Body N Mind Connection - Key to Surviving Tough Times

There is a very powerful connection betwee
"body n mind".

Our minds are the repositories of all of our pre-programmed reactions and response patterns. Our bodies are the vehicles through which our emotional reactions arise and are expressed.

Emotion is your body's reaction to your mind.

Emotion is the felt response to a thought, so for those of us who tend to identify very strongly with our thinking (which is to say most of us most of the time) there is a corresponding emotional response of equal or greater strength.

Many of us have a tendency to "over-think" things and create additional emotional reactions in the form of stress. In my experience this is particularly true when we are experiencing tough times.

It becomes a habit to carry all this stuff around with us, for many of us it as though there is (what we have come to regard as) an acceptable of "internal static".

In fact many of us are quite disconnected from our true feelings. The "body n mind" connection can be extremely useful in determining what our true feelings are in a particular situation or difficult decision that we have to make.

Your (unconscious) thoughts are always reflected in your body as emotions. This a very beneficial aspect of the "body n mind" connection. So if you are struggling to bring your unconscious mental activity into conscious awareness as thoughts, pay very close attention to your emotions.

When we go through tough times we generate a lot of emotion and the "body n mind" effect of this can be quite overwhelming.

I know from my own personal experience that learning how to anticipate and manage my own responses to difficult situations is hard work. I learned to deal with this on a particularly stressful business on a large project I was involved with about 12 years ago.

These were the key lessons I learned:

(1) A strong 'body n mind' response to tough times is always predictable and should be fully anticipated

(2) Don't ignore or attempt to suppress the feelings that arise, and do not allow yourself to become identified with them

(3) Regularly remind yourself that: "This too will pass". Realise that these angry and defensive states arise automatically but if you just sit with them and observe them, without engaging with them for about 24 hours, they will pass.

I learned this three-fold lesson fairly quickly, not because of any great insight or spiritual maturity on my part, but as a matter of simple personal survival!