The mind body approach is the path to the genuine sense of wellbeing that defines health.

No matter what your motivation, no matter what your symptoms, no matter what challenges you’re grappling with, for optimum health and real healing, you need to understand how to deliberately, consciously apply the principles of the mind-body approach to health. But it's doubtful that you'll get this kind of information from your doctor. It’s not that they don’t believe the mind strongly affects health—remember, doctors are the ones who tell us that 60 to 90 percent of all doctor visits are for stress-related symptoms.

But until science comes up with answers that appeal to the scientific worldview, we’re mostly on our own when it comes to using our minds for health.

Where do you find support for using the mind body approach?
 

The ways things are now, if you want to use the mind-body approach to health, you’ll need to do your own research—and that means lots of reading and lots of experimenting. You’ll need to sort through all the information, misinformation, good advice, misguided advice, brilliant insights, distortions, and sheer nonsense you’ll find when you research the mind-body approach to health. You’ll need to figure out what works and what doesn’t by trial and error. That would be a lot to do even if you felt great and had plenty of leisure time.

If you’re like me, the last thing you're in the mood for when you’re in a health crisis or under a load of stress is sitting at the computer doing endless hours of Internet research, or combing through dozens of books, trying to make sense of hundreds of different points of view.

I've done lots of research.
 

Exploring the details of using consciousness for change has been my passion for more than 25 years. When I first started exploring mind-body health, I was exhilarated by the idea that I could change my body by thinking differently. I wanted to know exactly how to accomplish this magic.  So I read everything I could find about healing and the mind. But the more I read and studied, the more confused I became.

There's a lot of conflicting advice.

And there is plenty of information from respected authors that just doesn’t make sense. Because many of the authors writing about mind-body health are doctors, their strong allegiance to the scientific worldview keeps them from taking the ideas about the power of the mind far enough to allow them to understand how it works. And the more metaphysically-oriented authors often make up new rules for health that are as limiting as the conventional ones.

As I studied, I tried to apply the information I read, but I was rarely as successful as I thought I should be. I wondered what was I doing wrong. How could I tell which information was accurate and which was distorted? What was the common thread?

In search of the active ingredient

I gathered and organized every clue I could find about the affect of consciousness on the body. I read reams of scientific evidence that pointed toward the power of the mind in health, studies about how optimism affects health, research on the placebo response, documented cases of spontaneous remissions from cancer, and research on centenarians. I read the New Age "conscious creation" authors, New Thought authors, channelled information from metaphysical teachers, advice from medical intuitive's, and information from spiritual teachings throughout the ages.

I read books on quantum physics and string theory to try understand what science knows about the energy that makes up matter and the universe. I read metaphysical teachers to connect what they said with what physicists think about energy. I also read the sceptics, the scientists and medical authorities who denied or minimized the power of the mind to affect the body. All this exploration led to clarity about the role of the active ingredient of belief and perception in the mind-body connection. And it also revealed why we love the idea of the mind-body connection but reject practicing the mind-body approach to health.

Why do science and medicine resist the mind-body approach to health?

As I studied the history of science and medicine I saw how the scientific worldview and beliefs about health and how the body works have changed over the past couple of millennia. I learned that cultures and institutions always resist new ways of thinking, new theories, and new worldviews before they finally accept them. Negative reactions to new health theories in the past are identical to current reactions to the mind-body approach by today's health authorities. Despite the fact that science can't explain it, the evidence remains overwhelming that the mind-body approach is something real and useful. Becoming convinced of this only requires opening your mind a little and exploring the ideas for yourself.

This is important, because it looks like being willing to be convinced that the mind-body approach can work is the first step in putting this tool to conscious use.

More evidence supporting the mind body approach.

I discovered many areas of scientific research reveal that mental energy—something we can’t see, can’t measure, and don’t seem to want to believe in—can affect the physical world. Psychology of health is a field devoted to examining the effects mental and emotional factors have on health. Studies of biofeedback and clinical hypnosis reveal that we have an almost miraculous ability to exercise conscious control over even what we call our "unconscious" physical functioning.

Research in the area of Psychoneuroimmunology is providing evidence that our thoughts and emotions chemically affect our bodies with an immediacy that can't be explained by the brain-body connection. And there are many studies somewhat off the beaten path of science that reveal that we inhabit a "living energy universe": the work of psychic researchers, studies showing bizarre similarities between identical twins raised separately, the fact that people with multiple personalities can have diabetes one moment and not have it as another personality takes over, and experiments that show that animals know when their owners are coming home.

In the search for evidence supporting the power of the mind-body connection, I sifted through information about every healing practice and theory I could find: Western medicine, Chinese medicine, acupuncture, Ayurveda, healing touch, homeopathy, radionics, Christian Science, shamanism, voodoo, Huna, megavitamin therapy, color therapy, aromatherapy, macrobiotics, chiropractic, naturopathy—the list goes on and on.

I did not discover an easy formula for guaranteed health.

You probably don't want to hear that. Anyone who wants to sell you something—whether it’s their point of view or a product or service—is supposed to get you to believe you’re buying a no-effort, simple to understand, easy to apply formula for guaranteed success. You know how this goes:

• "Lose 30 pounds a month eating foods you love with this guaranteed weight loss program!"

• "Use antioxidants and stay cancer-free."

• "Just spray on and dirt rinses off. No scrubbing needed!"

Despite the fact that these claims are never true, we seem to have an endless appetite for assurances that life can be this easy. So this is what I would tell you if I was apart of the advertising promotion team for the power of the mind:

• "Use the amazing power of your mind to banish illness forever!"

• "Three easy-to-apply secrets to curing any disease!"

• "Just spray on the mind-body approach and symptoms disappear with no scrubbing!"

• "Guaranteed!"

But integrity always guides me to share the truth and therefore the current new age thinking of the perfect formula for health just by thinking we are unfortunately doesn't quite work that way for most of us.

Each of us has our own particular problems that will most likely require our individual creativity, flexibility, persistence, time, energy, and attention to change. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll read about healing and the mind, experience a flash of enlightenment, and have everything in your life change with no effort on your part. Instead, I say to you, the formula for good health is a journey of self discovery and higher learnings about your self, your environment and your deep spiritual connection that all of us have.