The psychosomatics of illness is the key to recovery through the mind-body connection. Every day more and more people turn to psychosomatics as a science to improve their health. Therefore, now this topic is more relevant than ever.
In this article, we will analyze the essence of psychosomatics, tell you what you need to pay special attention to when recovering, and also talk about stress, illness and wonderful stories of overcoming them!
THE POWER OF MIND IN PSYCHOSOMATICS
Donald Epstein, author of The Twelve Stages of Healing, has often said that recovery is an "inner work." This means that the most important components for curing disease, such as vitality and harmony, are already within us. This is the foundation of mind healing. The innate healing power of the mind is our integral part, it is available to each of us.
Dr. Epstein writes: “Healing, including from fatal diseases, is a natural process, not magic. Healing occurs through the unity, integrity and reunification of your psyche with all aspects of your being."
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Many of us understand the power of the mind. There are many known cases when people with incurable fatal diseases, without the influence of modern medicine, returned from almost the other world to enjoy a long, healthy and productive life.
Medical representatives underestimate or even deny most of these cases. The psychosomatics of illness runs counter to the prevailing view that external factors such as drugs, radiation and surgery are critical to recovery. The belief that the body's recovery can occur due to internal psychic strength is incomprehensible to doctors.
THE MIND AND BODY CONNECTION: PSYCHONEUROIMMUNOLOGY
A holistic view of disease treatment teaches that humans are more than just a physical body and that emotions, thoughts, attitudes and feelings play an important role in recovery.
The psychosomatics of illness emphasizes the connection between mind and body. She argues that health and illness depend on dynamic interactions between the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of our lives, as well as our relationship with the environment in which we live.
Several years ago, an important new field of science emerged called psychoneuroimmunology. She is concerned with identifying the connections between the mind, brain and immune system, and how they interact with each other.
Researchers such as the American Candice Perth, Ph. D., have scientifically confirmed that our mind and senses affect health, and our health, in turn, has a powerful effect on the mind. Therefore, psychosomatic illness is always a reversible process.
Sarah Shannon, in her book "Wellness in the Atomic World", summarizes the main discoveries of psychoneuroimmunology in an interesting way:
- A person's mood and emotional attitude to illness can change its course;
- The human mind is constantly changing;
- Stress-related hormones weaken the immune system.
- The chemicals produced by the immune system directly affect the brain.
- The brain and immune system interact directly with each other.
These discoveries show how the psychosomatics of disease works. They reveal the connection between the psyche and the health of the body, showing that our attitude to ourselves and to life situations greatly affects our immunity.
EFFECTS OF EMOTIONS ON HEALTH
For example, fear, hopelessness, and apathy are closely associated with the production of neurochemicals that lower immunity and promote the aging process.
In contrast, chemicals (known as neurotransmitters) that are created by positive feelings and emotions strengthen the immune system. They slow down the aging process, protect against many viruses and even cancer.
Most of our thoughts and emotions have a temporary effect on health, as they are short-lived. But chronic, recurring feelings have a much deeper and more lasting impact on our well-being.
This effect underlies the mind's ability to heal the body. But it works the other way too. Feelings of fear, hopelessness, anxiety, and worthlessness still affect us, no matter how small.
Criticism, confidence in negative outcomes, anger and resentment are always associated with diseases such as cancer, ulcers and heart disease. All these connections are studied by the science of psychosomatics.
STRESS AND ADAPTATION TO IT
Recent research suggests that it's not just stress itself that leads to illness, but rather how we adapt to it. The actions with which we respond to them are often based on our views of ourselves and our lives, many of which were embedded in us in childhood.
When a stressful incident occurs (be it the loss of a loved one, a difficult life task, or a change in economic status), we tend to look at the problem through these old views.
If we are stuck in rigid, fixed ideas about ourselves and how life should be, it is much more difficult for us to deal with an ever-changing life.
Instead of adjusting to the situation and looking for practical solutions, we feel frustrated and scared. Rather than being a stimulus to action, a life challenge leads us to fear and paralysis.
DISEASE - CALL FOR CHANGE
In the context of our mind, illness should never be seen as punishment. Instead, illness should be seen as the result of a lack of coherence between the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of our lives.
Disease symptoms are the body's way of telling us that something is wrong. They are a wake-up call that tells us to change old attitudes and habits that contribute to health problems. This is what the psychosomatics of disease teaches.
To the extent that we are sensitive to the subtle messages of our body, we can fix the problem before it becomes serious.
Disease compels us to make a choice. Choices based on fear and other narrow-minded attitudes always lead to more suffering. Whereas choice based on knowledge and hope leads to recovery.
Points that promote recovery can include striving for greater inner coherence and harmony, changing destructive emotional images, letting go of resentment, getting rid of childhood wounds, and coming to terms with other difficult aspects of our past.
LIFE AFTER AIDS
In their book Living in Hope, Cindy Mikluskak-Cooper and Emmet Miller list some of the traits that unite AIDS survivors. In essence, they apply to anyone who suffers from serious illnesses, whether they are life threatening or not.
