Mind Body Connection

I’m amazed at how some of my relatives seem to believe that the mind and body are totally separate. Do they think the brain is just floating around in there, disconnected from the body? I am a strong believer that our thoughts affect our health. For me this is an obvious conclusion, given that I have developed a stress-related condition. After all, stress is just a collection of thoughts that result in physiological symptoms.

One of the things I’m ensuring is that I weed out negative thoughts and negative people in my life. I need to make sure that I have a fertile environment for reducing my stress. From what I've read there seem to be an awful lot of people who don’t like themselves and their thoughts are flooded with self-criticism and negativity. That really doesn't serve anyone. I certainly don’t hate myself at all and I believe life is full of opportunities and joy if you’re willing to do the work to notice and capture it.

Some of that work may be forgiving yourself, or forgiving someone else. The letting go is often a very powerful exercise in releasing the burdens carried by most of us.  This is starting to sound quite esoteric but I don’t believe there’s anything strange about doing some housekeeping in our emotions and thoughts. Clean up and get rid of the clutter. Nip those negative thoughts in the bud before they get rooted.

I love this post from Tiny Buddha about changing your life trajectory: http://tinybuddha.com/blog/changing-trajectory-live-life-purpose/ . For some of my relatives, the fact that I read something with ‘Buddha’ in it, and even referenced it, is tantamount to heresy. “Oh no, she’s abandoning her faith!” Doing yoga is surely to send some of them into cardiac arrest. Yet these are the things that help us connect body and mind.

I’m pretty sure that God wants us to be happy and to live full lives, following our passion. But we do actually have to take some action, other than prayer, to make our lives fulfilling. I’m sure many of you have heard that joke about God sending various forms of rescue to the idiot who is not listening. How many of us are making assumptions about how our prayers will be answered, so much so that we don’t notice that we actually received what we needed, not what we asked for? As far as I’m concerned, prayer and meditation are not mutually exclusive. Let’s be open to trying new things, from which we can learn and perhaps receive something we weren't expecting.