“Our mind, emotions, and body are the instruments and the way you align and tune them determines how well you play life.” – Harbhajan Singh Yogi
Well-educated, well-established, doing well for herself, earning a fat paycheck, Nimisha seems to be living the life of her dreams. People aspire to be like her. Everything seems great, right? It does, however, it isn’t!
Nimisha is literally working 24/7 and in the process, she is not realizing the kind of impact this work routine is having on her physical as well as mental well being. Her eating schedule is erratic and more often than not she ends up eating junk food. She is facing a tough time in managing her team members who are working remotely.
Though she loves her job, she feels anxious at times and occasionally she gets panic attacks. She apparently overlooks herself and snaps at others for minor mistakes. It gets even scarier when she finds herself feeling sick every month despite carefully monitoring her well being. What exactly is the problem?
It seems that despite living a high-flying life, she is unaware of the impact the work environment is having on her body. In a recent visit to her doctor for her health checkup, the conversation around the mind and body connection happened and this further intrigued Nimisha and she thought of understanding the concept in detail and how it impacts the entire body and its functioning.
What is Mind-Body Connection?
The link between a person’s thoughts, attitudes, and behaviours and their physical health is known as the mind-body connection. While scientists have long recognised that our emotions have an impact on our bodies, we are only now beginning to comprehend how emotions affect our health and lifespan.
The mind-body connection is an intrinsic part of holistic medicine, which focuses on treating the whole person rather than just their symptoms. Doctors recognise the value of a holistic approach to care that involves the mind, body, and spirit now more than ever.
How Does Mind-Body Connection Affect Us?
According to the mind-body or biopsychosocial paradigm, which supersedes the older biomedical model, there is no real division between mind and body because of networks of communication that exist between the brain and neurological, endocrine and immune systems.” —Oakley Ray, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Psychiatry and Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University
The notion that the interaction of psychological, social, and biological variables determines the causes, progression and results of physical disease is known as the Mind-Body Connection. Stress from both happy and terrible life events, such as marriage/divorce, promotion/layoff, or home purchase/foreclosure, can have an impact on your health. Daily routines such as fighting rush hour traffic, making a deadline, unreasonable self-expectations, and interpersonal connections can also impact our lives.
And your body reacts to stress, as well as anxiety and despair. When you are stressed, you may experience high blood pressure, a stomach ulcer, back discomfort, constipation or diarrhoea, exhaustion, headaches, shortness of breath, and difficulty sleeping or staying asleep, to name a few symptoms.
People around us live in our brain tissues. They also live in the heart, liver, muscles and bones. They live in our chromosomes. It means, if we have toxic people around us, we can very well imagine that they are inside us too, so we need to take care or take stock of the energy around us regularly.
How to Improve Mind-Body Connection?
The mind and the body are not two distinct beings, but they are usually considered distinct. In what is known as the mind-body connection, physical and mental wellness are inextricably linked.
Our mood and emotions, our thoughts and beliefs, are influenced by our chemistry and biology. When all of these elements come together, they have a significant impact on our stress levels and physical health. If you have ever had your stomach clench up because you are worried, then you have felt the mind-body connection.
There are ways to balance the Mind-Body Connection, and they are:
Invest in Yourself – Find Your Me-Time
It is sometimes necessary to set aside time for yourself, to do whatever you need to do to improve yourself emotionally. What are some of your favourite pastimes? What are your interests and passions? Writing, participating in a pastime, using a creative outlet, volunteering, or meditating are all stress management activities that can help you focus on the present. Invest in your overall health, including diet, fitness, relationships, work-life balance, and personal interests.
Relax your Mind and Body
There are ample calming and relaxing methods to keep our mind and body in place. You can try meditation, deep breathing, or music therapy to balance your emotions. As Dr. Srini Pillay, a Harvard trained psychiatrist, and a brain image expert recommends a powernap of 20 minutes in between can take your productivity higher.
Develop Resilience
In the face of setbacks in life, resilient people carry an ability to bounce back in no time. They are in control of dealing with stress and emotions. There are different tactics to learn and develop resilience. Some of these are maintaining a positive self-image, accepting change, having social support, and keeping things in perspective.
Once you are aware of your thoughts, behaviours, and feelings, you are more likely to have good emotional health. The more you understand your mind and body connection, the easier it is for you to cope with the stress and problems in a healthy way. Once you acquire this, you start feeling good about yourself and have good relationships with others.
Aligning the mind-body connection will enhance your ability to look at life from a new lens or a fresh perspective and conscious living. It entails cultivating forgiveness, being more evident and precise on the EPIC life you wish to create, your sense of possibility and the awareness of the lens of memory gets heightened.
Our life is a web of the mingled yarn that constitutes emotions, feelings and behaviours and they all come together to create an EPIC version of our life.
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https://sdtp.co.uk/programs/designing-an-exceptionally-amazing-life/
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Image Source: https://elements.envato.com/body-of-a-beautiful-girl-in-a-meditation-P622J62
Written By: Jimmy Jain
Edited By: Afreen Fatima
Society of Design Thinking Professionals
