Healing Through Whole Body Wellness (Mental Health & The Mind/Body Connection)
In order to decipher what the root issue may be when it comes to your mental health, I believe that establishing & maintaining a wellness lifestyle is a huge key step toward whole body wellness. In this article I’m going to focus on the facts of how interconnected our bodies and minds are and how that affects our mental health.
What is whole body wellness?
Healing through whole body wellness involves root issue, whole healing; it’s looking at all aspects of you as a person.
It’s not a quick fix. It’s not a two week diet; it’s about creating a positive, wellness lifestyle that sets the platform for a solid foundation for you to have positive ability to work through all the events, circumstances & issues that life presents. It’s designing and teaching a lifestyle to continually condition your body & mind for strength and wellness.
As I see it, we are innately designed to be aligned, in balance with and connected with our mind/ body / soul.
What happens all too often is we get pulled and disconnected from our mind / body by distraction, unhealthy influence, gimmicks and gadgets that promise us a quick fix and soon enough we’re completely detached and unaware of what our bodies need & want.
Whole body wellness in terms of mental health, is using the body and it’s messages (symptoms) to help you identify and address your mental health issues.
What does living a whole body wellness lifestyle mean?
I believe that being a cohesively whole & healthy person involves tending to all aspects of our health: our minds, our bodies, our spirit. A lifestyle of wellness considers all of these aspects. Therefore, how you live your life and the choices that you make for yourself, both big and small, align with the desire to live a well & balanced life.
HOW OUR BODIES SPEAK TO US
Our physical bodies are always trying to get our attention by sending us messages via our physical symptoms. This can be as basic as the feeling of physical thirst; the feeling of being thirsty is your body signaling to you that it needs water. As basic as this sounds, I can’t tell you how many smart, successful and well intended people I’ve witnessed end up in the emergency room because they were dehydrated.
Point being: It’s amazing how disconnected we can become from the messages that our bodies are telling us.
Here are some examples of what particular mental states will do to our physical body:
when we’re anxious we can will physically feel: a fast heartbeat, rapid breathing, upset stomach, digestive issues, sweating.
when we’re overworked we can physically experience symptoms such as: exhaustion, insomnia, muscle soreness, headaches, fatigue.
when we’re stressed we can physically experience skin issues like hives or itching, hair loss (long term), sore eyes, trouble sleeping, weakened immune system, digestive issues, chest pain, etc.
This shows how our bodies act as our personal alarm systems; our job is to decode what our symptoms are communicating to us.
A great question to ask when you experience a physical symptom is:
What is my body trying to tell me?
As we learn to take care of our physical bodies well, while also learning how to decode it’s messages; we will reconnect our body / mind.
THE MIND BODY DISCONNECT
It happens all too often when a client reaches out and explains that they are depressed. They usually tell me how they’re experiencing symptoms such as: restless sleep, headaches, fatigue, low mood and lack of motivation.
On the surface, this sounds like depression, right?
Well………
As I dig a bit further with questions around their physical health, I often discover that they:
“usually” fall asleep around 12-3am
eat poorly
never exercise
often forget to drink enough water
drink alcohol several days a week
are hooked to some bad habits such as overconsumption of screen time and social media
This information suddenly shifts my focus toward my clients basic self care habits. My job becomes about helping my client to physically regulate by supporting them in creating a wellness routine in order to weed out what could be going on with them mental health wise.
A lot of depressive symptoms mimic the symptoms that physically appear when we live a lifestyle of non movement & poor eating, self care & sleeping habits.
Without a healthy physical foundation to help ground and provide the kind of positive structure we all need to show up balanced and well; any sort of attempt to address any mental health issues becomes more difficult.
I’ve found that some symptoms that seem like there strictly mental health symptoms can be addressed and cleared at times with an intentional shift to create a wellness lifestyle.
(What I’m saying is that your chances of improving your mental health is aligned with how you look after your physical health; that is the notion behind whole health healing.)
Here are some physical symptoms that can be caused by a poor diet and lack of exercise:
Moodiness
A lack of protein can lead to low levels of dopamine and serotonin, which can cause symptoms of depression or aggression.Sleep disturbances
Caloric restriction or poor diet can disrupt sleep, causing difficulty falling asleep, and sleep interruptions.Weakened immune system
Not getting enough nutrients can make it harder for your immune system to fight infections, which can lead to frequent illness or illnesses that linger.Stiff joints
Under use of your joints can cause them to stiffen.Breathlessness
Without regular exercise the muscles that help your lungs move in and out become weak, leading to breathlessness.Low energy
Exercise helps deliver oxygen and nutrients to your tissues, not exercising your body results in low energy levels.High blood pressure
Not exercising and eating unwell can increase your risk of heart disease.Constipation
Poor diet and lack of exercise are common causes of constipation.Oral health issues
An over abundance of sugar in your diet can cause cavities, and not getting enough vitamin C can cause swollen or bleeding gums.Reproductive difficulties
When your body is not getting adequate nutrition, it prioritizes processes such as breathing and blood circulation over sex hormone production. This can reduce your sex drive and interrupt reproductive processes.
