The Importance of Mindset in Healing
Why is it that happy people have an advantage in life? [Note: this is a real scientifically backed, field of psychology called “positive psychology” if you want to dive deeper]
Imagine this: you have a 5-year-old child that reallllllly wants to play baseball. You start them out with T-ball and let them hone their skills. After their first game, your child hit the T stand every round and never actually moved the ball in a significant way. There are likely more than two options here, but there are two main categories of response:
1) Your child gives up. He decides to let go of the dream of playing baseball and you look for another sport he might like.
2) You child sees this as an opportunity to practice a lot. Your child thinks to himself, “hm. Last game I learned ______ and this next game I want to practice ______. I think I’ll improve this way.”
The child in the second scenario is obviously going to grow, adapt, and gain opportunities that weren’t even available to the first child because of his mindset. This goes back to the Wayne Gretzky quote that goes something like, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Or a similar quote, “shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Opportunities tend to favor those that are looking for them.
This blog post is similar to a recent blog post I wrote about at the end of last year titled, “The Intersection of Healing and Spirituality.” If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can find a link to that post, here.
Mainly my blog posts are a combination between my current musings and trends in the information that I’ve been sharing with patients/clients. This post is no exception. In my own healing journey, my mindset has progressed from an allopathic/conventional model to a functional medicine-based model, and finally to an energetic model of viewing human “dis-ease.” Though I see the role in each of these paradigms, and notably, we are all on different phases of our own healing journey and understanding, energetic medicine now feels like the most powerful form of healing we can offer each other and ourselves.
I believe this healing trajectory is not uncommon. We have prolific individuals such as Tony Robbins or Dr. Joe Dispenza that have been using mindset medicine as a foundation of deep healing, and not just for healing physical ailments, but for personal realization in whatever form that soul is seeking. If you look at the field of spontaneous remissions, most individuals have an intense intrinsically motivated mindset shift, rather than a purely externally fueled radical recovery.
You have 30+ trillion cells in your body that respond to environmental cues to determine function. Your inner environment of your body is the outer environment of your cells. This means that the emotional backdrop of your nervous system is consistently informing the very physiology of your body. Your inner landscape/emotional environment regulates the production of structural proteins and enzymes, the modification of DNA, the microbial diversity within your ecology, and of course, your immune system (because we are extremely interconnected beings!)
In my last post, I focused on how pain has the potential to elevate our consciousness to a place of growth and gratitude that would have been otherwise impossible. I talked about how our pain can actually be our greatest gift, even if the exact mechanism of this gift is obscure at the time. In this post, I’d like to highlight just how important practicing equanimity throughout this process is.
Equanimity is not toxic positivity. It is not spiritual bypassing (ie, putting blinders on and pretending that everything is okay when you don’t feel okay). Equanimity is the choice to stay grounded, centered, and compassionate with yourself and others in situations that might seem unideal at the time.
Can you breathe into the situational, transient discomfort knowing that deeper insight will come not from a place of deep anxiety or hyper-focus on the stressful event, but through gently activating the intuitive power of your heart’s bioelectricmagnetic field? (check out www.heartmath.com for more on this and the healing power of your heart center)
Can you soothe yourself without numbing yourself? This is the first step in reprograming your mindset.
A few ways I practice equanimity in my mindset:
getting into nature and grounding daily
getting perspective of our existence (stand next to ocean, mountain, forest, vast space, etc)
breathing intentionally
moving my body/shaking/dancing
sweating
journaling
eating food that feels full of high vibration
engaging in communities that I love
giving back in a service that I am passionate about
This mindset is a choice. It is a practice. It takes practice. But having the ability to reduce reactivity in your daily life is so worth it. Having the freedom to choose how you respond is the gift of being human.
If you look at animals, they are often completely immersed in the present moment. I’ve been staring at my dog today and thinking, if we are completely immersed in our present moment, our mindset is one of simply being. We aren’t replaying the past or rehearsing the future in this space. When we live like this, we open our life trajectory to the unfamiliar and unknown, and more importantly, to the quantum field of possibility. And to live a life full of health and abundance, isn’t that where we really want to go?
Tell me your thoughts! I would love to hear them. And if you are interested in working together on mindset medicine, see the link in bio to schedule a free consultation.