This is the beauty of working on the mind, emotions, and mind body connection – it only brings positive and good changes into your life.  You feel better mentally, feel more relaxed, and have more tools to use for difficult situations throughout your life.  This can only enhance the healing you are seeking from medical professionals.  It’s exciting to consider all kinds of treatments coming together as a whole to create healing.  When I was journeying toward health, I explored every possible healing modality and created a combination that worked for me.  I truly believe each person can find the right mixture of treatments, and I don’t see any single treatment as the magic bullet for everyone.  You are an individual, and your healing process will be completely your own. 

I’m going to continue discussing the mind body connection because I do think it’s important for you to know about it.  Perhaps you’ll read my posts and find some sort of relief from the constant anxiety, fear, hopelessness, or panic you’ve been feeling.  That is my hope for you, and the reason I am sharing every tool I’ve learned – both as a woman who worked through her own emotional pain and as a trained life coach.  I love sharing these powerful and life-changing tools, and I love writing.  This blog is a passion for me.  I am passionate about spreading a positive message regarding these painful health issues.  When I was wading through the internet, trying to figure out why I was in such agony, I read many scary things about these health issues.  At the time, I did not find anything written by someone who had returned to health, and much of what I read talked about the chronic nature of these diseases.  Every time I sit down to write, I imagine a woman combing the internet, looking for hope and something positive.  I remember the fear and hopelessness I felt, and the resonating sense of connection I experienced when I found someone with a positive message. 

The mind body connection has been explored by many different people, from medical doctors to psychologists to musicians to patients to writers.  Its origins lie in the Eastern healing modalities such as acupuncture, yoga, and ayurveda, to name a few.  Many people consider it an essential part of healing, and many people consider it hogwash.  There’s even quite a discrepancy about how to write the word/words mind body.  I’ve seen mind/body, mind-body, mindbody, and mind body, all used in published texts.  I haven’t yet decided my favorite, though I’m leaning toward mind-body or mindbody.  

I’m certainly no expert in the mind-body connection field, but I do study it constantly.  It is perhaps the single most fascinating subject to me.  I love the feeling I have when I live as a whole being, mind and body merged as one.  I love the messages my body gives my mind when they are communicating freely.  The whole concept has helped me with every aspect of my life, from physical pain to mental pain to emotional eating issues to musicianship (I’m a violinist and Irish fiddler).

The mind-body concept sometimes gets a bad reputation as another one of those “fluffy,” new-age ideas originating in California and slowly moving east.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  The mind-body concept is probably as old as humanity, and has been a part of many cultures including Celtic, Asian, and Native American cultures.  Though different cultures had/have different ways of utilizing the connection, the similarities are often astonishing.  Healers have traditionally incorporated mind, body, spirit, and Earth to help people return to health.  

I’ll be exploring the details of the mind-body connection in future posts, but today I wanted to introduce some of my “friends” who have published material regarding this topic.  As I unearthed more and more helpful information in my own healing journey, I came across many experts whose works became central in my own mind-body connection process.  If you’re interested in researching and discovering more on this topic, you might enjoy the works of Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. John Sarno, Depak Chopra, Dr. Ted Grossbart, and Dr. David Wise, to name a few.  Of course, my teacher and mentor Martha Beck has also written extremely useful information in her book, Finding Your Own North Star.  Her discussion about the Essential and Social Selves reveals a fascinating connection between our health, body, and mental happiness.  Happy reading!