Good Health & Mind Connection

I recently attended a church service where the guest preacher was paralyzed from waist down. He told a story of how he was once depressed and stayed up one night trying to come up with a list of things that were wrong in his life. I cannot recall the exact wrongs that he found, but I do remember that he defined them with the letters of the alphabet. Let us say he was “Ailing, Bruised, Crying, Depressed, Emotional, Fearful, Gloomy etc”. He then fell asleep and when he woke up the next morning, he told his wife what he had been doing the previous night. He had a small problem though; when he got to the letter Q he could not think of a word that started with Q that was wrong with him. His wife told him, “Have you forgotten that you are a Quadriplegic?” Ouch!

If a person focuses only on what is wrong in his life, he is surely going to find something. Negative thoughts are self fulfilling prophesies. It was only when the preacher snapped out of the negative thoughts spiral that he started experiencing healing in many areas of his life and body. His teachings went straight to my heart. He was a living testament that the mind is a powerful healing agent.

In the United States, efforts to articulate the relationship between the care of the body and the state of the mind, morals and emotions date back almost 200 years. Respected psychologist and philosopher William James wrote in 1902 that “mind-cure gives to some of us serenity, moral poise, and happiness, and prevents certain forms of disease as well as science does, or even better in a certain class of persons.” A positive mental attitude, just like an apple a day, will keep the doctor away.

Dr Deepak Chopra, M.D, wrote the book Perfect Health, the first practical guide to harnessing the healing power of the mind, which became a national bestseller in the US. He teaches that though we experience our bodies as solid, they are in fact more like fires that are constantly being consumed and renewed.

We grow new stomach linings every five days, for instance. Our skin is new every five weeks. Each year, fully 98 percent of the total number of atoms in our bodies is replaced. Your thoughts are more real than your body. Freedom from sickness depends on contacting our own awareness, bringing it into balance, and then extending that balance to the body.

Positive Thinking and Health

Your mind is very powerful. You become whatever you think about or envision. Positive thinking means changing the predominant thoughts in your mind to pleasant and empowering thoughts. Some people think of it as self hypnosis, while others think of it as a way of connecting with the mystic of the universe. If you populate your mind with positive messages, you will see a fundamental shift in your fortunes, feelings and outcomes.

The father of Positive Thinking Dr Vincent Norman Peale wrote that you must “Formulate and stamp indelibly on you mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. And hold this picture tenaciously. You can’t ever permit it to fade. Over time your mind will develop this picture, brighten the detail. Never doubt the reality of the mental image, because doing so is dangerous. The mind also tries to complete what it pictures. So always picture “success” no matter how badly things seem to be going at the moment”.

Your mind has a tremendous impact on the recovery process. If you ever find yourself sick or disabled but have a sound mind, use your mind to will yourself back to good health or help you cope with the situation. If you want to achieve a level of fitness or quit some vice like smoking, start by visualizing yourself leading a healthier lifestyle. Good health begins with the mind and manifests in the body.

Summary

You become what you think. Positive self talk and attitude can help you achieve your healthy living goals. The thoughts that are constantly running in your mind will affect your moods and behavior. Your moods affect your choices. Your choices affect your health.

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