“Whatever we don't bring to consciousness comes back to haunt us.”
– Stephen Belgin
"The body speaks to us through symptoms. Symptoms tell us something is going on, whether through the nature of the symptom, the effect it has, or the changes it demands." -- Deb Shapiro, Your Body Speaks Your Mind
"The most common blocks are the negative attitudes that a lot of people carry around all the time... In order to become healed, a person has to throw out hatred, envy, jealousy, and other destructive attitudes and feelings. Although such factors start within the mind, they quickly manifest in the body, becoming a stiff shoulder, a sluggish liver, cancer, or other illnesses. I believe that all genuine healing addresses the problem of unblocking negativities in one way or another." -- Sun Bear, Healers on Healing
What is a "body-mind" connection? How do unresolved emotional and psychological issues affect our physical health? How does our physical health affect our mental health? How are our feelings and thoughts connected to specific areas of our bodies? How can we heal our bodies with our minds? Can we heal our bodies with our minds?
Believe it or not, that answer is "Yes," and it is rooted in scientific evidence. The key word is "neuropeptides."
Neuropeptides are chemical signals, or messengers, that are secreted by the brain, the nerve cells, and the immune system. They carry information between the mind and the body through body fluids (like blood). Every cell in our bodies is covered with receptor cells, and each of those receptor cells is specific for a specific neuropeptide.
Neuropeptides transmit information into the cell (through the receptor cells) that alters the behavior of the cell. Among other things, neuropeptides can affect gene expression, local blood flow, and cell structure in the central nervous system.
"Neuropeptides provide the link between perception, feelings, and thought, on the one hand, and the brain, hormonal secretions, and every cell of the body, including those of the immune system, on the other, thereby creating a single whole-body communication system. In other words, each part or system of your body is listening and responding to your mental chatter, your every thought and feeling." -- Deb Shapiro, "Your Body Speaks Your Mind"; Piakus, London, 2007
Paramahansa Yogananda, the great Indian Yogi, claimed:
"There is an innate connection between the mind and the body... all diseases have their origins in the mind. The pains that affect the physical body are secondary diseases."
Through chronic pain, illness, or disease, our bodies are telling us that something is out of balance. Reclaiming that balance, and, ultimately, reclaiming our physical health, requires us to realize and reassess a few things:
a) Our thoughts are much more powerful than we realize: what we think and believe, is what we become
b) Our bodies tell our stories: our states of health show us what and how we've been thinking
c) We can choose to believe a different story about ourselves, the effect of which becomes psychological and emotional change, which then results in physical change.
Some people might scoff at this "radical" idea of health, yet in virtually every instance where people changed their core beliefs about something, their attitudes about their circumstances changed. It could be a positive change or a negative change; regardless, when our attitudes change, our circumstances have to change.
Take a relationship, for example. When one person in a relationship changes (i.e., their expectations, their desires, etc.), the entire relationship changes. It has to change, because certain components that previously made up part of the dynamic of the relationship have changed, thus changing the whole dynamic. See how that works? Now, if we use that same example for the relationship our minds have with our bodies, you can see where that goes...
"The perception of any given thing, at any given moment, can influence the brain chemistry, which, in turn, affects the environment where your cells reside and control their fate. In other words, your thoughts and perceptions have a direct and overwhelmingly significant effect on cells." -- Dr. Bruce Lipton
One way that people change their perceptions is through the use of affirmations. An affirmation is just something we repeatedly say to ourselves, either out loud or in our minds. It comes from the belief that "a positive mental attitude supported by affirmations will achieve success in anything." (Supercharged Affirmations, The Salem New Age Center, Salem Massachusetts USA . Accessed November 2018)
However, we humans have an interesting little bundle of nerves at the base of our brain stems, called our "Reticular Activating System," or RAS. The RAS sorts through twenty million bits of data every second -- the flood of incoming data from our five senses -- and allows only the information that is important to us or supports our beliefs to surface in our conscious minds.
The RAS is our "turbo-charge" for affirmations.
The RAS is responsible for letting in information that is, or might be, useful for making good decisions. It is based on the importance that we place on different things. It filters out unnecessary information -- all through the subconscious mind -- and allows only the important information to surface into our consciousness. It tries to “make sense” out of our experiences by looking for evidence to prove our beliefs.
