In my recent telecourse, The Power of the Mind-Body Connection: Less Stress, Less Pain, More Freedom, I introduced the Healthy Mind Toolbox.  The toolbox consists of four tool categories: Understanding, Awareness, Focus, and Persistence.

The toolbox is my way of organizing the aspects of mind-body healing to make it as easy as possible for you.

(Did you miss the telecourse?  Sign up for the Healthy Life Newsletter to get the free download.  The telecourse was an overview of the toolbox and its components, and now I’m presenting an in-depth look at each tool category in the upcoming Mind-Body Connection Power Series. To get more help with personal application of the toolbox, join the Mind-Body Connection Power Group – members get free access to the Mind-Body Connection Power Series.  You won’t want to miss the FREE  Success Secrets telecourse next Thursday, March 19.)

The Understanding Tools focus on two vital parts of mind-body work: thoughts and emotions.  Today I’m writing about thoughts.  This post is VITAL to your mind-body work, and will serve as a reference point for every post I write from here on out.  If you pay attention to this one, everything else will make sense.  Your knowledge and healing process can be built around this central concept.

You may already have some idea of the role of thinking in physical pain, but for those who don’t, I’m going to start from the beginning.

Though the common practice in our culture is to revere and depend on the logic mind, there are a few problems with that.  I can practically hear you thinking, “What?  Is she nuts?”  No really…it’s true.  Let me explain.

Thoughts are just electrical impulses that happen in our brains.  Often, they come from the area of the brain Martha Beck likes to call the “lizard brain,” which, without boring you with scientific details, is the part of the brain we share with reptiles.  It’s the part of your mind that helps you recognize threats, whether they are in the form of scarcity or overt attack.  The good old lizard can really take over your life if you are unaware of it, because it spews out “lack!” or “attack!” thoughts regularly.  You have little choice in this matter, being human, but you can learn the ultimate, life-saving trick:

Don’t believe what you think.

The many millions of thoughts you produce daily/weekly/yearly are just that – thoughts.  If you were to let them print out on a little thought-printer for several days, you would begin to notice patterns and lots of repetition.  They are just benign entities existing in your mind.  The trouble starts when you BELIEVE those thoughts.  If you think, “I will never get well,” for example, and don’t believe it, that thought has no impact on you.  If you believe it, it becomes devastating.

My favorite metaphor for this comes from Martha Beck.  (Naturally!)  She likens the mind to a large German Sheppard.  Imagine you and this dog on a walk together, but it’s the kind of walk you have with a dog who’s never been trained.  You’re being yanked all over, your arm is pulled out of its socket, and you end up exhausted.  However, if you were walking the dog rather than allowing the dog to walk you, then you would end up with a nice, energizing walk, some fresh air, and exercise.  And a happy dog.

Many people are getting walked by the dog, and spend their whole lives trying to fix the problem by hoping to control outside circumstances.  They feel victimized by events, because they don’t know the secret.

The secret is this: thoughts create feelings.

If an event or circumstance takes place, most people assume that it “made them feel” a certain way.  I used to continually get upset with my husband for “making me feel” any number of things.  However, it was not him making me feel, it was ME.  Whatever I was thinking, in response to his actions or words, was what created my feeling.  So, I would have running commentary in my head, like, “He just doesn’t understand what it’s like.”  Or, “He doesn’t really care, he just wants to do it his way.”  Those are just two examples out of the millions of thoughts I once believed.

By now, you’re probably imagining a situation, saying to yourself , “In that circumstance, it would not be my thoughts causing me to feel bad!  It would be the situation/in-laws/weather/pain making me feel bad!”

This is normal.  This is your mind’s reaction to this very shocking concept that everything your mind says is not true and in fact can create unnecessary suffering in your life should you believe it.  It’s very natural to resist this concept at first, and to try to disprove it.

Why?

Because understanding that thoughts create feelings means you are accountable for how you feel.  All the time.

Yikes!