Here are some physical symptoms that can be caused by symptoms of depression:
Low Mood
Feeling chronically sad, anxious, numbed out or empty. You may also feel hopeless, pessimistic, or irritable.Loss of Interest
You may lose interest in activities that you used to enjoy. Experiencing a general loss of pleasure is common with depression.Sleep
You may have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, wake up too early, or sleep too much.Low Energy
You may feel tired or have a lack of energy, even after getting a good amount of sleep.Poor Concentration
You may have trouble concentrating, remembering details, or making decisions.Appetite
You may eat more or less than usual, or have no appetite.Pain
You may experience aches, pains, headaches, or stomach problems that don't improve with treatment.Thoughts
You may feel guilty, worthless, or helpless. You may also have thoughts of self harm or suicide.
How It’s All Connected : The Body / Mind Connect
As you can see many of the symptoms that are due to a poor wellness lifestyle mimic the symptoms of depression. There’s also the overlap of when you’re feeling depressed you don’t have the desire to do healthy, positive things for yourself.
So, is it the chicken or the egg? Did your poor physical health lead to your depression? Or did the depression lead to your poor physical health and unhealthy lifestyle? Sooner or later one is going to align with the other and cause negative consequences.
In order to understand what’s going on for you physically and mentally; establishing, maintaining and living a healthy wellness lifestyle is what’s going to help you uncover the potential mental health conditions that could be buried under the physical health symptoms.
Starting with what you can control such as what you eat, how much you sleep, how much you exercise, how much water or alcohol you drink; these are “the basics” that often go under acknowledged when it comes to looking at mental health.
Once your basics are more regulated you might find some relief of symptoms. This in itself can provide you with the needed motivation and energy to tend to your mental health issues.
Also, let’s say that after you’ve created and maintained a positive wellness routine for some time; you’re still having mental health and physical issues. If this is the case, continuing to weed out other possible physical causes of any symptoms is another suggested place to look for some answers.
*Making an appointment with your medical doctor to discover and address any physical aliments is a good way to continue to explore what can be lying underneath your mental health issues.
As your physical health becomes stabilized, that sets a great foundation to clearly be able to see what’s going on with your mental health. Looking into your mental health history entails identifying any past pains, hurts or events where there may be stagnant and unprocessed feelings, emotions, trauma, resistance or pain.
Ultimately, once something within us or something that happened to us is acknowledged, we can then work toward healing, acceptance and letting go.
MIND / BODY / SOUL HEALING
MIND
what therapy can do: (mind healing)
Therapy can teach healthy coping strategies, conflict resolution & communication skills. Generally speaking therapy can help a client identify, process & heal any underlying issues that may be contributing to symptoms of decreased mental health. Obviously there’s a lot more to it; but having a space that validates, hears you, supports and is a safe space for you to unpack difficult emotions and events can be extremely healing with the right person.
Therapy and the mind / body connection:
Somatic therapy involves looking to the body to help identify trapped or repressed emotions and through body work, breath work, attention to sensations and visualizations, these practices helps to “push them through.” Somatic therapy works to dissolve unprocessed emotions by identifying, acknowledging, addressing and helping the client find acceptance for any unhealed emotions. Somatic Experiencing is a type of therapy that is used to help treat trauma via exploring the mind / body connection.
BODY
what movement can do: (body healing)
Energy: exercise helps deliver oxygen and nutrients to our tissues, leading to an increase in overall energy.
Healthy Coping: movement helps us cope with difficult emotions by helping us work through them physically via breath and movement.
Increase Mood: Exercise releases endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine, which are chemicals in the brain that can boost happiness and well-being. 10 minutes of moderate exercise has been identified to have positive effects on the body / mind.
Decrease Stress: Exercise can help reduce stress and mental fatigue. It can also improve the functioning of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which has been identified to lower cortisol secretion.
Improve Sleep: Improved sleep leads to a more vibrant, alert and steady mood.
Helps Cultivate a Sense of purpose:
Finding an activity, committing to it, gaining a community through it, while creating goals around it can all lead to creating purpose for your life.
Increases Self-esteem: Exercise brings structure, healthy routine and a sense of accomplishment to your life; all of which works to increase your self esteem.
Increases Brain function: Exercise can improve brain function, attention, focus, memory, cognition, language fluency, and decision-making.
