mercredi 8 août 2012

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Chemistry!




The Stoic Lucius Seneca once wrote: "It is part of the cure to want to be cured."





This simple observation reflects our current understanding of the relationship between mind and body. There is a close correlation between physical actions and mental states. Certain actions can impact our mental attitudes and our mental attitudes influence our physical being because the mind and body constantly talk to one another. The brain sends all that it thinks and perceives to the rest of the body.





An extreme example of this interconnection can be seen in the effects of voodoo. In the 1940s, Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon spent several years collecting examples of "voodoo death" -- case histories of men and women who died as a result of being the recipient of a curse, an alleged supernatural visitation or the breaking of some tribal or cultural taboo. Cannon concluded that humans could die from "the fatal power of the imagination working through unmitigated terror." Another researcher, Dr. J.C. Barker, in Scared to Death -- a collection of case histories of individuals who had willed themselves or others to death -- concluded that voodoo-like death results "purely from extreme fear and exhaustion...essentially a psychosomatic phenomenon."





How is it possible for thoughts to impact the body so drastically?





It is possible because the central nervous system and the body's immune system are hard-wired together. In 1981 neurobiologist David Felten and a team of researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine found the first concrete example of the mind/body connection -- a bridge between the body's immune system and the central nervous system that is under control of the brain. While tracing nerves to bone marrow, lymph nodes and the spleen, Felten's team discovered a network of nerves leading to blood vessels as well as to cells of the immune system. They found that nerves in the thymus and spleen terminated near clusters of lymphocytes and mast cells, which help control immune function. In other words, the brain absolutely communicates with immune-system cells.





This establishes a close correlation between a person's mental state and physical reactions. You can generate an emotion simply by going through the appropriate muscle movements. For example, if you clench your fist and scowl, you will begin to feel anger. Force yourself to laugh and you will begin to feel good. The specific muscle action is an integral part of the corresponding emotion. You cannot hold your features in the expression of one emotion and call up the feeling of a different emotion at the same time. It is impossible to do.





Paul Ekman, Professor Emeritus at the University of California at San Francisco, is a pioneer in the study of emotions and facial expressions. His research on more than 200 kinds of smiles demonstrated that you could actually alter your emotional state and immune system by smiling or frowning. When Ekman's research subjects were trained to control their facial muscles and voluntarily form smiles, their physiological processes altered immediately and their hormones changed drastically.


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