MIND MEDICINE / MIND-BODY CONNECTIONS
by Dr. Jean Millar, Perlamar Clinica in Calpe
There is every shade of opinion under the sun when it comes to issues regarding the existence of such an entity as the soul, or vital force, or life after death.
There is much less argument about mind-body connections, but the knowledge is still very little used in medical practice.
Traditionally, if you visit a doctor complaining of chest pain you will be given a thorough examination of your heart, lungs, chest wall and thoracic spine. If nothing can be found to explain the pain, you may well be reassured, and told that a large percentage of chest pain goes undiagnosed (that is perfectly true). Ultimately there is no obvious illness, and with any luck the pain will go away.
But, while you have that pain, it is very real, and must be coming from somewhere.
Many children have recurrent abdominal pain, and after being checked out (and having coke eliminated from their diet) frequently nothing serious is found wrong. Sometimes the knowledge that nothing serious is wrong is enough to make the pain magically disappear.
When you are nervous you may suffer from twitches, tremors, dry mouth, diarrhea, nausea, and any pain present in the body may be magnified many times.
Back pain (apart from being truly miserable in itself) seems to make most people feel very vulnerable and somehow “got at”.
We describe people and situations with remarks about pain in different parts of the anatomy, and other negative sensations: pain in the neck, makes me sick, makes me ill, gives me a headache, keeps me awake, has given me heartache, and yet there may be no actual physical entity involved.
Pain can be relieved by distraction techniques (my father always pointed vigorously to the dent I had made in the floor when I fell as a toddler), hypnotherapy, anti-depressants, and anti-epileptic drugs, yet there may be no direct link to the nerves that carry the pain sensations.
Why bother about mind-body connections?
What has this got to do with MY health? (you may well say).
Through out all the centuries that man has been observing man, it has been obvious that we do affect our own health in many ways other than simply by poor eating, lack of exercise, lack of sleep and other negative physical habits. But it is very difficult to pin down specific ways in which we do this, or specific disease states that we may create unconsciously by certain habitual thought patterns, deep angers, and worries.
The mind-body connections matter a great deal, because the more we come to understand them, the more likely we will be to have more control over the ways our bodies respond to various negative influences (including our own minds).
Learning to disperse anger, grief, jealousy, generalised anxiety and specific fears in a healthy way may actually prevent stomach ulcers, irritable bowel, certain cancers, strokes and heart attacks.
This does not mean that the physical health habits are not important, but that they are only one half of the equation.
For those of you that may be interested in reading around the subject try the books by Louise Hay [in particular: You Can Heal Your Life]; Body Learning by Michael Gelb; Frogs into Princes by Richard Bandler & John Grinder; Quantum Healing
( exploring the frontiers of mind-body medicine) by Deepak Chopra.
Apart from reading round the subject try some of the techniques and ideas on a daily basis. See if you can shift yourself towards a greater sense of well-being through the patterns of your mind.
I was interested to note a small article recently about the famous face-enhancer, Botox. Some interesting work has been done that links a direct anti-depressant effect to the use of Botox injections on the facial muscles. What makes it really fascinating is that the anti-depressant effect was noted whether the patient had wrinkles to remove or not! It has been suggested that simply by relaxing muscles of expression (these have strong mind-body connections) the deeper mood of the patient could be improved.
That’s right : SMILE and RELAX!
