Thought Affecting the Body (part 3)

In part one of this article I talked about people with multiple personality disorder or MPD. We looked at the research that showed that people with MPD had extreme physiological changes when switching from one personality to another. Everything from allergic rashes coming and going to changes in eye physiology depending on which personality was in charge at the time. This of course, illustrates that a person's unique perspective and thought patterns or personality has a distinct influence on what their body is doing.

In part two I looked at something called stigmata, where people that have deep religious beliefs can manifest the wounds of a religious figure, mostly that of Jesus Christ on the cross as depicted in religious paintings. This also illustrates that deeply held beliefs can have a profound affects on the body. To such an extent that the body self develops wounds that will bleed but not become infected or inflamed. The really odd part was that even external reality seemed to be affected by some stigmatist deep religious beliefs. Therese Neumann's feet supposedly bled upward towards her toes when she was lying down in bed, imitating the way Christ bled on the cross. Hard to validate, but still very interesting, since Therese Neumann's stigmata was witnessed by many people.

So, what does MPD and stigmata teach us? It would seem that personality and deeply held beliefs combined with the emotion of those beliefs can have a profound affect on some people's bodies. If thoughts can have such an extreme affect on these people's bodies then it stands to reason that our own thoughts are affecting our bodies to a certain extent. The next question is how do we improve our thoughts so that we can improve how our body functions?

There are two things I am going to suggest. - Of course, this is general advice and not to be construed as a specific treatment for any kind of health problem you might have. - The first thing I think would help anyone is meditation. I know that M.D. Anderson cancer center in Houston and New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center promotes meditation for it's patients. So meditation is even accepted by the mainstream medical community, even if they believe it is only for stress relief. The other thing I am going to suggest I call "catch yourself". In other words catch yourself thinking negative thoughts and then switch to a positive thought. -- Simple, but not always easy since most of us have habituated negative thinking as a protective mechanism. You know running through all the possible negative scenarios, or reviewing something that upset us over and over afgain, or worrying about the future, etc. Most of the time negative thoughts are doing more harm than good. So catch yourself and switch to a positive thought. Your body will thank you. Two things you can begin doing today, 1) Start meditating if you're not already and 2) Catch and switch, catch yourself having negative thoughts and switch to a positive thought. Try these out and see how you feel. Until next time, please share, subscribe and/or follow by e-mail this blog.