MIND-BODY CONNECTION

Lissa Rankin (2020, revised edition). Mind over medicine:                                                                              Scientific proof that you can                                                                heal yourself.


Rankin is a medical doctor that became disenchanted with the medical standard care practice of drugs and surgery and the protocol of exercise and nutrition as the primary ways  to address illness...she began asking her patients profound questions during the intake process like, "what does your body need to heal?"  By listening empathically, she began a journey of health and healing for herself and her patients. 

One theme in the book is that chronic stress produces a cascade of chemicals in the body that makes it difficult for the body to heal itself. Walter Cannon's early work on stress and the now well know phrase "flight, fight, freeze, or faint" are examples of this. Whereas the "relaxation response" (e.g., Herbert Benson's work from 1970's through 2020) is finally gaining wider acceptance in western US culture, and seems to provide the needed countermeasure to chronic stress. The relaxation response produces it's own healthy cascade of chemicals in the body that make it easier for the us to mobilize resources and devote them to health and healing.

There are many other important ideas related to health in the book including the health carin which includes 6 steps: believing healing is possible, connecting and surrendering to our "inner pilot light" (for me, the Holy Spirit), surrounding oneself with healing support, diagnosing the root causes of illness, writing a prescription for oneself, and treating our fears and resistance.


For pragmatic application, the relaxation response that promotes self-healing can be invoked by: choosing a positive word, sound or image, sitting in a quiet place, relaxing the body, repeating the word/sound/image with each out breath, and when distracted, saying the equivalent of "oh well," and come back to the word/sound/image for 15-20 minutes a day (ideally two times a day)...that's it!

link here to Benson describing the relaxation response process (hopefully the link will still work, if not, search for "Benson's relaxation response"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBCsFuoFRp8
















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS Wayne Dyer (2003). There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem. Dyer earned a Doctorate of Education in Guidance and Counseling, and is a prolific author. His first book that i read in the 1970's, Your Erroneous Zones, profoundly influenced my thinking as a teen.  The theme of this book is that there is a spiritual solution to every problem, that problems are illusions created in the mind by incorrect thinking, and that the solution to these mental problems is to change our thinking in light of the spirit (defined as an energy/intelligence that is the source of all life, i.e., God). Some might call this "spiritual bypassing," ignoring the body in favor of the mind and spirit. The first half of the book is lessons from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Dyer suggests that low frequency is associated with the "negative" and faster frequency with the "positive" [for me, at least musically, lower frequencies don't imply negative emo...
Read more
Image
TURN ON Timothy Leary (1965, 1999). Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out Leary was a University Professor at Harvard who is best know for his experiments with LSD. The book is part lectures, part interviews, and part essays. Given all the media hype about Leary, i was surprised at how much common sense i encountered, and how much he speaks to learning, hope, and love.  He begins with a chapter on how to start your own religion (to invoke the rights of the first amendment in US law) with family and friends, a tribe of people living together in community with their own laws...a place where sacrament is consumed (it need not be LSD, but anything that is spiritually meaningful to the community, something that binds the community together in ceremony)...a place preferably in nature where one feels protected and nurtured.  The BIG ADVICE is to drop out of society's robot world/mind, and turn on to God/Goddess (the Spirit), nature, and the body and mind, and tune in (dropping back into socie...
Read more
Image
BODY WISDOM  Therese Bertherat (1989).  The body has its reasons: Self-awareness                                                           through conscious movement.  Berherat takes us on a personal journey in learning body wisdom /awareness using Ehrenfred's method which is radically different than the medical model/method she learned at University. The story unfolds as "sessions" of practices, and the end of the book reveals several "preliminaries" on how to cultivate body wisdom. Among the many practical lessons are:      pause after exhaling to let the body use oxygen before inhaling again--this allows the              body to rest/relax with every breath.      because all parts of the body are integrated, working with one par...
Read more