Do Our Thoughts Have an Effect on Healing?
Sounds simple, but does it work? Can what we think actually have an effect on healing? Bodies do react to the thoughts you make. Our psychological/emotional state affects the endocrine system. For example, the emotion of fear is related to adrenaline. If no feeling of fear exists there is no adrenaline and the same applies in reverse: no adrenaline, no fear. They work in relationship with each other. Wherever a thought goes there is a body chemical reaction.
Deepak Chopra also spoke of the mind body connection in his book “Quantum healing.” In it he mentions that neurotransmitters bathe every cell in the body and that our neurology is constantly eavesdropping on our thoughts. This happens as the neurotransmitters pass information between the neurons, throughout the body. Example, have you ever seen a snake or any other scary event? All of a sudden your body is tense, adrenaline rushing and you are ready to run or jump. This response happens in less than a second. Your neurotransmitters are partly to be thanked for passing the appropriate chemicals and response throughout your body.
So we can clearly see how our thoughts affect the body. The problem comes when people deliberately block feeling or expressing their emotions. As we saw before, in doing so, they might suppress the strength of those emotions, which seem to be a good idea. However as they are suppressing their negative emotions, those emotions negatively affect the rest of the body. An example of that is long term pain.
Dr. John Sarno worked with patients that had back pain. He performed back operations for almost 20 years. He then went back to his patients to find out how much the operation helped. Unfortunately, for the most part, the operations did not help get rid of the pain. Further studies found that long term pain, longer than 8 weeks, is a result of negative emotions that the client is not paying attention too. Meaning, by suppressing the emotions, the unconscious mind actually created physical pain somewhere else in the body. I have personally worked with a number of people who have created long term pain, like sciatica, due to not dealing with the emotions they were feeling. In learning how to deal with those negative emotions and memories, the pain disappeared in less than an hour. You can read more on John Sarno’s work in his book, “Healing back pain. The mind body connection.”
Conclusion
What does this all mean? One the one hand, whilst we do not want to wallow in negative emotions, it is important to acknowledge these emotions and deal with the accordingly. Notice the emotion, acknowledge it, deal with it and move on. This does not mean be a robot, but rather that to be free from the emotions, we must deal with them and not hang on to them.
It also means that when you have a positive mind set, that your body responds accordingly. Celebrate your successes and happiness. Positive thinking in its own right is not enough to make everything go your way. However it goes a long way to keep a healthy body and mind. Helping you to profit from and grow, even in times of challenge. One easy way to practice a positive mind set is to create an attitude of gratitude diary or an accomplishment diary.
Keeping a positive mind set not only impacts on your own mind and body, but also those around you. Coaching is a very good way to learning to deal with the negative emotions and also to create a more positive mind set.