To many, a disease comes as a surprise. A sudden heart attack or gall stones or cancer diagnosis do shock them and they keep recounting how they were living a healthy life with not even a fever or cold. They keep asking their Doctor about the cause. The answers given, range from blame being given to viruses, food, stress or their life style.
The fact, however, is different. The cause is internal and the starting point is “how they think and behave “. Today, research in mind-body connection clearly points that
mind influences the body towards both health and disease. Anger, guilt, jealousy, anxiety, victim mentality, grief, remorse and other multitude of mind states influence
negatively our body’s physiology on a daily basis whereas the positive state of mind comprising love , warmth , confidence , helpfulness etc keep our body healthy.
Here are some examples of diseases linked with mind states by medical researchers:
Anger, hostile behavior and depressive symptoms in apparently healthy individuals may lead to cardiovascular disease and stroke.
- Psychosomatic Medicine ( Sept.2004)
Anxiety disorders have been linked with Oral health problems.
- General Dentistry (November/December 2003)
People who are happy and relaxed may have more Immunity to Common Cold than those who are depressed, nervous or angry.
- Psychosomatic Medicine (July.2003).
Angry resentment has been related to functional gastric complaints, particularly where patients reported unfair treatment in a study
by IRVING D.HARRIS, MAJOR, MEDICAL CORPS, A.U.S
- Psychosomatic Medicine
Clinically, allergic children have been found to suffer from Maternal Rejection in a study by HYMAN MILLER M.D.1 and DOROTHY W. BARUCH Ph.D.
University of Southern California Medical School and reported in
- Psychosomatic Medicine
These are only randomly chosen examples. There is tremendous amount of data available on mind-body connection in disease. As an illustration of how thought and behavior affects the physiology resulting in High BP, let us look at this research study by Mary C. Davis, Ph D of Arizona State University in Tempe on Social situations in daily life.
Davis and colleagues categorized 80 male and female study participants through a test measuring suspiciousness, resentment, and cynical mistrust as either high or low in hostility.
Each study participant then took part in a brief discussion of capital punishment with an individual who had been trained to remain calm while presenting an opinion opposite from that of the study participant. Davis and colleagues found that High-hostile individuals showed greater increases in diastolic blood pressure and blood vessel constriction than did low-hostile individuals during this "mild social stressor".
Their findings are published in the January/February 2000
issue of Psychosomatic Medicine
This is an example of how our negative attitudes are silently affecting our body’s physiology. Thoughts are also energy and scientists are now beginning to find out how these turn into/affect matter.
Researcher David R. Hawkins, M.D., PhD author of the book Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (1995) states that attitudes, thoughts, and
beliefs are connected with various energetic pathways to all of the body's organs.
These pathways are same as the meridians of Chinese medical treatment method –acupuncture. The Indian yoga system calls these pathways nadis’. The chakra system described in ancient Indian texts is a part of the energy body we have.
According to Hawkin’s the energy of thought induce changes in these energetic pathways and affect overall physiology. The research work of David R. Hawkins along with Nobelist Linus Pauling, and Eric Kandel, M.D have concluded that the mind, through our thoughts and memories, influences our physical beings at the most elementary levels. These levels are in our invisible energy body commonly known as Aura. (More about our aura or ethric body has been given in annexure.)
The frontier science research has revealed that change at consciousness level first creates a change in this energy field (AURA) and then the physical body.
The direction of flow of creation of matter from mind is:
Consciousness ---->Energy Field ---->Physical (Body).
What we focus on in our conscious mind immediately gets manifested not only in our mind but in our body’s physiology as well. Mind affects the energy template of body and thereafter the physical body.
Thoughts - we focus on in our mind have corresponding emotional state in the body.
The thoughts and actions which are based on love, warmth, gratitude, appreciation, excitement, confidence, and cheerfulness have a positive effect on our body and keep its functioning healthy. Whereas thoughts and actions based on fear, hurt, revenge, guilt, anger, disappointment, loneliness etc make our body diseased.
The thoughts are the seeds we sow and what we reap is according to what we have sown. Even the circumstances in our life are attracted by the thoughts and beliefs we have. The thoughts we serve in our mind regularly shapes our thinking pattern and corresponding shape and functioning of the physical body. In essence we are what our thoughts are. This follows that thoughts that affect our body’s physiology
adversely end up making our body diseased.
Guru Sahib connects the cause of disease to negative pleasures.
“The fools enjoy their pleasures;
they must also endure all their pains.
From pleasures, arise diseases and the commission of sins.”
- SGGS-139
If we could easily know which negative emotion and belief has caused a particular disease then a treatment method can be in that direction. At present medical science has only indications, even metaphysics also generalises the cause in many cases. But this, again, is a part approach as compared to holistic.
(Source:
Simran Healing - eSnips, share anything)