These traits include:
- Having a sense of personal responsibility for your health and the feeling that it can be influenced;
- Having a purpose in life;
- Finding new meanings in life as a result of the presence of the disease itself;
- These people have previously dealt with life crises;
- Accepting the reality of their diagnosis, they refused to believe it was a death sentence:
- The ability to communicate your concerns to others, including the illness itself;
- Stubbornness, ability to say “no”;
- Sensitivity to your body and its needs.
Here are 10 more hallmarks of AIDS survivors. These traits are discussed in Scott Gregory's book A Holistic Protocol for the Immune System. They speak of the healing power of our consciousness.
So, how people who survived AIDS behaved:
- They believed in the best;
- They took responsibility for their own health and took control of decisions that had a significant impact on their lives;
- They developed a sense of humor and learned to laugh;
- They empathized with other people;
- They were patient and did not expect an overnight recovery;
- They changed their attitude towards themselves and increased their self-esteem;
- They realized that there was nothing that could cure them, and they looked for combinations of life-enhancing factors and conditions;
- They were not afraid of death or life;
- They did not refuse treatment;
- They were fighters.
WHAT TO KEEP HEALTH?
An important component of the mind's body healing process is creating an environment that will promote recovery. Here we are not much different from a farmer preparing the soil in anticipation of a bountiful harvest.
While the environment will differ depending on our personal needs and life situation, it must include a number of indispensable aspects.
We offer several ideas that can improve our condition on the emotional, mental and even spiritual levels.
EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONAL SELF
Our emotions play an important role in both the formation of good health and the development of disease. Positive feelings are produced by neurochemicals that strengthen the immune system; negative, repressed, or distorted emotions can lower immunity and open doors to a host of health problems.
This is why emotional well-being is an important aspect of body recovery. Instead of trying to suppress, deny, or control our emotions, we need to feed and direct them so that they can help us become whole. The psychosomatics of disease comes down to this.
Emotional parenting can involve creating a support system. It can take the form of communicating with other people who support us. Sometimes, on the contrary, we may need to distance ourselves from everyone and be alone.
Accepting all of our senses (including sexual feelings) plays a huge role in the healing of the body. The psychosomatics of illness attaches great importance to this.
Unfortunately, the free expression of anger, grief, disappointment and sadness is not always accepted in our culture as an expression of joy, excitement and affection.
Like a river whose flow is blocked, emotions that are blocked become toxic and harmful. By their very nature, emotions must be experienced and expressed. Chronic suppression of emotions leads to horrors such as cancer, stroke and heart attack. It also contributes to less dramatic illnesses such as depression and chronic fatigue.
This is why we need to re-establish the connection between the mind and body through emotions and allow them to be lived and expressed.
Prominent biochemist and neurophysiologist Candice Perth writes in her book Molecules of Emotion: “I believe that all emotions are positive, because emotions are what unites mind and body. Anger, fear, and sadness, the so-called negative emotions, are as beneficial as peacefulness, courage, and joy. Suppressing emotions without letting them flow freely is to turn your body against yourself. Stress, which blocks the flow of peptide signals to maintain cellular function, creates the conditions for disease to emerge. All sincere emotions are positive emotions."
Through meditation, dynamic exercises, or various body-oriented practices such as bioenergy, network chiropractic, zero balancing, we can learn to accept our emotions and channel them in a positive direction.
Another important component of psychosomatics is humor. In his book Anatomy of a Disease, Norman Cousins wrote about how ten minutes of laughter at regular intervals helped him overcome a life-threatening illness.
Most importantly, we need to heal old emotional wounds from the past. Reconciliation with other people, forgiving those who hurt us, letting go of hurt feelings, and especially forgiving ourselves are essential to this process.
NUTRITION FOR MIND
At the moment we have access to a huge amount of information. And if we do not know what the psychosomatics of diseases is, we may have problems.
While information can be valuable, the inexorable amount of gossip, sensation, shallow ideas, and negative, fear-inducing concepts of advertising, news, and politics are mental junk we can do without.
All this dulls our consciousness, forces us to be on the periphery of a happy life and prevents the connection of our body and mind.
Of particular concern is the constant stream of negative reports of death and incurable diseases. In news, magazine articles, the main attention is paid to the constantly growing number of viruses that cause cancer, tuberculosis, AIDS in us. This creates a mental environment of fear and hopelessness.
Unless we fucking throw our television away and decide to avoid reading the news or going online with or without reason, we cannot avoid this onslaught.
However, we can block out most of this negative information through our ability to discriminate.
We can also stop taking almost all opinions on different diseases seriously, realizing that many of them are the result of a limited approach and partial understanding.
- For example, in the early 1980s, we were told that AIDS is an incurable disease. After it was discovered that many patients were still alive five to ten years after their initial diagnosis, the media decided that it was not necessarily an incurable disease.
- In 2003, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) was touted as a disease that would kill millions. But less than eight hundred people died.
- More recently, bird flu was said to kill tens of millions of people. This did not happen.
