Mind- Body- Spirit Medicine

 From my understanding, the mind-body connection refers to the way in which the mind impacts the body. For example, as a hypnotherapy practitioner, I often lead my patients into guided visualization in order to calm their emotional arousal. I also explain to my patients that stress impacts the body in devastating ways. I often share an infographic on the ways that stress negatively impacts the body and the importance of being able to shift from debilitating emotions to more adaptive or regenerating emotions. I have learned that from HeartMath and I often speak to my clients about the benefits of being able to learn to have the capacity to shift to more  adaptive emotions as it results in a healthier body as well. Varona(2018) noted that in supporting music educators undergoing burn out, mindfulness was a resource in coping with stress. The researcher noted that mindfulness helped to build emotional regulation but it also impacted cognitive functioning in terms of flexibility and problem-solving.

Chan et al.(2017) explained that mind body spirit medicine uses an array of techniques including integrating the mind to impact functioning and increase overall health. The researchers described the mind-body connection as an approach which is integrative in nature  and which is drawn from traditional Chinese medicine, Confucianism, and Daoism. Their study focused on establishing the effectiveness of integrative mind-body spirit interventions used to alleviate disturbances in sleep, mood, and inflammatory response in individuals with depression. The researchers findings indicated that integrative Body mind spirit interventions help to improve sleep and alleviate depression as well as reduce inflammation. The beliefs around integrative body mind spirit interventions is grounded in an understanding of how the body mind and spirit are interconnected and the value of spirituality as well as a movement to go past the reduction of symptoms to experience changes which are transformative in nature.

                                                                 References

Chan, C. H. Y., Ji, X.-W., Chan, J. S. M., Lau, B. H. P., So, K.-F., Li, A., Chung, K.-F., Ng, S., & Chan, C. L. W. (2017). Effects of the Integrative Mind-Body Intervention on Depression, Sleep Disturbances and Plasma IL-6. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 86(1), 54–56. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48516317

Varona, D. A. (2018). The Mindful Music Educator: Strategies for Reducing Stress and Increasing Well-Being. Music Educators Journal, 105(2), 64–71. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26588695