What does health consist of?
Human health is a whole: in addition to the body, health includes the mind and the social environment. The physical well-being of the body is influenced by healthy and clean nutrition, adequate rest and exercise. Spiritual well-being in mind includes thoughts, feelings, beliefs and their own life values. None of us live in a vacuum and the social environment and its interactions affect us and our well-being on a daily basis.
Especially as a child before the age of 7, the social environment also serves as a model for creating and embracing different beliefs. As a child, we model our parents and other close people and make our own interpretations of situations from the child's point of view. Some such interpretations may continue to become unconscious beliefs, affecting life even in adulthood and also linked to health challenges.
The effect of the mind on the body
The human mind is an immeasurable resource. Every day we have between 65,000 and 85,000 ideas, but we only know a small part of these ideas. It's a so-called .. iceberg model – only visible 5% are conscious thoughts and the remaining 95% of thoughts are unconscious. Many feelings and beliefs also go unnoticed by us, not to mention the awareness of our own values of life. In other words, whether we can identify what we have embraced from others and what is truly in accordance with our own will and our world of values at the moment.
The good news is that the 5% of the conscious mind allows us to influence the unconscious mind. By developing the skill of listening to one's own body more and more subtly, it is possible to understand one's own mind, thoughts and feelings as part of well-being and health. The body communicates continuously throughout the day – the body's messages just often go unnoticed unless we stop for a moment to sense the sensations that are noticeable in the body (e.g. pain, itching, tension, etc.). The body's messages have a logical connection back to the mind – thoughts, feelings and beliefs (ref. META-Health). Instead of trying to influence health only through the physical side of the body, we can harness the power of the mind and at the same time contribute to the physical changes of the body. The connection between body and mind has been studied a lot and we know, for example, about the placebo effect (i.e. a positive thought has a beneficial effect on the outcome) in the case of placebos and placebo surgeries. The opposite of a placebo is nosebo (i.e., a negative thought adversely affects the final result). If we listen to our own thoughts, we may find ourselves using nosebo through negative thoughts, affecting our own health unfavorably. Among other things, it has been observed about the connection between body and mind that even a few minutes of negative thinking decreases the defenses for several hours. So thoughts matter!
Health is a process
There are literally many small changes in health all the time. From physiology, we know that the body seeks homeostasis, a balance that occurs at the cellular level. There are also changes at the level of the mind and, in particular, thoughts and feelings vary according to the situation – even unconsciously. Indeed, health can be seen as a two-step process (ref. META-Health), in which the stress phase is followed by a recovery phase. Through the identification of the stress and recovery phase, there is also an opportunity to influence health preventively – lowering the stress phase and helping the body and mind in the recovery phase. Stress, including the unconscious, has a great impact on our health – even more than 90% of various symptoms and illnesses can be linked to stress.
How do I affect my health?
In health, everything affects everything and being aware of the interaction between different aspects of the whole – body, mind and social environment – is a good step towards a holistic understanding of health. From the point of view of one's own health, it is beneficial to seek a suitable balance for one's body and mind, in the same way that cells balance their actions according to the situation. In addition to the physical well-being of the body, it is worth identifying the stressors of your own life and the thoughts, feelings and beliefs associated with them. When a stressful thing leaves the level of the mind, the body gets to fix itself. Also check out easy methods like EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) to help you learn how to reduce stress in line with your own life.