7 Ways to Improve Mind-Body Connection

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Mind-Body Connection is simply the way your brain and body communicate and respond to each other.

Being more aware of this connection and knowing how to interrupt signals of stress, while strengthening the helpful ones, can improve the quality of your thoughts, health, immune response, and how you respond to life and stress in general. Decisions can be made from a more powerful place, therefore, creating a momentum of growth and better quality of life.

Imagine being able to catch the stress response rising in your body. Now imagine taking 30 seconds to bring it back in check, let it go, and instantly feel more powerful and in control of your day. Situations don’t control how you feel and knock you off your path for the rest of the day… or sometimes days or weeks, depending on how stuck you get in that cycle.

A practical example of this is how someone can start talking about your favorite dessert or you drive by a restaurant grilling hamburgers, and suddenly your mouth begins watering. The limbic response to smell is one thing, but how is the idea of a desert you can’t see or smell making your mouth water?

It’s the mind body connection.

Our thoughts send powerful signals to the body.

Those thoughts trigger the body to release and produce hormones and chemicals that create feelings and tangible sensations in the body.

Stress and negative thoughts also create tangible sensations in the body, and if it goes on for a period of time, the immune system can suffer. It can even affect the growth and regeneration of cells in your body if it continues long term, meaning that you age faster and are more likely to experience degenerative health issues.

Your health and sense of peace isn’t all that is affected. It goes so much deeper, even generations deeper. The level of stress you live with affects your decisions and even the proteins that sit on your DNA. This is called epigenetics, the study of how behavior and environment affect the way your genes work.. You can actually manifest situations in your life and pass them onto generations through DNA. It was once just a theory that the medical community thought was farfetched, but it has now been proven and widely accepted that thoughts and environment do impact gene expression.

But it goes the other way as well…

Positive thoughts and feelings improve and rewrite DNA. They calibrate us toward better decisions and situations in life.

Ok, so what do we DO about it?

7 Ways to Improve Your Mind-Body Connection

Improving your mind-body connection gives you a greater sense of awareness and ability to catch stressful thoughts, feelings, and patterns and turn them around. You’re not ignoring or pushing away stress. You’re acknowledging it and then navigating toward a more powerful perspective and sense of wellbeing.

Take a break.

Taking active breaks from work or stressful problems to give your brain a chance to regroup and reboot. Physically walk away. Close your eyes. Take three deep breaths with your hands over your heart. Inhaling Rosemary from your hands is a great way to help the mind let things go and get more into the body.

Stand tall.

Thanks to the research of Amy Cuddy, we know just how much the body’s posture affects our thoughts. The body affects the mind too, not just other way around! Standing in a power pose with hands on hips or in a victory pose in the air for just two minutes releases neurotransmitters that tell the mind you are strong, capable, and confident. It’s very difficult to feel stressed when your mind and body both believe you’re in charge.

Reduce your toxic load.

This one may not seem like it has an immediate effect, but when our body is holding toxins from our foods, beauty care, cleaning products or other environmental factors, it becomes physically disconnected and inflamed. Cell receptors get clogged and neurotransmitters get confused. Signals go kind of haywire. That alone triggers a stress response. So the next time you’re cleaning the bathtub before you take a bath or mopping with bare feet and inhaling these products, just remember that there are just as effective ways to clean without the harsh toxins. Your body will physically thank you for it. Here are the cleaners I use in my home to avoid adding extra toxic burden.

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Spend time in nature.

Nature has a grounding effect on our body by balancing out the protons and electrons in our body. Mindfulness is pausing to connect to your senses in the present. What do you hear, see, smell, feel, or maybe even taste? Being mindful pulls us out of our head and stress and syncs our heart rhythm back into a stable pattern. Being mindful in nature is a powerful way to interrupt stressful signals that may be on loop from our brains into our bodies, and vise versa.

Exercise.

There are many forms of exercise that incorporate mindful movement and breath with a strengthening and stretching routine. Barre, yoga, pilates, and Tai Chi are a few. These forms of exercise do more than help you sweat it out. They stress your muscles to the point of change with fluid isometric movement, and they also help to lower cortisol, the stress hormone, and integrate the body and mind with periods of stretching and breathing. This not only increases calorie burn but has a long term positive effect on metabolism as well.

Hydrate.

Thanks to ongoing research by the HeartMath Institute, we’re learning more about the wisdom of the heart and how it plays into our thoughts and decisions. The heart sends 60x more signals out to the body than the brain does. It has an electromagnetic field that can be felt up to 12 feet. That’s a lot of power. When you don’t start your day being hydrated, your heart has to work harder, blood volume decreases, and all that electromagnetic energy sits in the chest instead of being circulated out. At best, you’ll lack energy. At worst, you’ll feel anxious and stressed from the very onset of your day, impacting all of your decisions and interactions. So… just drink the glass of water when you wake up, and make sure to schedule in at least a couple more water breaks during the day, and one more small glass before bed. Stack the habit of drinking water into your daily habits so it doesn’t get forgotten. Being proactive with this will save you a lot of energy.

Essential Oils.

There’s no way I’m leaving this one off the list! Essential oils have a powerful effect on the mind through the sense of smell and limbic system. But did you know that applying essential oils can also interact with the cells and nervous system of your body to trigger specific sensations of calm, soothing, grounding, energizing, motivating, and clarity? Here are some basic categories of essential oils, how they affect us, and a suggestion of where to apply. *It’s always a good idea to use a carrier oil to dilute essential oils to avoid skin sensitivity.

Floral oils

Geranium, Ylang Ylang, Clary Sage, Lavender, Neroli, Magnolia and Jasmine