The Mindbody Electric
When the mind and body are treated as inseparable and are fueled by positive energy, the results are electric. Literally.
In her book Cell-Level Healing, Dr. Joyce Whiteley Hawkes says, “Every nanosecond – a time so small that more than a million nano-events occur in one blink of your eyelid – ‘something’ forms out of the energy within the proton.” That “something” can be negative or positive, depending on the charge it received.
Dr. Stewart Stein, medical director at Nathan Adelson Hospice, says, “We know that there are various neurochemical changes that occur in the body associated with stress and negative emotions. We know that these changes are associated with impaired cellular immunity and that our ability to recover from the day-to-day assaults caused merely by living is also significantly impaired.”
Dr. Bernie Siegel, pioneer of a therapy program for cancer patients using their drawings, dreams, images and feelings, and author of Love, Medicine & Miracles and Prescriptions for Living, says, “How does a gene decide what to do? It gets a message from the body.” The nature of the message makes a difference. “People have to think of it as a blueprint or a light switch. Something has to turn it on.”
So when you hit the switch, remember that the emanating energy may have long lasting effects. Remember, as Siegel says, “Recent studies have shown that happiness enhances immune function…If you laugh and you’re a cancer patient, you live longer.”
Clearly, the mind/body connection is not a trivial matter and in the demanding world of dance, the teacher can help relieve the pressures of that constant drive for technical perfection. Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of several books including, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, and a noted speaker on how to create health in your life, says, “Professional dancers are kind of the body trashers of all time. It’s possibly the world’s hardest profession.”
“As a teacher, I’d want my students to know that every time they come to class, every time they try something new, they’re creating new pathways between the right and left sides of their brain.” A balanced brain with a positive message is only half the equation, however, because the signals don’t just travel from the mind down; they travel from the body up. That must also be addressed.
Dr. Bernie Siegel
Dr. Candace Pert, author of Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d, and a scientist whose work is based on how the “bodymind” functions as a single network, says, “The mind isn’t controlling the body. The body is the flip side of the brain. One is the length of the field and one is the width. Together they make the area of the field. Together they make a dynamic field of information.”
So what if the field of information contains negative thought patterns? How is that overcome? Repeatedly telling yourself everything is wonderful won’t work if you don’t buy into your own message. Siegel says, "You only have control over your mind…How you act changes internal chemistry.” Therefore, he says, “You have to change the process. If you find yourself not believing, you have to stop and ask yourself, ‘Why am I not believing?’”
If, as Siegel says, the only control is over the mind, then it’s doubly important to send a positive message, and send it often. Northrup says, “You practice, just like dance…There’s a place in the brain that translates ideas into actual, physical substrate. Let’s say that you have an idea of how you want a dance step to look or how you want your feet to move. You’ve seen it on television. You’ve watched your teacher do it. But if you’re like the average American, you won’t be able to do it immediately.”
“It begins in your imagination. The imagination and the autonomic nervous system cannot tell the difference between actually, physically doing something and imagining yourself doing it.”
Make sure the initiating energy of the mind is positive and the message that circulates through the body, all the way to the cellular level, will be full and rich. Northrup says, “Dance teachers are training the right hemisphere of the brain, which has the most connections to the physical body. Our culture values the left hemisphere. We value mathematicians, scientists and doctors, [but] everyone has a body and it’s not simply a vehicle for transporting around the left hemisphere of the brain.
“Dance teachers are teaching people how to move through life. The number of movies where dance is a metaphor is astounding to me and I believe that what’s happening now in culture is the rise of the right hemisphere – creativity, feminine ways of knowing and dancing. What could be more yummy?”
In case you missed the prescription, it lists plenty of laughter and things like meditation and yoga to calm the breath and promote internal focus. That’s where health begins.