Do you ever find yourself feeling a bit off and you can’t figure out why? Maybe you’ve had seasons of trying to heal and feel better using different means. You might feel anxious and go to the doctor only to be told you check out fine and they recommend going to counseling. Other times, you may have gone to counseling trying to resolve feeling low energy to be told you should try going to the doctor and get your blood work checked. Maybe you’ve prayed and gone to speak to a pastor about emotional pain and while that was helpful, they recommended you get some additional counseling.
It can become confusing trying to sort out the origin of issues you are having and where exactly to go for help. For a long time, humans were encouraged to view their bodies, minds, and spirits as separate without much overlap. If medical professionals didn’t find a medical explanation, people were sometimes told “it’s all in your head.” As more research emerged, doctors started encouraging people to get mental health support to supplement medical help. For years, people went to counselors talking about problems believing that their mind and their physical experience were two completely separate things. As more research emerged, counselors began understanding the connection between emotions and how feelings are stored and experienced physically in the body. More therapists are now incorporating physical body exercises along with talk therapy with improved results. For many years, some churches discouraged people from trusting mental health support outside the church. Now, many churches encourage church members toward counseling alongside spiritual discipleship.
While it is complicated to sort and determine the next steps in pursuit of healing, what we are all learning is that the body, mind and spirit are deeply connected. You don’t have to choose only one pathway of growing and healing. You can choose to address all three areas with a greater chance of feeling more healed and whole. So, what does it look like to embrace the body, mind, spirit connection in day to day life?
6 Ways to Embrace the Body, Mind, Spirit Connection
- Evaluate historical messages. Notice messages you may be carrying from childhood or other times in life that make it hard for you to give credibility to your experiences in your body, mind, or spirit. Were you told that you shouldn’t believe in counseling? Was faith modeled for you in harmful ways that create current confusion? Were you encouraged to ignore or skip what your physical body is trying to signal to you?
- Get support to decide what you believe now. While historical messages can be powerful, you have the option to decide what you want to believe in the here and now. Try doing your own research to develop beliefs about how you want to seek mental or medical support. Try talking to a spiritual mentor about spiritual struggles. Do the work to unblock what might be blocked related to how you grew up.
- Notice. Start intentionally noticing the connection between what you think, how you feel, what sensations you are having in your body, and how your faith experience is shaping you. All of these work best when you are open to noticing how they work together.
- Try using body, mind, and spirit together to process life experiences. For example, notice that you are feeling angry and stressed. Notice the physical signs such as tension in your body and exhaustion. Notice the irritable thoughts and feelings. Notice how your anger and stress are related to your relationship with God and how you are living out your faith.
- Try engaging spirit, mind and body to address feeling better. Try talking openly with God and people in your spiritual community about your struggles. Engage spiritual disciplines to support yourself. Ask for help surrendering spiritually. Seek counseling to understand how historical messages, boundaries, and your internal thoughts might be impacting your stress and anger. Try a stretching class, breathing exercises or other physical activities to engage your body in releasing anger and stress. Each of these can be helpful, however, all of them together work most effectively.
- Practice and repeat. Use reminders in your phone and post it notes to notice how mind, spirit, and body are deeply connected and all important parts of how you were created to be a person. Your brain rewires through repetition. The more you connect all three areas in your daily awareness, the more you will notice naturally how they are each at play every day.
Be curious and kind toward yourself as you ponder and practice the body, mind, spirit connection. Connect with us at Journeybravely.com along your journey for counseling and coaching support.
