase in blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar levels—allow us to react quickly to danger or threat. In this way, short-term stress keeps us out of harm’s way and protects us.
This high level of vigilance has been beneficial to humans as we’ve evolved, allowing us to survive actual threats such as attacks from predators, infections, and countless natural disasters. However, while our frontal brains have become larger and more sophisticated over time—leading us to explore space, develop medical robotic surgery, and create advanced computer technology—the primitive brain responsible for our fear reaction has remained basic in design. While most of us no longer have to worry about being the next meal for predators in the jungle, our mind often creates thoughts of guilt, anger, fear, resentment, and being “busy” that can create the same fear reaction provoked by the sight of a saber-toothed tiger. Our mind’s automatic thoughts, or remembered sounds, sights, or smells of danger, can turn on the fight-or-flight reaction. In other words, the mind creates stress and the brain activates our body’s stress hormones. By thought alone, the brain can be tricked into sending visceral messages to the body about a threat that is not actually present.
Sometimes the memory of danger can become so embedded in the brain after many repetitions that it becomes automatic, such that we continually react to a perceived instead of an actual threat. Perpetual thoughts of stress, whether real or imagined, keep our stress hormones continuously activated. And prolonged, chronic stress shrinks the brain and causes a profound change in its chemistry, biology, and electrical circuits—changes that affect our memory, mood, and functioning. To understand why, we need to know a bit about our brain.
BRAIN FUNCTION AND ANATOMY 101
The central nervous system (CNS) is the control center for the whole