Your Mind Creates Your Body & Life
By Jennifer Kelleher
“If it is never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.” This quote by Richard Bach reminds me of the power of the mind and our innate ability to heal ourselves.
In today’s column, I am inviting you to take off your protective personality and open your mind. The boundaries in our minds determine the boundaries in our lives, and our state of health is a direct reflection of how we perceive ourselves and our world.
Mind and body cannot be separated. Every thought and feeling alters your state of health and wellbeing. Think about it: while a spell of depression can paralyze your immune system, falling in love can boost it. And because your life is a reflection of your inner state (“as within, so without”), it also cannot be separated from the mind/body.
The endocrine system produces hormones in response to your mental experiences. It is your free, inner pharmacy and it can produce any drug you need. Knowingly or not, you are the pharmacist who writes the prescriptions. Depending on your emotional response or reaction to any given event or obstacle, your drugs and doses vary accordingly. As you learn to utilize the magnificent tool that is your mind through mindfulness, meditation, and manifestation techniques, you will naturally and easily begin to control your health and life trajectory.
What would happen if you took the energy you use focusing on what is not working and shifted it to receiving joy, care, nourishment, and love? Leonard Ravenhill said, “When you’re sitting in a dark room, you can either sit and curse the darkness– or you can light a candle.” It is not the disease or negative aspects of your life that are the problem. The question is, how are you responding (or reacting) to what is at hand?
Using our minds, with awareness and practice, we can easily start to create positive feelings in our bodies. Our bodies naturally respond to these positive vibrations and begin to heal in ways that were previously unimaginable to the logical mind (left brain). By using the mind to create positive emotions for your body, your body and life naturally align with these positive vibrations, taking the shape of your energy. This is the foundation of my manifestation practice.
Energy follows thought and disease thrives on negative energy. Studies show that happy people are less likely to catch colds and people who are in love have a higher resistance to disease. Major studies also show that lack of happiness and job satisfaction are leading risk factors for heart attacks, far more endangering to our health than animal fats, alcohol, and even cigarette smoking. Hospitals have been recording cases for years where cancer patients experience ‘spontaneous remission’– a remission of cancerous tumors or other serious illnesses when the affected person suddenly enters a feeling of profound trust and unprecedented happiness. Others have recovered when they became ‘addicted’ to laughter. Carefully controlled studies prove that you can reduce your biological age by 10-15 years within 10 days, provided your interpretation of your life experience undergoes rapid and positive changes. By contrast, you can also put on 20 extra years within a single day if you enter a state of hopelessness and depression. (‘Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation’, by Andreas Moritz). Award-winning Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, Ph.D. demonstrates this in her famous counterclockwise study.
Last week at Ocean Bliss Yoga, we began our first four-week group Meditation Masterclass where 14 participants will learn a no-frills, at-home mindfulness, meditation, and manifestation practice to dump old stress from their cells and start to learn to use the mind with purpose and intention to create a body and life they love. To learn more about upcoming group sessions, or to ask about private or semi-private sessions, call or text me at 917-318-1168.
