Consider this; well-educated, slender, and attractive, Sara seems to have it all. She is an MD, has an interesting career, and good friends. From an outsider’s perspective, she almost seems perfect. So everything’s great, right?
Not exactly. Sara also has epilepsy. And while she loves her job, she feels anxious about business finances. She often gets angry at herself. Sometimes she snaps at others for small mistakes. Even scarier, despite being aware of cues that might alert her to a situation that might lead to a grand mal seizure, she finds herself having black-out seizures once or twice a month. What’s going on?
It turns out that despite Sara’s generally healthy habits, her stress and anxiety prevents her from paying attention to the triggers that can bring on a seizure. Common triggers for Sara include tiredness, a lack of sleep, and stress.
On her doctor’s advice, Sara tries Mindfulness-Based Stress-Reduction (MBSR) classes along with her regular epilepsy care program. The MBSR practices help Sara slow down actually pay attention to her body. Sara begins to notice when she if over-tired or stressed, so she can make lifestyle modifications to decrease the probability of having a seizure.
Sara’s story is a great example of what we call the mind-body connection; the concept that our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and attitudes can positively or negatively affect our biological functioning. In other words, our minds can affect how healthy our bodies are!
It’s scientifically proven that what we do with our physical body (what we eat, how much we exercise, even our posture) can impact our mental state (again positively or negatively). This results in a complex interrelationship between our minds and bodies.
What exactly is meant by the word “mind?”
The word “mind” is not the same thing as your “brain.” The “mind” consists of mental states such as thoughts, emotions, beliefs, attitudes, and images. The brain is the physical hardware that allows us to experience these mental states.
Mental states can be fully conscious or unconscious. It’s very common to experience emotional reactions to situations without being aware of why we are reacting. Each mental state has a physiology associated with it—a positive or negative effect felt in the physical body. For example, the mental state of anxiety causes you to produce stress hormones.
Many mind-body therapies focus on becoming more conscious of mental states. The person can then use this increased awareness to guide their mental states in a better, less destructive direction.
What is the history of mind-body connection?
Awareness of the mind-body connection is hardly new. 300 years ago the field of medicine across the world commonly treated the mind and body as a whole when treating diseases or looking at human health. During the 17th century, the Western world began treating the mind and body as two distinct entities. In this perspective, the body was like a machine with independent parts and no connection to the mind.
Although this view of separateness had benefits to medical advances in surgery, trauma care and most other areas of medicine, unfortunately it also decreased scientific inquiry into humans’ emotional and spiritual life, giving less credence to the perspective that the body had an innate ability to heal.
Then in the 20th century, the body-mind separateness approach began to change. Researchers began to study the mind-body connection and soon scientifically demonstrated complex links between the body and both consciousness and unconsciousness. Integrative psychiatrist James Lake, MD, of Stanford University, writes that “extensive research has confirmed the medical and mental benefits of meditation, mindfulness training, yoga, and other mind-body practices.”
Why Use These Therapies?
Have a headache? Stop and take a moment to get perspective on yourself and your situation. Did you barely make it to a meeting? Sit in rush-hour? Skip lunch? Have an argument with your significant other? Ask yourself– Could these situations be contributing to your head pain? Before taking medication could you consider an alternative, such as deep breathing, or exercise, or meditation?
Paying attention to and exerting some control over your emotional and mental states—anxiety, anger, pessimism, and depression—can help you reduce the severity or frequency of symptoms, or help lessen the length of illness and expedite recovery.
How do mind-body therapies prevent disease?
Mind-body therapies and practices can help prevent stress. This is extremely important; research clearly shows that prolonged stress contributes to serious diseases such as high blood pressure, heart irregularities, anxiety, insomnia, persistent fatigue, digestive disorders, mental health issues, diminished fertility, and diabetes. Stress also suppresses your immune system, which makes you more likely to get new diseases and experience reoccurrences of previous diseases.
How do mind-body therapies help manage symptoms & help with treatment?
Mind-body therapies and practices can impact the way you experience symptoms; the experience of pain can be radically transformed with mindful therapy. Mind-body practices can foster a sense of control, enhance optimism, or provide social support that improves the quality of life, allowing you to cope better with symptoms.
For example, two people may have a similar chronic health condition. Person A is almost incapacitated, while Person B is functioning fairly well. Why? In part, it may be because of Person B’s take-charge attitude about the disease, strong support system, or the conscious steps they have taken to minimize stress in her life.
Mind-body therapies and practices can help a variety of medical treatments by facilitating the body’s power to heal itself. Research shows that mind-body therapies and practices can impact the immune system, lower blood pressure, reduce damaging stress hormones, and reduce the need for some medications.
What’s the bottom line?
It appears the human mind, both conscious and unconscious, is intrinsically connected to our physical selves, but far beyond simply controlling our breaths or regulating our temperatures. The complex way our brains communicate with our cells and bodies commands a respect beyond simple medical science – treating the mind and body as an almost symbiotic entity has tremendous benefits to the person who’s out of balance. Combining physical treatments with therapies that teach the capacity to use self-awareness provides meaningful and effective tools to help ourselves both physically and psychologically.
