Can Your Body Heal Itself? Section 4

I’m life coach and counselor Peter Winslow. As a life coach I’m often asked by my clients about stress and how it dominates the mind-body connection.

Doctors know that stress is a major cause of illness and dis-ease, and that alleviating the mental stress that causes health issues will often restore optimal bodily function. Medical practitioners typically prescribe invasive medication as treatment, but there are many alternative options which are free of harmful side-effects.

For instance, moderate movement exercises balance the mind and body by settling the brain chemistry brought on by stressful emotions. There are a variety of simple mind-body techniques and exercises you can use to help your body heal from stress, many of which can add quality and years to your life.

The astounding thing is, you don’t have to understand the mind-body connection in order to use it for powerful results. Consider it this way: do you need to know how to build a Ferrari to start one up and drive it down the street?

Your body—the Ferrari—was designed and created to operate smoothly. Your mission is to climb into the driver’s seat and steer your vehicle to happiness, health and wellbeing.

Remember, understanding the mind-body connection is not required for results. Case in point: do you know exactly how you digest and assimilate food and then excrete the waste without even thinking about it?

You don’t have to know how you do it because the work is done automatically. Call it what you want—the subconscious mind, inner intelligence, instinct, nature, or higher awareness—the system is operating right now, directing your physical functions without you paying any conscious attention to it.

This is where it gets interesting: even though you pay little or no attention to it, your inner intelligence pays close attention to you. How? It responds to your dominant thoughts and emotions, and for better or worse, stressful or otherwise, you are communicating with it at all times. 

–Peter Winslow

Can The Body Heal Itself? Section 3

I am Peter Winslow, a life coach and health counselor in Scottsdale. I have a question for you today that may make you think very deeply about your own health, and it goes like this: What makes us ill—and who, or what, can make us well?

There is a growing mountain of evidence that our beliefs and behaviors hold the key. The new science of Behavioral Epigenetics reveals new facts about the cause of chronic illness, and I am a firm believer. Why? Because behavioral changes led directly to my remission from the “medically incurable” autoimmune disorder known as Ankylosing Spondylitis.

We now know beyond all doubt that long-standing toxic emotional states greatly constrict the immune system, a natural defense mechanism which exists to protect us from premature aging and disease.

Ask yourself this question: if you repress your resentment, guilt, shame, anger, and other difficult emotions, can this behavior lead to illness? Recent medical studies prove that yes in fact it can.

This is all due to what is called the mind-body connection, a natural phenomenon that many people remain skeptical about. Yet medical studies continue to find that how we think and feel affects our health, especially when what we think and feel leads to chronic stress.

In the United States, stress-related illness accounts for 85% or more of the complaints that patients report to their doctors. Here’s a common example: Studies show that emotional stress directly affects the human digestive system. Mental and emotional stress is frequently cited as causing loss of appetite, uncontrollable cravings, or unhealthy eating binges. Stress also impedes proper absorption of nutrients and causes further issues with elimination of waste matter.

Chronic stress is proven to cause symptoms of illness in the physical body. The long-term solution is found in lifestyle and behavioral changes, rather than quick-fix addictive drugs whose positive results never last. 

-Peter Winslow