The Healing Power of the Mind
Learn how to Harness It
The healing power of the mind is amazing! What goes on in your mind is a critical and often overlooked factor for everyday health. And it’s even more critical when you are dealing with a serious illness, chronic pain, or health condition. Your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and stress levels can influence how you feel as well as the choices you make. It also influences how you respond to your health challenges.
There are three important ways you can harness the healing power of the mind to support your overall health. The first is the ability to choose the beliefs you hold about your health. What you believe impacts what you’re willing to do to be healthy or improve your health. If you don’t believe you can get well, you may become defeated before you even get started. In other words, if you don’t believe anything can change, it can be hard to take the steps you need to.
The second is the ability to focus your mind and open yourself to exploring and testing new possibilities. Competent health care professionals can assist you in this process, but you also need to take an active role in learning about your health, asking questions, and exploring ways to support your health.
The third and final ability is to turn thoughts and beliefs into actions. This is your ability to implement what you learn.
When harnessing the healing power of the mind, you may encounter many different obstacles. You can have subconscious mental blocks that keep you from taking action on what you know. You can also have emotional blocks that prevent you from objectively evaluating what is working and what isn’t.
Focus on Building A Healthy Mind, Emotions and Thoughts
It’s no secret that our emotions and negative thoughts can impact our health. Stress, especially chronic stress, can wreak havoc on our bodies. Stress activates the fight-or-flight response of the nervous system, and chronic stress can impact your immune system, metabolism, and cardiovascular health.
Tips to Better Manage Stress and Negative Emotions
Below are some tips to help you. Remember, it is a combination of many things that promote overall health of the body and mind.
- Stay Hydrated.
- Eat Whole Foods
- Keep Moving
- Practice deep breathing.
- Explore Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT/Tapping) if you find it helpful.
- Learn to meditate.
- Support your gut health. Download our FREE gut health resources, 5 Top Gut Imbalances, and Beat the Bloat.
- Surround yourself with supportive people.
The Placebo and Nocebo Effect
The placebo and nocebo effects are interesting examples of how expectations can influence our experiences. A placebo effect happens because you have positive expectations about a treatment or practice, and this can contribute to a perceived or measurable improvement. A nocebo effect occurs when you have negative expectations which can contribute to having unpleasant symptoms or outcomes.
This doesn’t mean an illness or result is “all in your head.” Instead, it demonstrates how your brain and body interact in ways that can influence how you feel, your symptoms, stress responses, and how you experience your health. The connection between the mind, nervous system, and immune system has been studied in a field called psychoneuroimmunology.
Supporting The Healing Power of The Mind
Your thoughts aren’t the only thing that determines your health, but it is important to pay attention to not only your mental and emotional well-being, but also what you eat, how much movement you get, sleep, gut health, and other healthy habits.
All you have to do is start with one small step. Practice deep breathing. Take a walk. Spend a few minutes meditating. Talk with someone who supports you. Small actions repeated over time can make a meaningful difference in how you care for yourself.
If you need help managing stress, learn more about our Nervous System Reset Program.
This article was originally published as part of the Sunshine Sharing newsletter series.
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