Without diminishing the dangers of bird flu, instilling fear of disease is counterproductive. Today, instead of an avian flu pandemic, we have the fear of a pandemic.
History and logic suggest that the best way to fight bacterial and viral diseases is to prevent them, common sense, and good immunity. This is a practical psychosomatics.
PAST YEARS EXPERIENCE
Our past is an important aspect of psychosomatics. As a child, many of us formed certain ideas about ourselves, our talents and our life goals. We also developed an idea of other people and the world in which we live.
While many of these beliefs may have been true once, they may be useless now. For example, the idea that my older brother would be angry and beat me up was true when we were five, but at fifty it is no longer relevant.
The idea that I'm not very good at art may just reflect a bad experience in a second grade drawing class. But it still gets in the way of realizing creativity.
For this reason, we need to ask ourselves, are the old concepts still valid and can they be changed?
By answering this question, we will expand our perspectives, which can bring us new opportunities for understanding this world and personal growth.
Also, our negative images are a manifestation of past experience. For example, our friend or relative died of a certain disease, and now we think that the same fate awaits us. While we may be genetically predisposed to certain health problems, that doesn't mean they will manifest.
Someone said, “Just because my father has cancer does not mean that I will get sick. I don’t think like him, I don’t eat like him, I don’t live like him. We are different people.
In addition, we must be aware that the body we have now is not the same as it was five or ten years ago. Every cell in our body is constantly undergoing changes. The health of future cells and, therefore, the future health of our entire body and mind, depends on how we live, what we eat and what we think right now - this is how the psychosomatics of diseases works.
STEREOTYPES OF SOCIETY
As people living in society, we are imbued with many beliefs and myths that interfere with the process of our recovery. We need to create other attitudes that will enhance the healing power of our mind.
In his famous book Healing Myths, the Magic of Recovery, the already mentioned Dr. Donald Epstein focuses on social stereotypes (“recovering means understanding what went wrong or who did what to me”), biomedical stereotypes (“recovery takes time”), Religious stereotypes (“sickness is the punishment for my sins”) and offers alternative ways to help us restore our innate ability to heal ourselves.
He writes: “Each culture dwells in its own mythology. If we want to wake up from sleep, we must be willing to reevaluate our beliefs in order to perceive our world as it is. Then we can develop our own view of the world in which we live, and write our own life story. When we wake up from sleep and question public beliefs, it can be a matter of our liberation, life transformation and empowerment. The psychosomatics of disease plays an important role in this."
SPIRITUAL EDUCATION SYSTEM
Among doctors, it is believed that spirituality has little effect on recovery, but this is not the case.
Spirituality is understood by many in different ways. But be that as it may, it is always a penetration into deeper levels of our consciousness, where one can find inner wisdom and love. When we connect to them, our companions become a sense of harmony and coherence between all aspects of our being. This is exactly what triggers the healing process, and at all levels.
THE MAN WITHOUT CANCER
Finally, we give the story of a young Brazilian guy who was able to defeat a terrible disease. This story came to us from personal conversations, there is no documentary evidence of it. At least we didn't find them. But if you wish, on the Internet, you can find many confirmed similar stories.
We include this one because it is very inspiring and fits perfectly into the topic of the article.
So how can psychosomatics of illness save lives?
JOSE HISTORY
At the age of 25, Jose was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His doctor, a renowned oncologist at a major American hospital, gave no chance of recovery. He recommended surgery as the only way to prolong Jose's life.
Jose decided to return to his native Brazil, where he was examined by other oncologists at a hospital affiliated with the best medical school in Brazil.
They confirmed the initial diagnosis and, like the American doctor, did not hope for Jose's recovery. They offered him surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, but all were refused.
Jose himself had a medical degree and knew that therapy would kill him. Instead, he decided to move to the countryside, where he embarked on a holistic recovery. It involved intensive spiritual and psychological work using a range of local healing plants.
This led to important discoveries in his life. They brought about major changes in attitudes, beliefs, behavior and diet. All of this had a positive (and powerful) effect on his health.
When Jose returned to the Rio de Janeiro hospital six months later for an examination, CT scans and other tests showed that the cancer had completely disappeared. His doctors were stunned.
They knew that nearly everyone with advanced pancreatic cancer dies within six months of being diagnosed. They simply could not believe in a complete remission, let alone that it happened in the absence of traditional drug therapy.
Although the doctors were happy for Jose (who remained in excellent health for another eight years until he died of a heart attack), they announced that they must have been mistaken in their initial diagnosis and that he did not have cancer after all!
The idea of complete recovery from pancreatic cancer through psychosomatics was unthinkable for them.
CONCLUSION
The article turned out to be long, but, of course, it was not possible to cover the whole topic. Stay tuned for more in the following articles.
To summarize, let's say that it is foolish to deny the connection between mind and health. Thousands of years of experience show us that the possibilities of our psyche are endless.
Our knowledge in this area is still very superficial. But, drawing attention to the topic of psychosomatics, with the help of such articles, books about psychosomatics or videos, sooner or later we will come to an understanding of the true nature of things!