Increase Ability to Emotionally Regulate
(when we’re not emotionally regulated; we’re dysregulated, which leads to all sorts of mental health issues. Feel free to read more about emotional regulation and tools and coping strategies here.
SOUL
what mindfulness can do: (spirit/ soul healing)
Mindfulness is “a type of meditation that involves focusing on being aware of what you're sensing and feeling in the moment, without judgment or interpretation.” - google
Mindfulness is a skill that teaches you to be more present so you can learn how to “live in the moment” instead of living in the past (where depression lives) or in the future (where anxiety lives.)
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy / DBT therapy is a type of therapy that focuses on teaching distress tolerance skills, while helping the client to understand & accept emotions. Learning how to be mindful is another key part in DBT.
Whole body wellness is a concept as a former athlete and therapist that I believe in so fiercely. It’s what I base my practice around and what I live by myself. Treating the whole person by looking at all aspects of how they are functioning is how we can address and identify the whole cohesive picture of what could be happening for someone.
In my opinion; this is how true healing occurs as it’s all connected.
Resources
BOOKS THAT SUPPORT WHOLE BODY WELLNESS HEALING
When the Body Says NO / Gabor Mate, M.D.
The Body Keeps the Score / Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
The Energy Codes / Dr. Sue Morter
Shop Wellness
Shop my favorite wellness products that i have hand selected and use myself on my SHOPMY page. Find selected self care products that I love.
An Invitation For You
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*Images by photographer Renata Amazonas.
6 Signs That Your Disconnected from Your Body, Mind & Spirit
In a world that’s turning so quickly around us, it’s becoming more common to subconsciously disconnect from our mind, body & soul.
What’s the mind, body & soul connection all about?
This connection points to how our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitudes, combined with our level of awareness, effect our physical and mental functioning. If this connection is lost or imbalanced it’s only a matter of time that issues will present.
My intention with this post is to help you identify symptoms of a mind, body & spirit disconnection while offering tips toward reconnection so you can function with all systems firing to their best ability.
Below, find 6 symptoms of disconnect from the mind, body & soul.
MIND & SPIRIT
1. Inability to connect with and understand your emotional state
In a nutshell, when we’re disconnected from our mind, body & spirit, our ability to feel and name our emotions is compromised. This is a result of being “unrooted” and detached from our emotions. Experiencing symptoms such as fatigue, anxiety or stress without awareness as to why is an example of this disconnection.
I’ve come across clients who’ve told me that they’re “fine,” yet are experiencing debilitating panic attacks and have “no clue why.” There’s a lot going on physically and a lot brewing emotionally by the time an individual is experiencing physical symptoms, such as panic attacks. When there’s a severe disconnection within your emotional space, there tends to be a mismatch between your affect and any given emotional situation. For example, you might find yourself laughing when it would make more sense to cry.
Our body is designed to warn us of danger via our physical and mental health symptoms. *Usually unresolved emotions are the culprit for our disconnect and distressed symptoms. There’s a lot that we can miss when the synergy between body, mind & spirit is out of tune.
2. Making lots of plans without considering your mood, how you feel and what’s already on the agenda.
Over planning and chronic busyness tends to correlate with a disconnected mind/body. When we’re going too fast via over planning, we’re missing the moments to breath, observe, listen to our body and feel our emotions.
This is exactly why some of us go the route of over planning. It’s a way to avoid uncomfortable emotions that we don’t want to look at.
The truth is that avoidance is a bandaid solution. Avoiding anything doesn’t make it go away. Avoidance encourages and allows any matter the space to become bigger, which will eventually manifest negatively in other ways. If you avoid the fact that there’s a fire in the corner of the room, it will eventually take the house down.
3. Putting too much emphasis on performance while shaming yourself if you don’t accomplish what you set out for.
Plans can be enormously helpful to structure our days and get things done. Although, there’s such a thing as “over planning” and that’s what I’m speaking to with this point. What you can’t plan is how your mind and body are going to feel on any particular day. “Pushing” yourself to do “the plan” vs. checking in with how you feel physically and mentally can, overtime, create a disconnect. Bringing in concepts such as flexibility while being open to shifting plans based on how you feel physically and emotionally is a way of taking good care of yourself.
BODY
4. Hyper focus on how you think your body should look vs. accepting your natural set point.
I’ve seen people go to extremes in order to fit a square peg into a round hole when it comes to their physicality. This can look like over exercise, rigid dieting, critical self talk, body dysmorphia, eating disorders and so much more.
Whenever we’re in resistance to “what is,” we’re fighting an upstream battle, my friends. We all know that the journey upstream requires way more effort and energy than going with the natural, downward flow. Finding acceptance around where your body naturally wants to be (it’s set point) is the path toward more inner peace.
5. Following strict diets and self imposed rules around food even when cravings or intuition is communicating something different.
