Mind Body Connection – The Power of Suggestion

This is Part V of a six-part series on the topic of Mind Body Connection.

Do you run your life? Are you an actor or a reactor?

Do you set goals for yourself and follow after them, or do you wait for something to happen in your life and then you respond? Do you go through life as a passenger or as driver—you drive to the beat of your own drum?

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, rather each of them has to do with control—the degree of control you exercise over your life!

Most people believe they have little or no control over their lives. They believe they are like actors in movies living out scripts. When it comes to changes and sickness in the body, most people once again believe they are “victims”. Whatever happens to them, they had and have no choice in the matter.

This is wrong thinking!

Often times you will hear the question asked, “How in tune are you with your own body?” What’s interesting about this question is not that you are in tune with your body, rather your thinking.

The true question should be, “How in tune are you with your thoughts?” Do you even know what you are thinking—that is most of the time? If you were, then you would know how “in tune you are with your body”! Remember that thoughts become things and often times “thoughts” are manifested in the body.

The body tells you what you are thinking, that is thinking about for prolonged periods of time.

Most of us allow thoughts to become feelings in our bodies through proxy—we surrender our critical thinking and don’t scrutinize what or why we are thinking which in turn becomes a feeling in our body and then we don’t know why it is there.

Do you ever wonder why your neck or shoulders are always sore or stiff when you haven’t done anything over-exerting to cause the pain? Well, the answer to that question would be stress which is caused by stressful thoughts. And keep in mind, we don’t think about stressing things once or twice which leads to the physical manifestations, rather on-going in an unconscious manner which creates the physical feeling.

How many times in the morning do you tell yourself that you are so tired and could just go back to bed? And what do you feel like doing at that point?

Well, probably going back to bed.

Conversely, have you ever told yourself that you aren’t tired or are going to have troubles falling asleep only to toss and turn all night and not sleep a wink?

How do you think that experience came about? You told yourself in each situation either you were tired and became tired, or wide awake and stayed awake because you willed the experience at an unconscious level. Remember, the body is a robot and must respond to what the mind is telling it.

As a matter of fact, we often times pay attention to other’s cues much the same way and follow their leads.

Have you ever been around someone who is yawning and you start to yawn yourself? What just happened was the subliminal experience of unconscious imprinting—you responded to another’s experience.

The mind body connection is always happening whether you want it to or not. If you are living and breathing, the mind and body are connected and working their magic

Have you ever been to watch a stage hypnotist or watched one on television? The hypnotist looks like a magician on stage where they can appear to make people do and say things by snapping their fingers. Without getting into all the hypnosis logistics as to how this is done, let’s just say they have left their unconscious minds open to take instructions. Now, would you like to play hypnotist next time you are out in public?

Here is a simple and non-threatening exercise you can try to prove the mind body connection through unconscious imprinting. The next time you are in a large room full of people, start coughing or clear your throat and listen to what happens.

Instantly, you will start to hear other people in the room coughing and/or clearing their throats. This habit or if they are just getting over a cold has been implanted in their minds. All you have done is triggered their unconscious mind stimulate a bodily response.

You are putting their mind body connections into play!

Often times our mind body connection is a by-product of observing and mimicking others.

The famous psychologist Albert Bandura studied this conditioning in his Social Learning Theory. If you were to divide the theory into a “grade one level logic”, it is basically monkey see, monkey do! Ever wonder why they joke about sending a monkey into space or operating machinery in a factory? Well, that is because they are operating at a conditioned level—being mentally trained (mind) to order robot (body) to do certain tasks.

These examples of the mind body connection are at the most basic and simplest levels for understanding. However, they can be applied at an advanced level to explain and examine where you are in your life at this moment in time.

Consider the following questions:

1)      Are you in the physical shape and/or appearance you want to be in?

2)      Are you happy with your life and the direction you are going in?

3)      Are there things you would like to change in your life?

4)      If you answered “no” to the first two questions and “yes” to the third question, then what is standing in your way?

5)      Is it you that is standing in your way and your own greatest obstacle? If you answered “yes” to this final question, then you need to reassess the role you are playing in your own life, namely the mind/body connection.

No matter what you want in this life or where you want to go, the mind must be adjusted (thoughts) to point you in the right direction. The mind body connection is a “mindset”.

Here is some interesting food for thought.

Studies by the Institute of HeartMath have verified that the heart has an extremely, powerful energy field that extends outside of the body. The esteemed group that works at this institute had their studies verified by studies conducted at Stanford University and Miami Heart Research Institute.

Did you know that when the heart is measured on EKG machines, the heart looks much different when people are happy and joyful versus when they are frustrated, sad or angry? Over a prolonged period of time, holding onto negative emotions causes heart rhythm incoherence which can cause illness and damage to the body.

