The interplay between mind and body

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Keywords

 Resilience - Emotions - Perception - Emotional Energy - Self-care - Energy Balance

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Denise Schonwald, a mental health specialist, discusses her holistic approach to patient care which emphasises the interplay between mind and body. Denise explains how emotions can manifest physically and highlights the role of perception in shaping experiences.

Denise also explores the concept of resilience, suggesting that suffering can contribute to its development and discusses the concept of energy, the role of emotions in emotional energy and the importance of self-care for energy balance.

Main topics

  • The interplay between mind and body

  • How certain emotions, such as guilt or grief, can manifest physically in the body.

  • The role of perception in shaping our experiences

  • Grief as a transformative force in life

  • How suffering can contribute to the development of resilience

  • The concept of energy in relation to emotions and physical wellbeing

  • How joy and gratitude contribute to resilience

  • The importance of self-care to maintain energy balance through exercise or relaxation

  • Understanding how high energy frequency energy is crucial for wellbeing

Action items

Let your body show you the way

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Ellen Meredith is an energy healer, conscious channel, and medical intuitive who have helped over ten thousand clients and students worldwide. Ellen helps her clients engage with the body’s energies to activate healing. Ellen feels we are being forced by our own inner nature and the awakening happening all over the planet and the conflicts were running into. There are a lot of changes and people are shifting in what they want to do and how they want to do it. We are being forced to go inward and reevaluate and ask ‘What’s my part? What do I want to choose moment by moment? What do I want to do with this life?’ Beyond that there is a rising yearning to know ourselves in a deeper way. It's a very exciting awakening or time of change but it also means letting go of a lot of habits and ways of thinking and being social that don't work anymore.

Energy medicine uses energy to heal. We are all made of and fueled by energy and, under the surface of our awareness our body, mind and spirit are constantly communicating using energy. This communication is a language literally something we can learn to participate in and speak. It influences our health and wellbeing and what happens around us to a certain extent by learning to speak the lingo. Ellen’s latest book is about activating the inner guidance system that's built into the body mind and spirit and accessing inner knowing learning how to navigate change using energy tools. The body communicates using chemistry and energy and your energy influences your chemistry but your chemistry doesn't necessarily influence your energy. It’s an emerging field but one that's been around 1000s of years in the guise of acupuncture, yoga or tai chi. There are lots of different practices and traditions that have used the energy communications of the body.

Everyone will say I don't have any energy today. It’s a rare person who says there is no such thing as energy. What’s really going on is a blowback. We’ve been in a long period of outside in thinking where we look outside ourselves for authority. We want science to tell us the truth, we want religion to tell us the truth, we want external forces to validate our truth. We live in a culture that says our objective reality is more real than our subjective reality. That's out of balance. What’s shifting now is the rising awareness that there is a role to be played by inner knowing and inner awareness and the choices that come from within us or from our own experience rather than from statistics about what’s a good life, how you should live or what’s healthy. Something that's healthy for me might not be healthy for you.

All of us have been socialised to think that the outside in reality is more true, more accurate, more correct than something that arises from our own experiences and knowing. We are out of balance and need to activate our ability to access out own inner wisdom because right now we are in an age where technology are enabled us to her everyone’s opinion. We are bombarded by group things such as social media so if we don't have access to our inner wisdom, our inner knowing and our inner truth moment by moment, then we are at the mercy of charismatic but not very balanced people. There is a big move on the planet of authoritarian government and people wanting to turn to authorities who will tell them what the right thing is but there is also a counter move to say no, we need people power, we need to wake up and jointly make these choices and decisions for our own mutual benefit.

Energy medicine has lots of tools for shifting the dynamic of energy that makes us up. It's a very healing thing. Our culture helps us believe that if we have a headache we can get rid of it with a pill but we have trouble in believing that doing something like a yoga pose will also get rid of the same headache. It has to do with our culture and how we are raised. Energy medicine has lots of activities and tools that influence the energetic exchanges of the body and between the mind, body and spirit. We can learn what’s needed, by letting the body show us what’s needed.

Symptoms are your body speaking to you and telling you that it needs something. We all have to learn how the body communicates and how to respond appropriately but we are pretty clueless about that. If we are tired we think we’d better have a stimulant such as coffee but adding coffee to fatigue doesn't address why – are you fatigued because you’re not loving what you’re doing, because you’re doing too much, because you’ve used up your available energy or because you’re really bored? We have to be able to understand these communications so we can find out what we need and make adjustments to live a healthier more receptive life.

Ellen comes from a background of creative writing and feels we don't always need something that's always calming. Sometimes we need to create something big and bold that runs the whole gamut of possibilities. It isn’t always about applying the same technique when you feel bad, it’s about attuning to what your body, mind and spirit is asking and making different choices moment by moment. We make micro choices all day long. Do I pick up my phone or look out the window? Do I grab something quick to eat or consider what my body really needs at this moment? We need to be awake and aware to get more precise about what we need and listen to the things our body is asking for throughout the day to make us more effective, efficient and passionate in each thing we do.

 You can find out more about Ellen at  http://www.ellenmeredith.com.  

 You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.

Ellen’s books are Your Body Will Show You the Way and The Language Your Body Speaks. 

Does the winter make you feel SAD?

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Despite the fact that millions of us say we've suffered a winter-related low mood, it can seem as though the winter blues is just a myth. But there's sound scientific evidence to support the idea that the season can affect our moods. So, if you go through bouts of the winter blues, lack of daylight may well play a part.

