10 Things you need to know on how thoughts affect health
We keep hearing that positive thoughts are essential to stay healthy and yet, we can’t escape the onslaught of negative thoughts. In order to move from the negative to the positive polarity – and finally to transcend both the polarities – we need to understand how thoughts affect our health. Here are 10 essential pointers in this respect:-We keep hearing that positive thoughts are essential to stay healthy and yet, we can’t escape the onslaught of negative thoughts. In order to move from the negative to the positive polarity – and finally to transcend both the polarities – we need to understand how thoughts affect our health. Here are 10 essential pointers in this respect:-
1. Body is a receiving and broadcasting station of thoughts
We know that we receive impressions from the world around us through our five senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch; but we are not always aware that this flow happens in reverse direction as well. Just as we receive impressions about others, others receive impressions about us. Thus, body acts as both a receiving and a broadcasting station.
2. A physical illness is body’s communication with us
A physical symptom in our body is a sign that our body is speaking with us. This signal tries to convey what is wrong with us and how we can take care of that problem. Sometimes it wants to bring our attention to our negative way of thinking. At other times it wants to warn us against our toxic emotions. It might even want to alert us about the harmful elements in our environment.
3. Body is a community of cells
Irrespective of how it looks from the outside, a human body is a highly organized community of very capable cells, which behave as one entity. Each cell possesses tiny but functional nervous, digestive, respiratory, excretory, endocrine, circulatory, reproductive, and immune system. Each cell is an individual being that can survive on its own. Each cell carries intelligence, intent and purpose. Each cell can analyze thousands of stimuli from the environment and respond to ensure its survival. Yet each independent cell merges itself so beautifully in co-operative existence that it can fool us into believing that this bustling community of above 50 trillion ‘individual, self-sufficient’ cells is one single body. This co-operation of highly empowered cells makes a human being such an efficient entity!
4. Each one of us is a self-programming computer
A simple way of looking at our body-mind-spirit collective is as a self-programming computer, in which the body is the hardware, brain is the CPU and the operating system, conscious mind is the software, sub-conscious mind is the hard disk and super-conscious mind or spirit is the electric power, which also doubles up as the internet.In this highly advanced computer, the hardware is intelligent and can heal itself. Hard disk is not a separate unit; it is permeated in each cell of the hardware. Software is a field surrounding the hardware; and the electric power runs through all components. Everything is interdependent and inter-active. The subconscious mind collects the data of experiences, stores it and transfers its essence to spirit or universal mind, the internet. Spirit is neutral like the electricity, not involved in the drama, but still a pivotal presence as the functioning of the computer is dependent upon it. If the software or conscious mind is corrupted, the hardware or body gets affected but the hard disk or subconscious mind can never crash. And of course there is no load shedding; there is a constant supply of electric power.
We come in with some built in software, and continuously re-program ourselves through our thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
This simplistic understanding makes it clear that we can influence our health by changing our programming.
5. The thought-programming happens in the unconscious state of mind
We get programmed through the information that is collected by the conscious mind and is stored in the subconscious mind. Unfortunately most of the time, we are not conscious of what we are being exposed to; hence, a lot of undesirable information enters our subconscious mind. This state is known as being in an unconscious state of mind.
Unconscious mind loves paying attention to all that is wrong, and like a faithful servant, the subconscious mind keeps creating more of the same.Subconscious cannot differentiate between right and wrong; it accepts whatever is impressed upon it and creates our reality from there.
6. The internal programming determines our health
Our mental and emotional energy field starts getting programmed the moment we are conceived.As we grow up, our conscious mind collects impressions from the way our parents, peers, and teachers interact with us, treat us, honor or dishonor us. These impressions are stored in our subconscious as our beliefs, thoughts, and emotions. Most of our beliefs are formed by the age of 7 years. Thereafter these beliefs replay themselves and reflect in our life as our reality.
Unfortunately most of us have been negatively programmed during our formative years. This early programming has led us to a habit of negative self-talk. When these negative thoughts get repeated over and over in our subconscious mind, they get recorded on our internal tapes without our being aware of the process, and create dis-ease in our lives.
7. Our beliefs become our biology
There was a time when we used to regard thoughts as harmless, abstract activities of an over-active mind, but we have been proven wrong by science. Now we know that thoughts are impulses of energy and information, which act as electrochemical triggers to produce positive or negative chemical reactions in our body cells, in order to create emotions and cellular memories.
We think about 50,000 thoughts in a day and 90% of these get repeated the next day….and 90% of those the day after. In other words, our thoughts get repeated day after day after day, firing certain neural pathways and keeping them alive. That is how our unique habitual thinking patterns are formed.
A belief is a deep-seated thought. When we completely trust a thought we start believing in it.
8. Both – implicit and explicit beliefs affect our health
We have two kinds of beliefs; implicit and explicit. Explicit beliefs are part of our conscious awareness, but implicit beliefs lie deep inside the subconscious. Whatever we do repeatedly becomes a part of our implicit and automatic behavior. These automatic behaviors and habits affect our health. In other words, our health shows a mirror to our implicit beliefs.
In order to remain healthy, we have to go to the root cause of all our implicit beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
9. Whatever we believe becomes our reality
Creating our health is simple because whatever we believe becomes our reality. In other words, we see what we believe.
This fact is proven by the placebo effect. A placebo is a sham pill, which does not contain any active medicinal ingredient.In controlled experiments, doctors administer these tablets to patients, telling them that this medicine will improve their condition. People taking placebo get better because they believe that the pill will make them better. In many cases placeboes have actually helped people with serious illnesses. This proves the power of beliefs.
If we make a conscious effort to change our beliefs, our lives can change. But that can happen only when we take full responsibility for our beliefs and realize that our health is not dependent upon anyone or anything outside of our beliefs.
10. Beliefs affect sour health
The working of a belief-epidemic is particularly apparent in the process of staying healthy. It is a well known fact that our body cells keep renewing themselves continuously, until the day we die. Yet we become ill because of our negative programming.
We accept sickness, as we ‘see’ the evidence all around us.This deep-seated belief in disease gets impressed upon our subconscious mind, and in due course of time the results are faithfully delivered to us,without any exception.
In order to discover the origin of our beliefs, we need to go within and explore. Only then can we re-write our new belief programs – the ones, which will make us healthy.