Everyone wonders if mind over matter is a real thing. Can you truly control your thoughts? Your actions? Can you really change your emotions in a particular setting?
Positivity, affirmations and gratitude are some big time trends for this decade. With COVID and a recession, a crisis of supply and demand and the housing market being at an all time low, we have a lot of stress and change that we cannot control. Anxiety and depression are on the rise along with food insecurities and homelessness issues. It is a difficult time. The need to teach people to use the power of positive thinking is crucial right now.
The health benefits of mind over matter
Melmagazine.com says that “Willing your way to good health might sound like wishful thinking, but a new study conducted by Stanford University researchers suggests otherwise. The scientists specifically found that simply convincing someone they have a genetic predisposition to certain health characteristics, both positive and negative — such as a low capacity for exercise, or a tendency to overeat — can actually cause their body to react accordingly, which presumably means that this optimistic toddler has now become the strongest human ever”
They continue on later in the article to say, “Psychologist and psychotherapist Jeanette Raymond further explains this phenomenon by comparing it to the placebo effect.
“If we believe that something will work — or won’t work — there’s a change in our neurochemical balances that provides for an excitement,” she says. “When you act on these feelings, you wire the brain for a change toward success in that arena, which epigenetically alters your DNA.
Much of what we do and how we operate affects the DNA through this epigenetic mechanism, so it’s perfectly plausible that emotional factors alter DNA.”
It’s not common for anyone to grasp the concept between a positive mindset and your health. My mom had breast cancer surgery. I was a wreck, she was fine.
She was on the phone, doing her regular stuff around the house. You would have thought that she had a wart removed the way she was acting. She had radiation for 7 weeks straight. She took it all in stride and just went with it. Thankfully she was blessed with such a healthy recovery but I truly believe her mindset really set the tone for this process.
The power of mind over matter is real
I found this article that is just too perfect to not repost here. “A common belief in our society today is that drugs or pills are the cure to most of our ailments. The global drug market is today worth over $1.3 Trillion but we often overlook a critical factor in our recovery from illness. A factor that every single scientific study aims to account for and ensure doesn’t bias the results. It is so effective and powerful that basically every study in the world is proving its existence and power.
We are of course talking about the power of the mind and placebo effect. The placebo effect is the idea that your brain can convince your body a sugar pill treatment is the real thing and thus stimulate healing. Interestingly newer science has found that under the right circumstances, a placebo can be just as effective as drug treatments.
“The placebo effect is more than positive thinking — believing a treatment or procedure will work. It’s about creating a stronger connection between the brain and body and how they work together,” says Professor Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, whose research focuses on the placebo effect.
What this boils down to is that we are given one body with an amazing, untapped natural power. Its technology is available to everyone but we have to learn how to tap into and maximize the effectiveness of these systems. One of these systems is our immune system for healing and prevention, but ultimately the brain is the computer that drives us and we need to learn its incredible power.
This really hit home for me and the team when we had Lee Chambers on the Power is Within Us. Lee at the age of 28 woke up one day to find out he couldn’t walk. His immune system had reacted oddly and attacked his knees making them seize up.
Doctors thought he may never walk again. Heart-breaking for most but Lee had a 6-month old baby and another on the way. This meant Lee was more determined than ever to get back on his feet. He had a clear objective and a purpose to help drive him there.
A year of incredible hard work, perseverance and determination led Lee to be able to walk again. An amazing achievement that defied medical science. What led Lee to be able to make such a dramatic recovery, well in short, his determined brain. It led him to examine every part of his life, improve his diet and work incredibly hard with physios.
So if it is real, how do you use it in real life?
When we have such an incredible power inside of us, it naturally raises the question of how you can give yourself a placebo effect without being in a clinical trial?
Practicing self-help methods is one way. “Engaging in the ritual of healthy living — eating right, exercising, yoga, quality social time, meditating — probably provides some of the key ingredients of a placebo effect,” says Kaptchuk.
While these activities are positive interventions in their own right, the level of attention you give can enhance their benefits. “The attention and emotional support you give yourself is often not something you can easily measure, but it can help you feel more comfortable in the world, and that can go a long way when it comes to healing.”
Step by Step Mind Over Matter
This site has the goods on helping you flip the script on your positive thinking. You Need
- Determination
- Mindfulness- see my other blogs on that! I fully believe in this little gem! Here is one I wrote for kids!
- Sit and focus on nothing but breathing
- Focus outward. At the sounds and smells of the world around you.
- Perceive without attachment to things. I call this the swipe right effect. When something pops into your mind, say hello and swipe it right, right out of your mind.
- Meditation
Up until about three years ago I thought that when you were doing yoga or meditation that it was crucial for you to have nothing in your mind. I used to focus on a white polar bear in a snow storm inside my head to try to have nothing but white inside my mind. It never worked. The polar bear used to run off or something else would jump into my head and I would chastise myself for not being able to focus or concentrate. It wasn’t until I started taking a mindfulness yoga class where all of the moves lasted 3 to 5 minutes that I was able to learn from the instructor that it was perfectly acceptable for me to say hello to thoughts that are running through my head and then let them go.
Your Words Matter . . .
I use the analogy of having all those different apps open on your phone and you keep forgetting to close all of them. so now I use the swipe right thought processes when something comes into my head I just acknowledge it, say hello to it, and then close that app! It’s a process I’m still not perfect but I definitely leave after that hour of yoga feeling very refreshed and very recharged
Take some time over the next couple of weeks to give yourself a little space, give yourself at 5 to 10 minute break wherever you can. In the middle of your day, if you can walk outside take your phone but maybe don’t look at it, maybe play some music, or a meditation app might be fun too.
Try something different that helps you reset the thoughts going on in your head. I like to call it “flipping the script” . Change the negatives from “don’t run” to “please walk”, change the negatives of “I really suck at math” to “I’m working on being better at math” or “I will be better at math”. Your words matter.
