Is Your Body Listening To You Or Are You Listening To Your Body?
The Yappy Dog
I used to have a yappy dog. It was an imaginary creature in my head and only its voice was real. It barked at me all day, all kinds of negative comments that kept repeating in my head over and over like a tape recorder on replay. In my younger years, I thought it was my personality, but as timepassed, I learned it wasn’t really “me”. I wasn’t a negative person. Instead I unearthed the many reasons why we may think negative thoughts and more importantly, why we can’t seem to turn them off.
Many people don’t realize that we have various systems in our body that can control moods, thoughts, and reactions. I say control, but what I really mean is hijack. We can be moving merrily along through a day and be “struck” suddenly with sadness. Ever get angry at something silly? How about turning a bright outlook into bleak with a single thought? We can turn around moods or negative trains of thought quickly, or we can allow them to linger for hours or even days. What is the difference between being negative and just thinking negative? This is a huge, complex question that has many answers that could fill a book (which, by the way, I am writing!).
Let’s talk first about a couple of physical aspects of ourselves that can trigger what I call a downward spiral of negativity. According to scientist Candace Pert, author of “Molecules of Emotion”, and “What the Bleep Do We Know” fame, the chemistry existing within us forms a dynamic info network linking mind and body. This means that what we think about actually instigates our bodies to produce peptides, enzymes and cells to match that thought. So if you are constantly repeating a negative mantra to yourself over and over, your body is helping you become more and more determined to hold onto that negative philosophy. Even if you decide at a later date that you want to change your mind, your body has a hard time letting you do it! There are various ways you can try to physically and mentally manipulate those tendencies. Some of the ways are discussed at length throughout the site, like yoga, meditation, “Positive Manipulation”, and the “Sooi Principle”.
We can’t discount the Food/Mood connection either. What we eat plays a role in how we feel, act, and react. I like to say, “If our eyes are the window to our soul, then the mouth is the door to our persona.” What do I mean by that? Food is just chemicals on a plate. If the chemicals in a tiny pill called Prozac can keep us from jumping off a bridge, then don’t underestimate the chemistry from the pounds of food we consume daily to make us feel like jumping in the first place! Food can alter our bodies on the long term by changing our hormonal balance and adding or subtracting to the amount of vital nutrients we need to stay stable and happy. It can also work almost immediately by changing a mood or instigating already existing thought patterns. Society is just now figuring out what food is doing to harm our bodies physically, but on an emotional and mental level, we are on our own to figure out what forces our own, very precarious, bio-chemical balance to change. Unfortunately, it will take a long time for the medical industry to want answers because they are too busy prescribing pills to fix what they believe comes from our brain, not from our food.
With all of that working against us, it is difficult to imagine staying on an even keel mentally or emotionally. Think about the last time you took a “feeling” and make a mental thought out of it. Ever walk into a room of strangers and feel uncomfortable? Usually this kind of scenario can generate an energy of discomfort but instead of understanding it is a cumulative energy from everyone around us, we believe it is within us. Sometimes we feel something from someone and start creating a story to go with the feeling. “I don’t think he likes me” is a statement made from a girl who meets a guy for the first time. He is shy and not acting very cordial. His energy is perceived by her physical body as uncomfortable or maybe even negative. She starts to assume, mentally, based on what she feels instinctively. Instead of relying on facts to draw a final conclusion, she writes her own story, “It must be me. He hates me. I’m not attractive enough!” Then she creates an emotion around that story. Based on her past history with men, it can be anything from anger as a defense, to fear to anxiety. All this because a guy is shy and can’t make eye contact.
We all do this to some degree. A month ago I gave a seminar to a local counseling center for their employees. When I left, I felt very positive about how it went. When I didn’t hear back from the director for one month, I started to get paranoid. Here is how my train of thought went: Week One: She must be busy. Week Two: Maybe they just aren’t interested in another seminar. Week Three: Did I possibly alienate them because I was acting like a counselor instead of just talking? Week Four: If this seminar isn’t any good, I might have to rethink the entire thing. Did it suck? How bad could it be? Blah, Blah, Blah!
As you can see, I allowed the yappy dog back in, but luckily for me, I got hold of it before any damage was done. I didn’t go on a downward spiral, which in years passed would have went something like, “I suck, I will never be good at this. Now what am I going to do with the rest of my life?” Instead, I muzzled that darn dog and changed the direction of my negative thoughts by making a request to the Universe. “I would like to know how the seminar went and if they would like me back, so I can make it better to help others.” Then I took the request and made it into a goal and motive. That day I decided to email the director and ask for feedback. I started to draft it in my head, but it never went out, because she emailed me before I got a chance to send it. Here is what she wrote: “How are you? I was very impressed with your presentation; and once again, thank you very much for the opportunity you gave us to share with the staff all the wonderful information you have. I was thinking that it would be very nice to present to the children in our agency’s after school program, as well as to their parents. They need education about these topics. If you feel that you can do it, please let me know and I will ask the program coordinator to follow up with you. Again Donna, thank you very much!”
One can’t help wondering if my request planted the seed in the director’s head to reach out. After all, there are no coincidences. More importantly, if I didn’t stop the train wreck I was headed for, it would have changed much more than my thought pattern. If my confidence in myself was even partially jostled, it would have affected my writing, other speaking engagements, and the list goes on. The moral here is that we have control over what our “voices” are saying since they are in our bodies, but we may need to understand the where and why before we feel in control to do so. By stopping the yappy dog through our own Positive Manipulation process, we can control not only the thoughts in our head, but the direction of our life.
