Mind – body – soul: they are what makes a living being what he or she is. Leaving the soul for another discussion, let’s look more closely at the relationship between mind and body. I have suggested previously that mind and body both mean well (to keep us alive and thriving, fulfilling our task of being human as skillfully as possible – cue the soul…), but that they occasionally fail to co-ordinate with one another as they do not speak the same language. To understand this difference of language is most helpful, and luckily much has been done recently to help us rediscover each language and to become better at coordinating both at once.
The premise here [crudely summarised – for more specialist reads, you can consult for example the works of Ervin Laszlo, Rupert Sheldrake or Lynne McTaggart] is that the world is essentially made up of energy (energy particles of some sort, elementary size still undetermined by researchers) that vibrates and resonates, and carries information – or is itself information, like a life intelligence. When energy circulates and vibrates at a very fast speed, it creates shapes which end up becoming denser and forming matter. But matter is never inert – especially living matter; indeed, it continues to share the qualities of circulating energy (its ability to vibrate and transmit information, as well as to shape-shift) but it also acts as an instrument able to receive, amplify, modify or echo the information that circulates around and across it.
This effectively means that although mind and body may have developed their own language, they are both essentially energy – different forms of energy for sure, but nonetheless of a common source. The body is matter, hence it is much denser than the mind and what the mind produces (thoughts, images, rêveries…). That is why, when the body is sick or in pain, it takes time to heal, whereas a state of mind can be altered much more quickly (or so it seems). Reprogramming the mind can have direct and drastic effects on a person, whereas a physical transformation requires more patience and dedication – although this is not a rigid rule by any means, as the mind is also far less stable and oh so easily distracted.
So mind and body can communicate and can understand one another because, effectively, they have an origin in common: they both are made from an energy field that carries essential life information in a very dynamic and creative way. On the other hand, the shape and function of the mind are different from the shape and role of the body, so that they each have very different sets of priorities.
The mind flutters, enquires, ponders, projects, imagines, dissects, analyses – it is always seeking movement and expanding the boundaries it perceives it is bound by. It does not stop at ‘the obvious’, but searches for the meaning within the experiences observed or lived. It needs to do so, it is its role; from this process we learn, we grow, we understand ourselves and our environment better. Of course, we may occasionally get lost in the swirl of the mind and ‘over-think’ things. This in turn creates a degree of stress which affects our entire being.
The body’s task is seemingly more basic: to attend to the needs of the organism so as to nurture life until life can no longer be sustained. The process is one of conscious awareness, balance and straightforward demands. The body speaks literally: hunger is about sustenance; pain is about wellness; elation is about pleasure; and so on. The body does not communicate in layers: it says what it needs to say in the way it experiences it. However this does not mean the body lacks subtlety and sensitivity; in fact, the body offers many clues for the mind to pick up on what is really going on, so that if the mind is attentive enough and does what it does well (that is, to analyse and search for meaning) then the physical and the mental domains can align and heal what needs to be healed at a deeper level. That is the underpinning of a psychosomatic approach to diseases and injuries.
For example, if I feel trapped in a job I dislike, but I consciously try to hold on because for many reasons I do not think I have a choice of doing otherwise, I will start to experience an enduring state of stress – both physical and psychological. Psychologically, I may feel the mind escaping, fantasising about ‘if only’ scenarios, but also enhancing the feeling of being trapped, of not being able to escape, to look for alternatives right or left. Physically, I may start feeling a greater tension and rigidity in my body, perhaps culminating in a growing pain in the neck, so that it becomes painful to turn the head from right to left, and back. What are the cues sent by the body in this instance? The body’s needs are jeopardised because the state of stress is not a natural state to be in for a long period of time. The tension and rigidity, logically bringing a stiffness of the body, especially a stiffness of the neck, which is the part of the body that enables us to look in different directions – to gain other viewpoints, alternative perspectives, to choose different paths. So the body communicates clearly to the mind that this situation is ‘a pain in the neck’, and that it triggers a difficulty in moving the head in all directions comfortably. The mind, then, can hear the words and analyse what it means beyond ‘the obvious’, that is beyond the simple diagnostic that I have a stiff neck. Instead, the mind can understand that the perceived sense of being stuck, of not allowing oneself to look for other jobs or other ways to deal with the situation is the root of the problem, and that it needs to draw upon its resources creatively to remove the state of stress, and therefore allow the body to heal physically once the ‘pain in the neck’ – whatever it is – is removed.
This illustrates how healing oneself is necessarily a holistic process: we need mind and body to work together, to communicate intelligently and creatively so as to get to the roots of the problems, of the tensions experienced, and to re-establish a state of balance that is life-enhancing. The mind plays a critical role in the process, but the body is a wise guide who sends us the clues we need to make sense of our existence: we just need to listen with care and imagination.
Considering a recurring physical problem you may have, what creative analysis can you make of what your body expresses in this instance? Think about free associations that spring to mind, or take the time to narrate what you experience physically (i.e. let the body talk freely) so that the mind has more material to work with.