Do you feel your heart rate speed up or do you get sweaty when you get angry or upset? Do you feel your muscles tighten and your head throb when you become enraged

When frustrated and angry, cholesterol and hormones get released into your body which basically puts you in a fight or flight modality. Whenever you are in this mindset leading to a feeling state for too long a period of time, it can start to wreak havoc on your body. Conversely, did you know that when you are happy and joyful you create a heart rhythm coherence which is healthy for your body and mind?

By having a healthy heart rhythm coherence, you strengthen your immune system, stabilize your blood pressure, improve cognitive functioning and also increase the levels of good hormones in the body like DHEA, which is an anti-aging hormone.

Most high blood pressure leading to heart disease is caused by our faulty thinking patterns. People tend to lock themselves into a mindset without challenging it, even when it is detrimental. The example of the heart is only one example of how we affect our bodies by our thinking. To get to the real “heart of the matter” let’s look at why you are thinking what you are thinking.

The first question worth asking is, “Is your current mindset getting you what you really want?”

Perhaps an even more effective question would be, “Do you enjoy being stressed out, run down, feeling sick most of the time and physically beaten?” If you answered “no” to this question, then what is stopping you from feeling the opposite of these feelings and sensations?

That would be you!

Your thinking is continually leading you to think in ways that are harming you. Your body is giving you feed back that it is not at ease and still you do the same thing—think in negative terms.

Change your mind and you change your body!

It is funny how much simpler people believe that it is to change their body. With today’s technology, many people do things the other way around. The short-cut or quick fix to changing things these days is done at the physical level and doesn’t pay attention to how the mind manifested the problem in the first place and that the mind will more than likely bring the body to where it was again because the mindsets have not been changed.

How many people opt for liposuction only to put the weight back on? How many people try gimmicks to stop smoking or to enhance their sex lives? These are quick fixes! They don’t fix the real issue, the mind… where the problem or dis-ease is originating from.

You can’t only focus on the outcome and expect the income to change!

If you recall, we are unconscious filters most of the time. We take in information and do things as a by-product of habit. We don’t challenge our thinking. By not challenging our thought processes we allow actions and manifestations to occur whether we want them too or not.

To change your conscious, you need to change your unconscious. And to change your unconscious, you have to start out by changing your conscious mindset which pours the information into your unconscious. You have to learn to censor not only what is going in but also what you are thinking

The fastest way to stimulate and change the unconscious is flooding it with positive, healthy thoughts.

The general rule of thumb states that if you can feed it with these thoughts for 21 days, they will start to become engrained in the unconscious and fresh neural pathways will get created. Repetitive thinking is the key to healthy success just as repetitive negative thoughts are what brought you down in the first place.

To reshape the unconscious and retrain the conscious some really effective methods can be used. Listening to meditation tapes embedded with NLP (Neurolinguistic Progamming) and hypnosis are two of the fastest and most effective ways for reshaping the mind. Both of these methods go right to the “heart of the matter” the unconscious mind. They begin to create new neural pathways for positive healthy thoughts to multiply and stick to the mind like Velcro. Unfortunately, the negative thoughts stuck to the mind and now have to be replaced with the good ones.

There is an even faster way to change the way you think… think differently.

Of course this is easier said than done, but what is really stopping you? Of course what is stopping you is your own thinking pattern. Focus on your thinking for a moment.

Where does your mind always drift too in terms of your thoughts? This will tell you a lot about what has become embedded in your unconscious. Now what has gotten into your unconscious got there because you had to think about it, at least at some point! And you allowed it to remain there until it secured roots and grew into something permanent.

Changing your thinking is available right this minute by changing your thoughts.

Once again, ask yourself, “What do I really want?” Decide on what you want and start thinking about that again and again until it becomes embedded in your unconscious. Be sure that what you want is healthy and productive. The last thing you need is more junk in the trunk!

Here at Free At Last Hypnosis we recognize and understand the mind body connection is real. We see the strong connection in evidence almost every day with our clients we help with our weight loss service or various stop smoking hypnosis programs. So learn more about the connection in the articles below as we get into more detail.

 

OTHER MIND BODY CONNECTION RESOURCES IN THIS SERIES:

Read Part I of series Mind Body Connection – Introduction here.

Read Part II of series Mind Body Connection – Mind Over Matter here.

Read Part III of series Mind Body Connection – Thinking, Feeling, and Becoming here.

Read Part IV of series Mind Body Connection - Seeing is Believing here.

Part VI of series Mind Body Connection - Putting it All Together here.

 

Peter Andrew Sacco Ph.D.
Staff Editor
Free At Last Hypnosis