Did you know that the mind and body constantly communicate with one another? Your neurobiology informs your physical body, and your physical body can directly affect your thoughts.
Here’s another way to think about it: how you move and interact with your surroundings can shape how you feel, think, and behave. It starts early in life. The younger children become mobile and reach cognitive milestones, the faster they develop and maintain mental health.
Exercise and physical activity in adults help promote healthy physical and mental aging. When you work out, you keep your body fit and nourish your brain. So, it’s a double win!
What Is The Mind-Body Connection?
The mind-body connection is the intertwining of both the mind and body. If you think of a disturbing thought, this connection is so powerful that your body may experience a physical response, like nausea, weeping, or a stress-induced headache.
This physical response is basically how you and your ancestors managed to survive. In other words, the mind-body connection is responsible for you’re being alive today.
How Does The Mind-Body Connection Work?
Four primary parts in your brain directly affect the mind-body connection.
- The cortex is responsible for dealing with your feelings. The cerebral cortex, the brain’s outer surface, is associated with higher-level processes such as consciousness, thought, emotions, reasoning, language, and memory.
- The hippocampus is a complex brain structure embedded deep into the temporal lobe. It has a significant role in learning and memory. Damaged by stimuli, it affects multiple neurological and psychiatric disorders.
- The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive function. It allows you to strategize and decide what to do. The prefrontal cortex is primarily responsible for the ‘higher’ brain functions of the frontal lobes, including decision-making, problem-solving, intelligence, and emotion regulation.
- The amygdala is known as the fear center of the brain. It is what controls your fight-or-flight response. It gets activated when your body senses an external threat. As a result, it releases large doses of cortisol, the stress hormone. In times of danger or trauma, this hormone signals your lungs and heart to make you breathe faster. It pumps your muscles full of adrenaline. It helps you escape danger or fight your way to safety.
Each physical symptom you experience is also something you feel emotionally, and vice versa. So, for example, if you sprain your ankle, the physical pain can also be accompanied by a sense of anger (swear words) or sadness (crying).
On the other hand, if you experience a panic attack, you may feel a tightness in your chest, nausea, or achiness.
What Are The Benefits Of The Mind-Body Connection?
A solid and healthy mind-body connection can reduce anxiety and fatigue while lowering blood pressure. Science has proven that the mind-body connection improves digestion, pain management, and cognitive function while strengthening your immune function and increasing your resilience to stress.
Now, let’s look at the benefits of the mind-body connection that can improve your overall wellness.
- Better Stress Management:
Strengthening the mind-body connections affects the body’s ability to manage stress outside your control. Yoga, meditation, breathing techniques, and tai chi can down-regulate the fight-or-flight response while up-regulating the rest and digest mode. It causes us to be less reactive to pressure and calmer in our responses.
- Boost Awareness
Learning the power of the mind and body connection causes you to focus more on your thoughts and less on your emotions. You can use this knowledge as a strategy.
For example, suppose you’re struggling emotionally; your body may send specific cues. If you’re in tune, you’ll know exactly how to react before you become overwhelmed.
One of the best ways to do this is by being mindful of your thought patterns and how you speak to yourself. Focus on when negative thoughts come into your mind and trigger them. This self-awareness lets you stop them before they escalate and become overwhelming. Once you practice this, you’ll deal with negative emotions more healthily, allowing for fewer physical setbacks.
- Better Release of Negative Emotions
Being in touch with your feelings and knowing what triggers bring on specific thought patterns can go a long way in helping you release pent-up or negative emotions. You become better at finding activities that nourish your mind and body, like learning breathing techniques, prayer, meditation, and yoga.
As a result, you begin to know what your body is feeling and find the best ways to calm your mind. It is convenient if you’re prone to stress, anxiety, and depression.
- Reduced Inflammation
In the wellness community, we hear about the damaging effects of inflammation in the body. Did you know that one of the benefits of mind-body practices is reduced inflammation? Scientific studies show their impact on lowering systemic inflammation.
- Develop Healthier Habits
When you can deal with difficult emotions, you become more in control of your thought patterns. Thus, your overall well-being gets a lovely boost.
For example, you pay better attention to your needs. So, you don’t get easily dragged into drinking, drugs, or binge eating when you’re in a bad mood. Instead, you engage in different physical activities to release the pent-up emotions. You may also start to eat and sleep better, hydrate more, and manage to stay more consistent. You’ll finally realize that you’ve made a conscious effort to develop healthy habits by living a balanced lifestyle. Over time, maintaining good physical, emotional, and mental patterns will become a way of life.
Final thoughts
There are many more benefits to a healthy mind and body connection. Besides the ones listed above, the list includes less fatigue, mental clarity, increased creativity, better sleep, and more. Start today by becoming more aware of the vital mind-body connection and how you can improve your life.
Be well + prosper,
Elaine xx
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