Just how powerful is the mind?

The other day I was sharing an interesting thing with our boys - before you take your first bite of food, you use your senses to start digestion; your sense of smell and vision in particular.

Do a quick experiment with me! Close your eyes, and picture something that sounds tasty to you right now, you will notice your mouth starting to salivate. That is your body getting ready to start the digestion process!

Just think about how powerful the brain is in this instance - you just THINK about something and it sends signals to make the body start DOING!

This is great news if it’s something productive for you. However, sometimes when we worry or have stress; our brain prepares our body for fight or flight (survival) mode. Fight or flight mode was designed to give us the stamina to run away from a tiger that is chasing us, or to live off of minimal food during a famine, etc., which isn’t regularly happening these days. However, our perceived stresses on a daily basis still trigger this preparation within our body (running late to soccer practice, relationship issues, work deadlines, etc.)

To have our bodies in perpetual fight or flight mode is not good for our health. It isn’t something you will immediately notice, but in the long term it can lead to many issues in the body - hormone imbalances, pregnancy issues, sleeping disturbances, hypertension, anxiety/depression, cancer, constantly being sick and feeling run down, digestive issues, thyroid imbalances and the list goes on an on. In short, as your body prepares for survival mode, it slows down the less critical systems in your body (ie, digestion isn’t needed when you’re being chased by a tiger, certain hormones are borrowed for cortisol production to boost your “get up and go”, etc).

When this happens on a regular basis, it leads to the above issues because your body is constantly living in survival mode, which isn’t optimal.

There are many things you can do to calm that fight or flight within your body, here are a few below:

-Meditation (5 minutes is all you need)

-Yoga

-Centering yourself with grounding techniques (use your senses - touch, taste, hear, smell).

-Gentle massage

-Get outside

-Deep breaths

-Self care (whatever that looks like for you - reading, walking, creating, etc.)!

Schedule time in your day for these things so that your day doesn’t become heavy with what everyone else needs from you. If you do this, you will most definitely be a better person for those special ones in your life, and for yourself!