Mind-Body Connection Intro
What is the mind-body connection? It means that your thoughts, feelings, and emotions affect your body, and your body affects your thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Read that sentence again. Slowly. Let it soak in. Your mind and body – they affect each other. In powerful ways – they completely control each other. All the time – every moment, moment-by-moment. Usually subconsciously – you’re not aware of it.
The bottom-line: your thoughts could have made you sick. But the good news: they can also heal you. You can heal yourself.
Let’s explain how.
How could you have made yourself sick?
How could you have made yourself sick? There are two common reasons:
Your nervous system got stuck in fight/flight/freeze mode.
These modes kick in when your nervous system thinks you’re in immediate danger. It moves energy into systems that you may need during danger, and pulls energy from systems that you don’t need during danger. It’s supposed to switch back over once the threat has past, but can get stuck. You can develop health issues because your body isn’t built to have energy put into some systems, and taken away from others, for a long time.
You have emotions that are stuck in your body.
Your nervous system needs to express emotions or else they can get stuck in the body and cause many health issues. Animals do this naturally – for example, they shake after being chased by a predator to expel the emotional charge.
Humans can also do this by talking about their emotions, crying, yelling and shaking. But we’re taught the opposite (“big boys don’t cry”) so our emotions don’t get released from the our body. This can cause us to develop health issues.
What issues can this cause and how prevalent is it? Let’s discuss.
Issues caused by mind-body connection
What issues can be caused by the mind-body connection? You might be surprised – many. For example:
- Chronic pain syndromes such as back pain, fibromyalgia, tension and migraine headaches.
- Autonomic nervous system related orders including irritable bowl syndrome (IBS) and chronic regional pain disorder.
- And many other syndromes including Long COVID, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), anxiety, depression, food sensitivities and many others.
How prevalent are mind-body disorders?
It’s an epidemic. For example:
- 619 million people world-wide (8% of the world’s population) had back pain in 2020 as reported by the World Health Organization, with 90% “cannot be confidently accounted for by another diagnosis such as an underlying disease, pathology or tissue damage.”
So, how do you heal yourself? Let’s explain that next.
How do you heal yourself?
So, how do you heal yourself?
It comes down to nine core principles:
- Radically changing your diet
- Taking control of your health
- Following your intuition
- Using herbs and supplements
- Releasing suppressed emotions
- Increasing positive emotions
- Embracing social support
- Deepening your spiritual connection
- Have a strong reason for living
This site points you to world’s leading resources – teachers, methods, videos, books, websites, etc. – that focus on the 9 principles above for you to learn more about them and apply them to your life so that you can heal.
Great, but you may be confused by all the methods and resources that are available. Why are there so many? Where do you start?
Where to start?
Ok, so you understand the mind-body connection, and are interested in learning more so that you can heal. But where do you start, and why are there so many resources? Because:
- There are different aspects of the mind-body connection and experts specialize focusing on specific aspects.
- There are different approaches for the same aspect of the mind-body connection.
- We can have different root issues which require different healing techniques.
So, you begin your mind-body connection healing journey by:
- Rule out acute issues – structural (broken bones), or pathological (infection).
- Determine the root cause(s). Stuck trauma? Stuck nervous system? Poor diet? Lack of exercise?
- Learn about leading resources that can help with your challenges, applying ones that speak to you. Some teachers will jive with your energy, personality and learning style, and others won’t. That’s OK and normal.
- Believe that they will help you heal (the placebo effect is real).
- Diligently apply them consistently over time and you will heal!
How's this related to spirituality?
Spirituality is related to the mind-body connection.
The spirituality that we discuss on this website is the highest form – for you to ultimately experience and realize that you are not your thoughts, feelings, and emotions but are the consciousness that observes them.
Most people run around their entire lives trying to find people, places and things that make them feel good, and try to avoid things that make them feel bad.
But what they don’t realize is that they can always feel that same goodness inside but the emotions that are stuck in them are blocking them from feeling it.
So they find things they like, which temporarily allows them to feel the happiness inside, but they could just focus on that happiness instead of themselves directly, cutting out the middleman.
Blue Heron points you to spiritual techniques on how to work through what’s stuck in you, and how to see through the illusion that you’re not your thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
This is true spirituality. Self-realization. Enlightenment.