Wellness of the Mind

    Our spiritual input is a determining factor when establishing our wellness level. We all need the benefit of spiritual reflection, as a way of cleansing ourselves of the toxins of our daily life.  Spirituality is a way of assuring ourselves of a renewing, and rebirth of ourselves as caring humans. Wellness encompasses our state of being, mind, and health. It is a condition of the whole. Wellness is a condition of the mind, body, and soul.

    Meditation is preventive maintenance for the mind. Meditation gives us the opportunity to reflect on our inner self. To listen to that small inner voice that is supposed to help guide and direct our mental processes, but in modern day existence, is often drowned out due to excessive noise pollution.
   
    Our spirituality and meditation practices are the tools we have available to keep our mind as well as we keep our bodies. The mind is a complicated and versatile machine, but it can become overwhelmed and unable to function correctly, if we don’t take the time to keep it well and cared for.

    Our mind has varying levels of operation, known as brainwaves. As we pass through the different stages of our day, we enter various stages of brain wave activity. The brain uses this tool as one way to allow us time to rest our busy mind, and cope with all the pieces of information we’ve received, a way to kind of “mind file” for the day.

    When we don’t give adequate time for these processes, or we simply don’t get enough rest, our mind cannot maintain its state of wellness, just like our bodies aren’t capable of wellness if there is no chance to rest and replenish.

    Modern alternative medicine and holistic healers believe in the power of the energy that flows through our bodies; this energy radiates from our mind as well. It is believed to be the chief from of transportation for our body nervous system to carry out communication.

    Breathing techniques, music, aromas, and candle therapy are all ways we utilize the opportunities to reflect on our day, allow our mind to rest and replenish itself for further use.
   
    We must remember over the course of our daily routine, to make time to maintain mental wellness, as we strive to maintain physical wellness. The nice thing about the whole process is that, as we go about accomplishing these tasks, quite often the opportunities for preservation and care are interchangeable. We can help to quite our mind as we take our twenty minute walk. Or we have the opportunity to build muscle strength as we meditate.

    Often just the opportunity to listen to music will allow our mind the chance it needs to relax and regroup. It’s not always the most formal of occasions that we find an available chance to reflect and listen to that inner voice. It can be in the middle of the day, with the wind blowing through your hair, and the radio turned up really loud!

Is Your Mind Playing Tricks?

    Over the course of our life, our senses and our environment come together to enrich our mind, and to sometimes overwhelm our mind. Much of the knowledge we acquire comes to us through our senses. As children, we use the senses daily to absorb as much as possible. The mind is a voraciously hungry, empty den when we are young.

    As we age, we depend greatly upon our senses to inform us about the world around us; hot, cold, sweet, sour, bitter, loud, soft, so many of our perceptions and actions begin with input from our five senses. There is another sense that isn’t given much attention, thanks to the fact that it is centered within our body, not on the outside. But, if used properly, provides us with as much valuable information as the sense of smell, taste, touch, sight, and hearing.

    Our intuition is our sixth sense. It refers to the ability to tune into the unseen world of sensing. All the other senses require a physical origin of input; our intuition does not. It requires not physical presence of an object in order for us to obtain information about the object. Thanks to the fact that we live in a materialistic world, and that most of our knowledge is dominated by the western traditions and beliefs, our ability to use our intuition is a lost art.

    The eastern cultures have long used the sense of intuition and the flow of the body’s natural energies to utilize the intuitive information available. The western civilizations are slow to realize the role our intuition can play in our overall health, just because it is not a “seen” source of input.

    Often, our mind can seemingly play tricks on our sensory perceptions, when we fail to utilize all aspects of the six senses, we often miss some piece of the puzzle, and what seems to be complete and correct, if often lacking.

    There are at times physical conditions that cause our senses to operate incorrectly, and we don’t process the information correctly. This happens when we are functioning at less than optimum levels. Often this occurs during times of sickness, extreme fatigue, or due to a lack of sleep. It is at this point, that we believe our mind to play tricks on us. We believe we are receiving certain input, and in all actuality, we are not.

    This is why keeping our bodies well, fit, and healthy keeps us in a reception mode to accurately process input from the outside world. It is through this accurate perception of intake that we are able to deal effectively with the world around us. All this culminates to come to this statement: in order to keep ourselves healthy and well, we must be able to accurately process input from the world around us. It is when we lose perspective, and don’t accurately “see” things as they really are that we are more likely to experience feelings of ill-health, mental unrest, and this can lead to actually becoming ill.

Our overall wellness depends upon our ability to not only cope with our selves, but to perceive reality as it really is.

The Mind, Body and Soul Interconnectivity

    The practice of chiropractic care focuses on the relationship between your spine and your nervous system. The spine is the structure, and the nervous system is the function. Chiropractic believes these two systems work in unison to keep and then restore your body’s health. The word “chiropractic” is taken from Greek, and means “done by hand”. This is exactly how chiropractic care works. The chiropractor uses his or her hands to manipulate your body, and help it to heal itself. It is the branch of the health sciences which focuses on the neuromusculoskeletal system. That’s a very big word to simply say how your spine and nervous system work together. The spine is the highway for your central nervous system; if the highway is blocked or traffic is jammed, they are usually able healers. Many cultures, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, and even the Africans have used some form of chiropractic care for hundreds of years.

    Modern alternative medicine and holistic healers believe in the power of the energy that flows through our bodies; this energy radiates from our mind as well. It is believed to be the chief from of transportation for our body’s nervous system to carry out communication.

    Acupuncture is one of the key components of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and operates on the premise that the body is divided into two opposing and inseparable forces, the yin and yang. Yin represents the cold, slow, or passive principle, and yang represents the hot, excited or active principle. According to TCM health is achieved by maintaining a balance state of the yin and yang. This is done through the vital pathways or meridians that allow for the flow of qi, or vital energy. The vital energy flow occurs along pathways known as meridians. These meridians connect over 2,000 acupuncture points along the body. There are 12 main meridians, and 8 secondary meridians. Although traditional western medicine does not completely understand how acupuncture works, the proof that it does work has been shown in several studies conducted by western medical facilities

    Finally, in the last few years, traditional western medicine has come to accept the role that your mind, body and soul have in keeping each other healthy, during daily processes, or recovering from surgery. Almost every form of healing accepts and incorporates the fact that our bodies have a “vital energy force” that flows through, from top to bottom. This “life force” as some refer to the energy, helps to keep us connected, mind, body, and soul. To come to the understanding, as modern medicine finally has, that there are certain aspects of our health that we cannot place neatly in a physical process, has been a difficult revelation for believers of the purely scientific approaches to healing and medicine.

    It’s impossible to separate the mind from the body, or the body from the soul. Their interconnectivity is the basis for our life’s meaning and existence. It is because of this connection, that we are able to heal ourselves in the beginning.