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THE POWER OF THE MIND

The Connection Between Our Mind & Our Biochemistry
Taking Control of Our Health & Healing
By Taking Control of Our Thoughts & Actions

By Jack Allis
January 2003

The notion of mind/body healing is becoming more and more widespread, particularly in the alternative health community. However, this is a concept about which there continues to be considerable misunderstanding and confusion. For many people, the connection between the human mind and human physiology is mysterious, and difficult to grasp. One reason for this is the fact that this concept is foreign to our culture in the West. It is far more prevalent, and has been so for thousands of years, in far Eastern countries, such as China and Japan, and in many cultures where people live closer to nature. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the primary role the mind plays in health and healing, as well as to demonstrate the connection between the mind and the biochemistry of the body.

In general, we tend to make this much more complicated and mysterious than it really is. It is all very natural and self-evident, as long as we clearly define what we're talking about, and make a few crucially important conceptual adjustments. First, let's define what we mean by the mind. Very simply stated, the mind is nothing more than the thoughts and beliefs, which we learn as a function of our experience, and which we take with us on our journey through life.

Most of the misconceptions about the relationship of the mind to the body stem from a mistaken philosophical premise, which also happens to be the cornerstone of traditional medicine in the Western world. This is the premise of the mind/body dichotomy. The mind/body dichotomy maintains that the mind and the body operate independently from each other. It sees the body as a biochemical machine, and the mind as operating separately from this. On this basis, traditional medicine separates physiology from psychology, and maintains that all disease is a result of biochemical imbalances. This then becomes a model, in which people are seen as helpless victims of their biochemistry, and who play no part in their own health and healing. The only possible treatment in this model is pharmaceutical medication.

The mind/body dichotomy is incorrect, and must be replaced with mind/body unity. This means that the mind and the body work in harmony. They are functionally identical, which means that for every physiological process, there is a corresponding psychological process, and visa versa. As soon as you separate the mind from the body, neither one makes sense anymore, which is the primary reason why traditional medicine is so totally incapable of explaining the cause of so many diseases, such as cancer. Muscles, nerves, cells and hormones cannot be separated from thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behavior.

Let's illustrate this with depression. Traditional medicine tells us depression is a disease, which is caused by an imbalance of chemical substances in the brain called neurotransmitters. This is what anti-depressant medication treats. Symptoms of depression also include a lack of energy, fatigue, lack of appetite, and problems with sleeping, all of which have a clear physiological and biochemical component. So, is depression biochemical? Of course it is, but there's more to it than that. There clearly is also a mental component of depression. Depressed people think they're inadequate, and they believe there's nothing they can do about it. They've given up on themselves and on life. They tend to blame themselves for everything, and they are very self-condemning. Isn't it understandable that somebody who thinks this way would get sick? So, is the depression caused by the biochemistry or by the thoughts? In concluding that biochemistry is the cause, traditional medicine makes the methodological error of confusing correlation with causation. Just because there is a correlation between biochemistry and depression does not mean there is causation. It's just as reasonable to conclude that it is caused by the thoughts, and there's no clear research evidence to indicate either way. It's a chicken or the egg situation. The mind and the body both play a part.

For many, the confusion about the relationship of the mind to the body is augmented by the fact that modern science understands very little about the mind. On the basis of hard and concrete research, the nature of thoughts, what they consist of, and how they work are still total mysteries to modern science. Most of our true knowledge of the mind comes from our subjective and intuitive experience, and from the spiritual and esoteric wisdom, which has been passed down to us for thousands of years from virtually every culture on Earth. From these sources of knowledge comes the fundamental principle that our mind plays the primary role in determining the nature of our world. Human beings create their total reality with their thoughts and with their beliefs. Of course, it then follows that we also create optimal health with our thoughts and beliefs. The revolutionary discoveries of modern subatomic physics confirm that the human mind plays an integral role in the events of the physical world, which places it in the vanguard of contemporary science. From this, it also follows that the potential power of the human mind is something we don't currently understand, and tend to underestimate. At the present time, human beings exercise only a small fraction of their total intelligence. Once we learn to fully understand the power of the mind, we will be capable of performing the unimaginable, and of achieving levels of health that are beyond our wildest dreams.

This primary role that the mind plays in relationship to the rest of the body is beautifully illustrated, both scientifically and metaphorically, by the structure of the human brain. The brain is structured like an onion, with each layer representing a step in the process of evolution. At its base are primitive structures, which humans share with lower forms of animal life. As you work up, each layer becomes more sophisticated in terms of its function, culminating in the cerebral cortex, which governs higher mental functioning. The cerebral cortex also has the capability of governing the lower structures. For example, the limbic system is located in the middle section. Humans share this with other mammals, and it governs instincts and emotions, which are basically physiological responses to outside stimuli. Humans have the unique capability to learn how to tame and manage their instincts and emotions, thus allowing them to exercise mental control over these aspects of their physiology.

There are two fundamental ingredients to achieving optimal health, and this again illustrates the primary role the mind plays in relationship to the body. These two chemical elixirs are happiness and relaxation. Happiness and relaxation are both states, which we achieve primarily with our minds. We either know how to achieve these states, or we don't. And if we don't, we can learn how. That's one of the primary things I teach in the world I do. Happiness and relaxation also have a direct and profound effect upon the biochemistry of our bodies. They have a direct relationship to a family of hormones secreted by the adrenal gland, which affect virtually every organ, nerve, muscle and cell in the body. There is also a direct relationship between these hormones and the strength of the immune system. You show me a person, who knows how to be happy and relaxed, and I'll show you a person, who doesn't get sick very often.

All of which leads us to another misconception of traditional medicine. This is the notion that the cause of all health and sickness is external to us. Let's take cancer, for example. Traditional medicine has speculated that virtually everything in our environment causes cancer. It's food, water, air, germs and contaminants of all kinds, sunlight, and on and on. Don't you agree this gets a bit ridiculous? Of course, the flaw is the notion that people are just fine the way they are, and the problem is something which gets into them from the outside - bad fuel getting into a good machine. In fact, the problem is within us. Without the proper mental attitude, from which everything else in life springs, no amount of good nutrition, supplementation, or anything else, which is external to us, will create optimal health. People get sick because they are cut off from the natural flow of life, and from life's vital forces. In order to get these juices flowing again, they must make dynamic changes within themselves, and in how they live their lives. It all starts with the mind. Our mind is our most powerful attribute. It is the single feature, which distinguishes us from all other forms of life. It plays the primary role in the biochemical events of the body, as well as the world outside the body. Thinking creates reality.

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