Ignoring our inner intuition conditions our automatic pilot response. Over time this leads to conflict between body & mind. Our bodies are designed to “speak” to us via our physical sensations, symptoms, intuition, cravings, moods and emotions. Strict, inflexible pre planned diets tend to strip us of the connection with our physical intuition by encouraging us to look outward for an answer to an inner question. (*Note: Always be mindful of looking for any of your answers externally.) This continuous act of following a script about what to eat disconnects us further and further from what we personally enjoy and what feels good to our unique bodies.
Questioning, “What do I feel like this morning for breakfast” vs. following a pre planned meal schedule are very different ways to connect with your mind, body & spirit.
*I understand that having structure & guidance around food choices can be helpful and important. The key word here to be mindful of is “strict.” Finding flexibility within any sort of structure enables you to keep your intuition alive and is highly encouraged.
6. A focus on numbers rather than how you feel.
Calorie counting, amount of steps taken, number of calories burned, obsessively logging the minutes or hours exercising, etc. There are so many gadgets and ways to measure a variety of analytics these days. I’m not hating on these gadgets if you use them FOR you and not AGAINST you. If these measures and stats are supporting you in a healthy way, carry on, although keep an eye out for becoming too focused and dependent on “the numbers.”
In the long run, what your whoop or apple watch says vs. listening to your body in order to pay attention to how you feel are very different concepts. Creating a dependency on something other than yourself to tell you how much to push yourself physically can create a questionable dynamic.
I’m all for a device that motivates you, up levels your performance and helps you feel good about your physical activity. I’m not devaluing these devices, rather, I’m pointing toward the importance of keeping your mind / body connection strong by acknowledging your own “stats” via paying attention to how you feel.
Like all things be mindful of balance. In the case of analytics around your health, how you feel and what the stats say should align if all is running smoothly. Bottom line: Your intimate experience of what it feels like to be in your body cannot be replaced by anything. Nada. Nothing…when you’re in tune.
Why does a mind, body & spirit disconnect occur?
For the purpose of answering this question, I’m going to decipher between the “issues” that we face in life as either “root” issues or “surface” issues. It’s common for us humans to find “bandaid solutions” for our life issues when those matters are difficult to face. Our deeply buried “root” issues (the hard emotional circumstances hidden deep) are uncomfortable and, at times, intolerable to face and talk about. So much so, that some of us never face them in a lifetime. Whatever we’re avoiding in life doesn’t go away. It builds silently and becomes heavy weight within our body & soul and chips away at the joy within our lives.
The pressures, perfectionism and critical self talk that keep us so structured and “in control” usually stem from deep rooted unresolved emotions and experiences that we’ve neglected. Overtime, you guessed it, the lack of dealing with our “stuff” causes a disconnect within our mind, body & soul. With that said, there’s so much more to get into with the topic of “root issues” as it’s a vast and so personal to each individual.
*If you feel like you want to dive deeper and face these “root” issues, it could be important to talk to a trusted source or licensed professional to help you through your process. Feel free to contact me for resources, etc. (via email, DM, phone, what have you.)
How do I reconnect with my body, mind & spirit?
Spending energy facing and acknowledging a disconnect is half the battle. Awareness is key, right?
Once we’re aware that something is not properly functioning, that’s the point where we can work toward a shift. Cultivating our awareness to seek out solutions to guide us through our issues begins the reconnection process.
In short, evaluating the behaviors that are not “serving” us while working toward weeding them out of our lifestyle is the first step. As we eliminate habits in our life that we’ve evaluated as “not needed” we then can begin to add in behaviors that are different, new and appear to have potential for our well being.
1. Evaluate what’s not working
2.Stop doing what’s not working
3.Replace what’s not working with a new behavior
This is a mini run down on the “letting go” process that’s essential when looking for positive change. This might mean less late nights and more early mornings for self care. This might mean less over planning and more time for self centering habits. It’s going to be a unique set of habits and behaviors to release and add in according to where you’re at and who you desire to become that will bring change to your life.
If anything, I hope that this post acts as a friendly reminder for you to pay attention to your physical symptoms and emotions. After all, your ability to translate what your symptoms, moods and emotions are saying allows you to strengthen and become more aware of what’s occurring beneath the surface.
Like so many of the topics that I write about, there’s so much more to them beyond a quick blog post. Looking at root issues and letting go of destructive habits is a process that takes time and might need to be supported with a professional.
I want to honor that my therapeutic approach is not for all. If this is the case for you, here’s a link from a post that I wrote about How To Find the “Right” Therapist For You.
Don’t hesitate to reach out with any further questions or comments; They’re always welcome. Cheers.
*Image by Photographer & creator of honeyandgarden, Renata Amazonas