Science behind the mind-body connection
The mind and the body have an interdependent and mutually supportive relationship. It’s untrue to say that one is more important than the other; together they interact with and influence each other. Keeping both the mind and body equally healthy is therefore essential. This is a holistic viewpoint, however there is science behind it.
There is no doubt that the relationship between the mind and body is a lot more complicated than we realise. That said, we can’t deny that changing how we think can greatly impact more than the mind, and changing our physical health can greatly impact more than the body. We have the ability to change our neural pathways through mindful activities like meditation, which in turn will have a positive knock-on effect on the body; we also have the ability to change our physical health through diet and exercise, for example, which will greatly impact our mental health. In doing so, we reap mental and physical benefits as we are balancing the mind and body to restore and maintain long-term optimal health.
Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have confirmed that the mind and body are inextricably intertwined. Using mindfulness as an example of the mind-body connection, they recently declared:
“People who meditate say that by calming your body with, say, breathing exercises, you also calm your mind,” said first author Evan M. Gordon, PhD, an assistant professor of radiology at the School of Medicine’s Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology. “Those sorts of practices can be really helpful for people with anxiety, for example, but so far, there hasn’t been much scientific evidence for how it works. But now we’ve found a connection. We’ve found the place where the highly active, goal-oriented ‘go, go, go’ part of your mind connects to the parts of the brain that control breathing and heart rate. If you calm one down, it absolutely should have feedback effects on the other.”
Delving deeper into the connection, their scientific study also found that there is a link between the mind and body built into the very structure of the brain, whereby parts of the brain that control movement also integrate behaviour, planning and thinking, as well as “involuntary bodily functions such as blood pressure and heartbeat”. In her book, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett expands on this. She details how actions in our daily lives are guided by past experiences and memories, rather than in-the-moment reactions. In this neurological process, she outlines how the brain draws on its backlog of experience and memory, cross-referencing it with the sensory inputs from your body and surroundings, in order to guide your actions (and you’re almost always unaware that it’s happening). You are acting on the predictions that your brain is making about what’s going to happen next - you are not reacting to the experience as it unfolds. This highlights the extent of how deep the mind and body are connected.
Yet, there isn’t enough education around the significance of the mind and body being treated as equal factors. In fact, many believe that we live in our heads, ignoring the rest. In this instance, the mind and body are considered as two separate and distinct entities that exist independently of each other. Sometimes we don’t really pay attention to our bodies - it is viewed as something that simply keeps us going. On the other hand, many of us overlook the importance of mental health, slowing down and relaxing. There is a relationship between the mind and body that’s mutually dependent and supporting - a balance to be achieved and an understanding that they work in tandem. The mind should be respected in exactly the same way as the body and vice versa in order to achieve balance and an all encompassing mental, physical and emotional state of wellbeing. Despite being a holistic outlook, from a scientific point of view, it is now becoming increasingly clear that the mind and body are intimately linked and that the body influences our thoughts and emotions.