That may sound like bad news at first, but it is actually the most freeing, energizing revelation once you begin to experience the results.  Once you learn how to see your thinking, asses it, and then change it, you discover huge amounts of untold power at your disposal.  The world no longer feels like such a scary place, because you have the ability to change how you feel, no matter what is going on in your circumstances.  (Not that you shouldn’t ever feel bad – but we’ll get to this when we talk about emotions.)

This might just be the most effective stress-reduction technique I’ve ever encountered.  I used to spend my life being walked by the dog, but no more!  I walk the dog, every day.  I am in charge of how I feel.  As a result, I get to feel good a lot more.

So how does this affect your mind-body healing process?

It gives it a boost of super-powered energy that rockets you to a whole new level.

Think about it – if you are able to reduce your stress without changing your unsolvable problems or difficult life circumstances, you end up with much less internal tension.  Your body stops living in fight or flight mode, and stops creating inflammatory responses and generous doses of stress hormones.  Also, you discover where you have been unwittingly creating massive doses of stress by reacting to thoughts like, “I will never heal,” or “I’m never going to be able to live a normal life again” as though they were true.

For those of us with the personality traits described by Mind-Body doctor Dr. John Sarno, such as perfectionism, good-ism, etc., this opens up whole new doors for healing.  What a revelation to discover that “I have to do this just right,” or, “I can’t make any mistakes,” or, “Everyone will think I’m a failure” are just powerless, little thoughts.

As you can imagine, not believing these and other, similar stressful thoughts reduces your stress levels fast.   You may not realize how much tension you are accumulating in your body while believing self-directed stressful thoughts.  When that stress begins to leave, suddenly you notice huge changes physically.  I used to be plagued with upper and lower back muscle knots.  I really thought I’d have to see a chiropractor for the rest of my life – and this was BEFORE I discovered I had a pelvic floor full of muscle knots!

Now, my back, neck, and pelvic floor are loose and relaxed – unless, of course, I start accumulating tension.  Now I know that tension is just a signal to look at what’s going on in my unconscious thought patterns.  Once I get the thoughts on paper (because it’s not like we CHOOSE to believe these thoughts, or even know we’re doing it) I am often shocked.  I often think – “I was thinking THAT??!!”

So now that you know the secret power of thinking, you might have a lot of questions.  I will definitely be posting more about this in the future, so please ask them.  I’d love to know what you want to know and what is confusing.

Since your mind has so much power over your body, you may be chomping at the bit to learn how to walk the dog.  There are many ways to do it – some people simply meditate (Pema Chodron is a great resource for learning how to detach from thoughts through meditation).  Others read books (there are many, many books about this very topic – see my Resources page for my favorites, listed under Self Coaching.)  Some choose to try coaching.  Martha Beck coaching is entirely about changing your thinking.  It’s based on the branch of psychology called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which is an extension of cognitive behavioral therapy.   Martha Beck coaches are also trained in The Work, a method for working with thoughts created by Byron Katie.

A fellow Martha Beck Coach named Brooke Castillo developed a very helpful method of learning to work with your own thinking.  It’s called Self Coaching 101.  I am certified in the method and find it extremely useful in my own life and in my work with clients.  I can tell you this: the thought-work methods are extremely effective and helpful in releasing emotional suffering.  This simply has to result in less physical pain.  Every single practitioner I am familiar with who works with mind-body healing, such as Dr. Schubiner (and to some extent, David Wise, Ph.D), advocates or incorporates a form of thought-work.

In fact, Dr. Schubiner tells people in the fourth week of his month-long program to read Byron Katie’s books and learn the thought-work methods.  Monte Heuftle, an author and TMS coach, advocates “thinking clean” in his resources.  This kind of mental work is truly one of the biggest pieces of mind-body healing.  It is fast, effective, and something you can incorporate into your life forever.

If you have looked at some of the resources I’ve mentioned above and are still struggling to understand or incorporate this kind of mental work, don’t worry.  It can be tricky, because you’re trying to do it through the filter of your own thinking.  That’s why it can be so helpful to speak to another person who is trained in this kind of work.  As a coach, it’s my job to spot those stressful thoughts that you are unaware you are thinking.  (We call them unconscious limiting beliefs.)   Keep on working, keep on practicing, and you will soon see the benefits.  Persistence is the key.