How your thoughts influence your health (and five ways of benefiting from them)
The thought-health equation is a powerful double-edged sword and to benefit from it we need to heed mental and rhythmic aspects.
One can sense the power of thoughts over the body’s health without the need for scientific evaluation. We have all suffered illnesses of uncomfortable physical symptoms as a reflection of some painful occurrence, of out-of-control stress levels or even simply our daily pessimism. For a long time, science remained distant from this somatic association but now, thanks to convincing psychological and neuronal studies, it has had to take a closer look at the powerful link between mind and body. So if we were lacking any “official” reminder of the need to take care of the flow of our interior monolog, we have this.
A study published recently in Cell tells us that the simple fact of thinking can accelerate the growth of many cerebral tumors. The studies’ conclusion showed how activity in the cerebral cortex affected high-grade gliomas, which represent 80% of all the malign cerebral tumors that people suffer from. In short, our mental activity exercises power over the body’s cells and a way of decelerating cellular degeneration is to slow down our minds or, in other words, change the rhythm of our monolog.
Another study found that it is not only food that leads to high levels of cholesterol. If you have a positive and joyous attitude in life it is more probable that you will experience low levels of cholesterol and better health. We can even experience a drop in physical energy and vitality as a result of a series of lies, for example. If you are depressed, is it the world outside of you that causes the depression or the thoughts that you most consistently have? That is the questionNew Window, and there are more and more studies undertaken in that regard that say there is something in the rhythm and tone of our daily thoughts that is intimately linked to our general health.
These results, more than anything, free us from the false belief that our genes control us; our mind is a large part of our physical fate. In this equation we have a powerful double-edged sword. If our beliefs and thoughts promote the general state of the body, the mental aspect must be attended to, first and foremost, and to attend to it we have to pay attention to its rhythm.
Deciding is therefore essential. If in the body’s degenerative sense our mind has such an effect, it also has an effect on the generative sense (transform the mind and you transform the person). Let’s remember King David’s proverb (17:22): “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”
The ways of lightening the weight of our thoughts are not entirely evident but there are some daily exercises that can help us to strengthen our cerebral immunological system based on the synchronization of rhythms and breathing. We recommend the following:
- Because sometimes simply looking out of the window, taking a good bath or going for a walk can change the entire panorama of our lives, these three distractions stimulate creativity.
- Because we have lost the capacity to be alone and appreciate the simple pleasures that bring us inspiration, these are some of the places to find silence.
- Because we live beneath the tyranny of the clock we need to rethink our relationship with time, and these are three ways of changing the essence of our temporality.
- Because insomnia can bring forth monsters, this is a simple step to get to sleep in a few minutes.
- Because this practice includes the calm of all of the above, we invite you to meditate.
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