We’re all affected by the change in season to a greater or lesser degree – we generally feel more cheerful and energetic when the sun is shining or find that we eat more or sleep longer in winter. However, if you experience SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), the change in seasons has a much greater effect on your mood and energy levels and can lead to symptoms of depression that have a significant impact on your day-to-day life.

The exact cause of SAD isn't fully understood, but it's thought to be linked to reduced exposure to sunlight during the shorter days of the year. Sunlight can affect some of the brain's chemicals and hormones although it’s not really clear what this effect is. One theory is that light stimulates a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which controls mood, appetite and sleep. These things can affect how you feel.

In people with SAD, a lack of sunlight and a problem with certain brain chemicals stops the hypothalamus working properly. The lack of light is thought to affect the:

  • production of the hormone melatonin

  • production of the hormone serotonin

  • body's circadian rhythm (its internal clock, which regulates several biological processes during a 24-hour period)

You are more likely to experience SAD if you live in a country where there are significant changes to daylight, temperature and weather between seasons. It’s more common in Scandinavia, Europe, North America, North Asia, and in southern parts of Australia and South America.  It’s also rare to find people with symptoms of SAD living near the equator, where daylight hours are long and bright all year round. In the UK, it is estimated that about one in fifteen people experience some symptoms of SAD.

SAD symptoms generally appear between September and November and are most noticeable during December, January and February. They can continue until March, April or even May the following year when symptoms tend to go away either suddenly (often with a short period of hyperactivity) or gradually, depending on the amount of sunlight in the spring and early summer.

SAD can affect people of any age but most commonly symptoms begin between 18 and 30. For some people, symptoms are fairly mild and last for a shorter period but a small percentage of people are affected very badly and find it hard to carry out day-to-day tasks in winter without continuous treatment.

Some or all of the following are symptoms of SAD

  • lack of energy for everyday tasks

  • concentration problems

  • sleep problems

  • depression

  • apathetic and feeling nothing

  • anxiety

  • panic attacks

  • mood changes

  • overeating

  • being more prone to illness

  • social and relationship problems

As with any type of depression, SAD can be difficult to live with. It is a recognised condition though, so if you do get the winter blues and start to feel down, depressed or unable to cope as well as normal then you should consult your doctor. Diagnosis is generally made after two or more consecutive years of suffering the symptoms but the good news is that there are a number of treatments available and they can be very successful.

Studies have shown that light therapy relieves SAD symptoms for as much as 70% of patients after a few weeks of treatment or your doctor may recommend talking therapies such as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) or medication such as antidepressants. If you prefer not to take medication, alternative therapies and approaches such as reflexology, massage or hypnotherapy have been found to help.

Energy Medicine Yoga for stress and trauma.

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Lauren Walker has been studying and practicing yoga since 1996. She loved the practice and found it helpful on many levels but when she experienced traumatic events yoga was not able to help her overcome them.  She realised she needed to find something else and that was energy or more particularly energy medicine.

When she started studying energy medicine she realised what energy actually was. It changed her understanding of herself as an energetic being and her practice of yoga gradually transformed into energy medicine yoga utilising powerful energy techniques and practices and transformed them in the lens of yoga practice. 

Most people don't have an understanding of ourselves as pure energy beings or that the world is purely energy. Science helps clarify this but can also muddy things. How can we actually apply this science? Where does the science reflect the value and truth of these alternative practices. And where does it come down to people using words like quantum so they feel they are more validated in the actually scientific ways they are meant to be?

Lauren feels there is more room to explore this. Western science is validating these ancient practices in studies to show where these scientific and spiritual practices come together and validate each other. At the end of the day though it’s really a question of ‘does this work for you do these techniques help to you be more in your life better with more ease, peace calm and freedom’.

There has been a lot more understanding of stress and trauma from the medical establishment. Stress causes disease. There is good stress and bad stress. Unresolved trauma also leads to disease and this speaks to that truth that everything is energy. Traumatic experiences are energies that knock your fluid incoherent energies out of coherence and it is the same with stress. Energy medicine and Energy Medicine Yoga speaks to those very specific energies. How they work in the body. How they move in the body. How to resolve them.

Most important we actually move the physical body energy systems animated in the physical body idea of expansion and contraction moving giving space in the body for energy to move and flow. Movement is important for stress and trauma. The more you move in a specific and guided way using the understanding of where the energy flows are in the body, the more freedom we have.

Any issue that you are having, whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual comes down to where the energy is out of balance. It affects everyone in different ways. Whether its stress, trauma, depression or relationships not working, energy medicine yoga addresses the issue and provides the tools to pinpoint where to take the practices depending on what is going on for you.

Energy touches every areas of your life - how you’re feeling or sleeping, how your relationships are working, how quickly you heal, whether you have an optimistic or pessimistic outlook or whether you take action of pull back. All are affected by how coherent all of your energy systems are.

There are nine energy systems and all of those animate the physical systems that all work together synergistically. There is a need to find which area is out of balance energetically and bring it back into balance so that the body does what its meant to do – to heal. It is not at all like a western medicine problem – its much more holistic and integrated and less challenging.

You can find out more about Lauren at EMYoga.net Her new book is The Energy to Heal: Find Lasting Freedom from Stress and Trauma through Energy Medicine Yoga (Llewellyn Publications, May 20, 2022).

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.