Eradicating ANTs–It’s a Mind-Body Connection

You are walking along the side of a busy road when suddenly a car swerves and is heading right for you! You are just ready to jump out of its way when the car self corrects and doesn’t even come close to hitting you. So now how do you feel? Well, if you are like everyone else on this planet you’d feel a huge rush of adrenaline flow through your entire body. So what just happened? Well it’s pretty simple. Your brain sent a super quick signal to your body to prepare it to take evasive action. That action may even have been you jumping faster and further than you ever thought possible.

I don’t think that the average person really understands or fully appreciates how big the connection is between the brain and the body. You see science has pretty much proved that our thoughts send electric signals throughout our brain. Yes, our thoughts have physical properties. Then messages can and do get sent to virtually every cell in your body. Why is knowing this important? Because by using or directing our brains and thoughts we can overcome anger, depression, sadness, negative thinking and yes, even our body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure.

A few days ago my daughter shared with me a manuscript written by Daniel G. Amen, MD (I think it came from one of his many books) entitled “Ant Therapy” or “How to Develop Your Own Internal Anteater to Eradicate Automatic Negative Thoughts”(otherwise known as ANT’s). A fascinating read indeed. It’s all about understanding the direct connection between thoughts and your body and how to automatically turn negative thoughts into positive ones to greatly improve your life and relationships.

The connection between mind and body he points out is clearly shown by observing a polygraph or lie detector test. He points out that a lie detector test measures heart rate, blood pressure, breathe rate, muscle tension and how much the hands sweat. He goes on to state, “The tester then asks questions like ‘Did you do that thing?’ If the person did the bad thing his body is likely to have a ‘stress’ response and it is likely to react in the following ways: hands get colder, heart goes faster, blood pressure goes up, breathing gets faster, muscles get tight and hands sweat more.” And all of that is the results of the brain sending messages to the body.

If we really understand what is happening in our brains, we then can turn things totally around and start reaping big benefits for our bodies and life. Amen further says, and we all need to burn this into our brains, “Remember, the deep limbic system is responsible for translating our emotional state into the physical feeling of relaxation or tension.”

So how do we control or program our brains to automatically turn our negative thoughts that are causing problems in our lives to positive ones that will improve virtually everything we do? Those answers will be given in next week’s post. But do consider sharing this weeks’ blog along with next with week’s with friends or relatives that you think might benefit from knowing more about the brain body connection and how to control it.

You Are What You Believe

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I watched an older movie last night–a real chick flick called The Princess Diaries with Julie Andrews and Anne Hathaway.  In it, the soon to officially be made a princess, Anne Hathaway, was being mercilessly teased and insulted by her high school sophomore classmates.  However, she got help in facing it when one of her mentors told her that she would need to give someone that is trying to insult permission for it to work. In other words, you determine whether you are being insulted or not. If you don’t allow what is thrown at you to be an insult, you’ll be okay.

I thought that was some brilliant advice and it works. It made me think of the story of Bunker Bean.  I wrote the story of Bunker Bean in my book Goals, Guts and Greatness, in Chapter 4 which is entitled “You are What You Think You Are”.  The story tells of this very young man, Bunker Bean who had a lot of potential locked up inside him but it was locked so deep he didn’t know about it, which unfortunately is the story of so many people all over of the world.  You see, when Bunker was very young, both his parents died, leaving him alone and friendless and as he roamed through his years he began to develop fears of all kinds.

Eventually he moved into a cheap, rundown boarding house where he met a man who claimed to be a spiritual medium.  This new friend told Bunker that we cast off old bodies when we die, we and are reincarnated as a new person.  Bunker Bean was not well educated and he had never heard of reincarnation.  He was happy to hear that he had been someone else in another life before.  So when his new friend suggested that for a few dollars he would be able to tell Bunker who he’d been in a former life, Bunker jumped at the chance.

The result?  He was told that in his former life he had been none other than the great Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of France. Bunker was totally astounded. But he wasn’t sure that he believed it. “How could this be that I, lowly Bunker Bean who fears almost everything, could have been such a great person years ago?”  The medium explained how everyone’s sequence of lives turns in vast Karmic cycles.  For each of us there is a period of ascension and a period of descension and right now Bunker was living in a period of descension. “But there is good news,” the medium said. “Things are now changing, and your life is entering a period of ascension.”

It was at that point that Bunker Bean’s life began to change. He really began to believe he had been the great Napoleon and his brain went through some major changes. So what did he do? He began to learn everything he could about his former self.

Think about your own brain and how, if you really truly believed that you had been a super famous person in a previous life, you could dramatically change your current thinking. We really are what we think we are. Run that thought through your brain for the next week and I’ll finish the Bunker Bean story in next week’s post and tell you what happened to Bunker because of his changed brain.