Originally posted at: https://sundayeveryday.me/2016/05/23/our-thought-life-affects-our-health-and-wellbeing/
by Lisa Hunt-Wotton
Depression is often the result of over thinking, our minds create problems that initially didn’t exist.
We exercise little discipline regarding the negative thoughts that run round and round in our heads, causing us anxiety and fear. We don’t stop long enough to realise that these thoughts are negative, they just are.
What if, I could have, I should have, I didn’t, if only and the list of toxic thoughts goes on and on.
“Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.
Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies” (Phil 4:8 The Message Bible).
The apostle Paul wrote this to the Philippians over 2000 years ago. The ancients knew that meditating on good and noble thoughts were the best thing for our health and for us to live in harmony.
Today I want us to understand the power of our thoughts and know that it is possible to change and renew our minds. Paul tells us to “Think on these thing” – what is good, pure, beautiful, noble, reputable. It is a spiritual discipline that we must all take time to learn to master. It is a spiritual discipline that has a powerful effect on our emotional and physical health. Dr Caroline Leaf is a cognitive neuroscientist with a PhD in Communication Pathology specializing in Neuropsychology, teaches on toxic thought life. This is what she says:
75% to 95% of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct result of our thought life. What we think about affects us physically and emotionally. It’s an epidemic of toxic emotions.
The average person has over 30,000 thoughts a day. Through an uncontrolled thought life, we create the conditions for illness; we make ourselves sick! Research shows that fear, all on its own, triggers more than 1,400 known physical and chemical responses and activates more than 30 different hormones.
There are INTELLECTUAL and MEDICAL reasons to FORGIVE!
Toxic waste generated by toxic thoughts causes the following illnesses: diabetes, cancer, asthma, skin problems and allergies to name just a few. Consciously control your thought life and start to detox your brain!
Medical research increasingly points to the fact that thinking and consciously controlling your thought life is one of the best ways, if not the best way of detoxing your brain. It allows you to get rid of those toxic thoughts and emotions that can consume and control your mind.
Change in your thinking is essential to detox the brain. Consciously controlling your thought life means not letting thoughts rampage through your mind. It means learning to engage interactively with every single thought that you have, and to analyze it before you decide either to accept or reject it” (http://drleaf.com/about/toxic-thoughts/).
Toxic thinking literally ‘wears down’ the brain and the rest of the body.
The Institute of Heartmath discusses an experiment titled “Local and nonlocal effects of coherent heart frequencies on Conformational Changes of DNA.” This study showed that thinking and feeling anger, fear and frustration caused DNA to change shape according to thoughts (that is thoughts with their intertwined feelings). T
The DNA responded by tightening up, becoming shorter and switching off many DNA codes, which reduced quality expression:
We will feel ‘shut down” by negative emotions and our body feels this too. What was really exciting about this study is the fact that the negative “shut down” or poor quality of the DNA codes was reversed with feelings of love, joy, appreciation and gratitude!
The researchers also found that HIV positive patients with these positive thoughts and feelings had 300,000 times the resistance!
A lot of our thinking is dominated by situations and people that we cannot forgive. About two-thirds of the teaching of Jesus centred around forgiveness. Richard Rohr says that:
“One of the most powerful of human experiences is to give or to receive forgiveness…when we forgive, we choose the goodness of the other over their faults, we experience Gods forgiveness…and we also experience our own goodness…this is a coming together of power, both human and divine”.
Throughout the next week why don’t you take the time to record your negative thoughts. Write them out on a post it note and put it in a private place. Next to the negative thought write out a positive or good thought and begin to rewire your brain. Take the toxic thoughts and replace them with a good or noble thought.
Maybe you need to weigh up the choice to forgive, to release yourself and the other person from your pain.
Make the choice now to be free from these negative thoughts that are causing toxic reactions in your emotions and in your body.
Love Lisa.
About Dr. Leaf
Dr. Caroline Leaf is a cognitive neuroscientist with a PhD in Communication Pathology specializing in Neuropsychology. Since the early 1980‘s she has studied and researched the Mind-Brain connection. During her years in clinical practice as a Communication Pathologist she developed tools and processes that help people develop and change their thinking and subsequent behavior. Her scientific Science of Thought techniques have transformed the lives of patients with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), learning disabilities, emotional traumas and released the potential of thousands of young students and adults.
Change in your thinking is essential to detox the brain. Consciously controlling your thought life means not letting thoughts rampage through your mind. It means learning to engage interactively with every single thought that you have, and to analyze it before you decide either to accept or reject it.
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Love Lisa
