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“The body is the battlefield of the war-games of the mind”
Brian Luke Seaward
Wow! What an amazing quote. I wish I could take ownership of having written that but I did not. For as long as I have been in practice, I have always been intrigued with the direct relationship between our minds and our bodies. Having read hundreds of abstracts, books and research articles, it is a fact that the mind and body are intimately connected and will forever stay this way.
The intention of writing this article is to support my patients, friends and avid readers of my blog posts to better understand the mind-body interaction.
Who do you know who lives with anger, hostility, greed, scorn and belittlement? With these as your default emotion, one can anticipate a body filled with inflammation, and altered physiology. The human body desires peace, serenity, non-inflammation and a calm mind.
The buzzword of our society today is “stress”. When we take a closer look at stress, what is it really but a reaction to a set of circumstances? The event is always neutral. It is the thoughts, the words and our physiology that describes the event and places a positive or negative twist to whatever has taken place. Let me explain this further. Every event in our life is but an event. IT JUST IS It could be the loss of a job, a divorce, a health challenge, the passing of a loved one etc. If we really examine these events, it is evident that each of these “is what it is” the interpretation we place on these events will give rise to the “stress” that then plays havoc with our physiology. Our hearts will race, our intestines will empty, and our breathing will accelerate. All of these are automatic reactions to our thought process. None of these events triggered these biologic manifestations. Please stay with me on this!
The absolute, very best way to reduce stress in your life is to offer no resistance to life. This may sound impossible or just ridiculous to some people. However if you spend repeated hours clearly contemplating what it means to offer no resistance, to just accept what is, allows each of us to CO-FLOW with what is happening instead of trying to make things different than they are in this very moment.
We may not be happy with the events and circumstances that are transpiring at any given point in our life but, if we can embrace that our happiness need not be derived from people, things or conditions, then you can be free to enjoy and appreciate just BEING. This concept of just being is very difficult. How can you just be? Don't you have any emotions? Any feelings?
My answer is yes. I have emotions and I have feelings however, I have learned the wisdom of surrender.
Eckert Tolle, the author of practicing the power of now, says it beautifully. “Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is in the NOW, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is.”
Please read that again. Here is what’s real. Things go wrong often in our lives. It is at these moments that we must surrender in order to eliminate the pain and the sorrow from these events. Acceptance of what is immediately frees you and thus reconnects you with being. Surrender, ladies and gentlemen is a purely internal experience. What it is not is laying back and doing nothing. The healthy individual will at these moments, take every action to help correct, deal, and cope with the present set of circumstances. At the very same time he/she, is accepting of all that is happening in the present situation.
When we experience tension of the mind, we get an immediate arising of tension in our bodies. We feel our bodies contract. At this very moment the free flow of life energy through the body, which is essential for healthy functioning, becomes greatly restricted.
My simple offering is to practice surrender every day of your life. Trust, in that with more practice like every other endeavor, we get better with time.
My goal in life is to become a spiritual warrior. I define a spiritual warrior as a person who can stay in a relative level of joy despite the events and circumstances going on at any given moment.
Please join me in this endeavor. It is a worthy goal. In the interim any action that you take may not bear immediate results. However, until it does, practice the art of Surrendering to “what is “.
Life can be more fun, less anxiety provoking and significantly more rewarding when we live this philosophy every day. I do not want my body to harbor war games. It’s my safe harbor and I will do everything to keep it at peace.
Please contemplate these powerful messages. So many of the health related issues that we suffer with are coming from deep unsettled emotions. I will leave you with a quote that I love:
“I would rather be at peace than the need to be RIGHT“
Dr. Charles Berg