So, by using affirmations to "convince" ourselves that what we're repeating is important to us, or change the way we believe about a certain thing, the RAS then kicks in and begins to show us proof of our new belief. Cool, huh?
There is one glitch, however, to the whole "thoughts become things" idea...
How do we change our long-held or childhood, subconscious negative beliefs (mostly about ourselves and the world around us), just by repeating affirmations? And, more importantly, what if it doesn't work? What if we spend days, weeks, or months repeating the same affirmations over and over, and nothing ever changes? What then?
Many people have claimed that they've used daily affirmations to completely change their lives and their circumstances. For some people, however, daily affirmations DID NOT work. A research study in 2009 found that positive affirmations had a positive effect on people with high self-esteem, but a detrimental effect on people with low self-esteem, when those people were allowed to consider ways in which the affirmations were false. (Wood, Joanne V.; Perunovic, W. Q. Elaine; Lee, John W. (July 2009). "Positive self-statements: power for some, peril for others". Psychological Science. 20 (7): 860–866. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02370.x. ISSN 1467-9280. PMID 19493324.)
For those people whose lives didn't change, they often, understandably, became cynical about affirmations. BUT... just because the affirmations didn't work well for them, doesn't mean that they don't work. It just means that there are (obviously) some subconscious negative beliefs that, 1) need to be brought to consciousness, and 2) processed and released, before the affirmations will work well. Once the underlying negative beliefs are brought to consciousness and subsequently healed, then affirmations can be an amazingly effective tool for manifestation.
One of HMBD's programs for bringing negative, subconscious beliefs to the surface for processing involves using Integrative Frequency Therapy®, along with our new chakra-healing program, to identify and release childhood traumas, negative belief systems, and old patterns of thinking that are stored in various parts of our bodies, and are accessed via the chakras. Once those traumas, negative beliefs, and old ways of thinking have been reprocessed and released, then the "thoughts become things" concept can become a reality.
So, the next question is... what is a chakra?
The Chakra System
Everything in the universe radiates energy, including every cell and molecule in the human body. Different cells emit energy in different ways, depending on what their job is and where they're located. There are several different energy "channels" in our bodies where energy flows in and out in a perpetual stream, each channel affecting specific nerves and endocrine glands, which in turn affect specific organs or systems in our physical bodies. These energy channels are called "chakras."
The word "chakra" is an old Sanskrit word meaning, "wheel." If we could see our chakras (and some people claim they can), we would see what looks like a wheel of energy continuously rotating or spinning either clockwise or counter-clockwise, depending on whether or not the energy is being moved out of our bodies (into the field around us), or into our bodies from the external world.
The chakras begin at the base of the spine, and end at the top of the head. They are fixed in the spinal column and skull, but are located on both the front and the back sides of the body. They are not physical, but are facets of consciousness that interact with the physical and energetic bodies through the nervous system and the endocrine system.
There are seven main chakras, each one associated with one or more of the nine endocrine glands, but also with a distinct bundle of nerves called a plexus. Each chakra, then, corresponds with specific parts of the body and specific functions within the body that are controlled by that endocrine gland or that plexus. THAT is the key to understanding how whole-body healing can work.
Starting at the base of the spine and working up the body, the chakras are called (in order):
Root Chakra
Sacral Chakra
Solar Plexus Chakra
Heart Chakra
Throat Chakra
Third Eye Chakra
Crown Chakra
By accessing our long-held, negative beliefs through the chakras, and the physical and endocrine systems that each chakra controls, whole-body healing is completely logical and absolutely feasible.
To explore this concept more fully with a free phone consultation, or to book an appointment to start on your own journey of healing through the chakras, click here:
"The incorporation of chakra clearing into our sessions has brought healing on a whole different level! Mind, body, and spirit are all connected and we are fields of energy. Therefore, it only makes sense to connect these in healing. Through guided meditation, Kim starts at the root chakra for clearing. She stays with each chakra until confirmation of clearing. I feel that with this new program I have had an emergence of breakthroughs. I leave the sessions feeling lighter than when I entered. I leave with more clarity and confidence. To say this method is effective is an understatement! I am eternally grateful for Kim and her tools shared for true healing." -- HK, Colorado