Letting the Mind Heal the Body

Our brains are so powerful. They can make physical changes in our bodies beyond what we would normally give them credit for or realize. One good example is the placebo effect. Researchers that study the brain-body connection have shown in numerous experiments how the brain can be tricked into believing that a simple sugar pill can relieve pain or cure an illness if the person is told and believes that the pill being taken truly is genuine medicine.

Some years back, I was re-reading a book I’ve talked about many times before called Super Brain by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi. They point out that any of us can, if we so chose, set up or create our own placebo effect at any time and without any kind of pill.

Chopra and Tanzi explain that “the effect isn’t limited to drugs, which is important to remember: anything you believe in can act as a placebo.” The authors go on to ask the question concerning patients that took the sugar pill. “Where did the patient’s relief come from? It came from the mind telling the body to get well.”

The body really believed what it was being told and then it relieved the pain or healed the sickness. In other words, your mind can, and does, control healing of all kinds including pain, disease, and wounds that our bodies deal with from time to time.

These authors go on to say “Being your own placebo is the same as freeing up the healing system through messages from the brain. All healing is, in the end, self-healing. Physicians aid the body’s intricate healing system (which coordinates immune cells, inflammation, hormones, genes and much else), but the actual healing takes place in an unknown way.”

Using the mind-body connection certainly takes a lot of work inside the brain but when you think of the huge possibilities you can quickly see that it’s certainly worth the work and effort. One of the conclusions that the authors suggest in conquering and taking advantage of the mind-body connection is summed up in this sentence: “In serious illness, doubts and fears play a marked role, which is why a practice like meditation or going to group counseling has been shown to help.” That is certainly worth trying for most, if not all of us, whenever we want to cure our pain, problems, or disease.

The authors suggest that there is a method through which anyone can apply their own placebo effect:
1. You trust what is happening.
2. You deal with doubt and fear.
3. You don’t send conflicting messages that get tangled with each other.
4. You have opened the channels of mind-body communications.
5. You let go of your intention and allow the healing system to do its work.

When we get a cut finger, we slap on a band aid and know that it will heal itself. In doing that, we’ve just let our brain send a positive message to our cells to do their job. But when we get a serious disease, we often let our minds jump into the mix with all kinds of worry and negative thoughts doing pretty much the opposite of the list above.

The bottom line here is, if were are going to benefit from our own built-in ‘placebo effect’ we’ve got to, at a minimum, follow the list of 5 conditions above. If you can do that, you are supporting your body’s ability to take care of you, as it is supposed to do.

Controlling the Fear

Last week I wrote a bit about my health problems and going to the hospital over an issue with my cardiovascular system. So this past week, I went through the recommended procedures and was relieved to hear that the doctors didn’t think I needed a stent. Great. I relaxed a bit after that.

But then, a few days later, I was asked to come back to the hospital. The doctors had completed a review and had become concerned. They now wanted to perform a procedure called an angiogram because they had found that the lower chamber of my heart had too many beats for the upper chamber, which, of course, is a problem.

Well, talk about getting nervous, worried, and scared! Man, oh man, my anxiety rose to a new high. I was a wreck.

What pushed my anxiety to a new high level was that I mistakenly thought an angiogram was the same as an MRI. All I could think about was the MRI I went in for about a year earlier. When they put me in the little, tight tube of the MRI machine, I freaked. I told the doctor and assistants that I was getting out as I was claustrophobic. Even though they were very insistent that I should stay in the machine until they were finished, I crawled out anyway.

So here I was last week, facing an angiogram but thinking it was going to be an MRI. My anxiety was through the roof. My own brain was beating me up.

I really do believe that our brains have so much power. It’s amazing. But internal thinking can be a great asset or a huge liability. Our brains can raise our spirits and lift us to a higher and happier place, or it can wreak havoc on our bodies, our souls, and our lives. 

So, I did a lot of thinking about my brain and how my thoughts were hurting me with all this worry. That’s when I realized that if I redirected my brain and thoughts, I could, most likely, get rid of my super high anxiety.

We human beings really do have the power to direct our brains down positive paths, even though it may take some time and a lot of mental work and discipline to do it. But we CAN do it! I did decide to get to work on that, attempting to remove my high anxiety. Soon enough, I found that my work on it was working!

So, I went to the hospital and got my angiogram a few days ago. Wow. My positive thinking really helped me stay calm, plus the angiogram was nothing close to having an MRI. It also turned out to be a great lesson about anxiety, fear and how we can control so much with our brains.

Yes, controlling our emotions takes time and effort, but it is so well worth it. Our brains really can lift our contentment level and make our lives so full of happiness. So, let’s all keep working on getting our brains to totally work for us and not against us!

The Energy Generating Brain

I am pretty sure there’s not many people that wouldn’t like a bit more energy. Okay, maybe an 8-year-old kid has plenty, but most of us, especially as we age, really want and need more energy. The amazing thing about humans is that we can actually create more energy with our minds.

The mind can be one of the strongest and most powerful force that you possess. A overly simple example of the mind creating energy is if you were dead tired at the end of a mountain hike and could hardly take another step, but suddenly you were confronted by a grizzly bear, your brain would immediately send a signal that would produce a huge amount of adrenaline and give you plenty of energy to move very quickly to save yourself. Although that is chemical physiology, even quantum physics has proven that your thoughts can be vibrations of energy.

How about this? You are lying in bed, totally worn out with seemingly no physical or mental energy, and suddenly you think of some incredible new invention. You can visualize how this idea could very possibly make you a quick few million dollars. Suddenly, your brain creates a ton of new energy and you jump out of bed, rush to your desk, and begin putting your great new idea on paper.

Your brain really can create energy. I totally believe that your brain is the key to your financial fortune and my experience backs up this belief. Some say that you can obtain wealth by training your subconscious mind to attract wealth, and I totally agree. If you put those money-making thoughts and plans deeply in your mind and then push very hard to turn those thoughts into action, you can and will be successful.

Quoting from one-mind-one-energy.com, “The most potent form of energy is thought because thought waves are cosmic waves penetrating all time and space.”  The 5 steps below, found on that website, make so much sense and are so very true. We really need to watch our brains like these 5 steps advise.

1. “Watch your thoughts, they become words.”
2. “Watch your words, they become actions.”
3. Watch your actions, they become habits.”
4. Watch your habits, they become your character.”
5. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”

Good ole Mahatma Gandhi said something similar: “A man is but the product of his thoughts–what he thinks, he becomes.”

Wow, there’s a bunch of good stuff to pound into our brains that can greatly enhance and improve our lives, whether it’s to make millions of dollars or become whatever we’ve always wanted to become and maybe have fallen short. Plus, who among us doesn’t want to have a ton more energy?