Mind your body before it minds you

I’ve always been fascinated by the mind/body connection.

As a freshman Biology major at UCI, and having been gifted at understanding human psychology since I was I child, this topic has always been interesting to me.

I was introduced to the work of Louise Hay by a roommate my sophomore year of college. It seemed very “woo-woo” to my very logical, scientific mind. Even though I witnessed the truth of much of what she was writing about, I couldn’t fully embrace it publicly because of how ridiculous it sounded to logical people. 

Over the last 29 years of working with people as a detective for undiagnosable pains, I’ve seen this in practice repeatedly. Now we understand the mechanism by which this happens.

New research shows us that negative thoughts make the mitochondria in our cells produce cortisol AND dump their own DNA. Which means, they destroy themselves. This is why you see people who are chronically stressed have such large bellies. 

Two things are happening: 1) the cortisol is applying more fat to the belly, specifically visceral fat, the most dangerous kind of fat to have. 2) the mitochondria are destroying themselves, thus slowing down the metabolism responsible for using fat and carbs for energy. So chronically stressed thoughts are a double whammy to our bodies.

Here’s where people think “ok, so I need to do some breathing exercise or meditation or something, right Alli?” Well, no. Most people who are chronically stressed don’t do any cardio and they certainly don’t do it hard enough to get the benefit of building the mitochondria and burning off the stress. We begin here, with the right type, amount and duration of cardio to start dealing with stress. 

Second, you can’t just “think happy thoughts” and expect that to work. While being positive is certainly more helpful than being negative, what we need to do is get to the root cause of why you’re stuck in this thought pattern and get rid of it. Sometimes it’s old anger that’s causing it, sometimes it’s lack of belief in oneself, and other times it’s no faith that “everything will work out” that does it.

Working through negative thoughts during cardio is the best time to do it while the dopamine is flowing. It’s also the best time to build up your belief in yourself. When I’m doing my intervals, and I’m going all out at 9.5-10 in exertion, I repeat over and over again “this is why I win. I’m willing to do what others won’t.” It cannot be understated the level of belief I feel when I’ve done something very hard and used it to build my belief in why I will win in business. It puts me ahead of my competition and I know I can do anything because I can do that.

So you see, we can use our bodies to build our mindsets and our minds to keep our bodies healthy. It’s a reciprocal system that when done correctly, becomes an upward spiraling vortex. 

When not done at all, the body and mind tend to deteriorate into negativity and disease.

What you think about you matters more than anything else you can ever think. Conquer this and you create the reality of your dreams.