In a world of medicine that tries to make everything as objective as possible, one of the great challenges is understanding the reality of the mind-body connection.

Any drug studies, for instance, need to take into account the placebo effect, wherein the expectation of improving leads to improvements, with or without an actual drug (or other treatment). In a similar way, the nocebo effect shows that the expectation of getting worse in spite of treatment actually leads one to getting worse.

Our minds seem to create our realities.

There are countless studies showing just how significant the placebo effect is. For instance, studies have found that:

• Nearly half of asthma patients get symptomatic relief from a fake inhaler or sham acupuncture.
• Placebo can be more effective than morphine in treating pain.
• Placebo has surpassed the effects of drugs in studies of inflammatory bowel disorder.

• 2 of 15 people in a placebo group grew hair.
• Nearly half of those with duodenal ulcers healed in 4 weeks from placebos.
• In a meta-analysis, nearly 20% of those with GERD responded to placebo treatment.

Research has even shown that nearly all positive mood improvements in patients taking antidepressants is attributed to the placebo effect.

So when it comes to health, it’s clear that the mind plays a significant role. In bioenergetics, this is considered a priority, which means giving more weight to what the mind really is and how it impacts the body.

What is the Mind?

Given that philosophers and psychologists throughout the ages have explored and debated the concept of the mind and consciousness, we cannot claim to have final answers on the matter in bioenergetics. But we can make some general observations and comments from bioenergetic research.

We might initially think of our “mind” as our collection of conscious thoughts, perhaps processed by the brain. But we would propose a broader view which considers everything we use to perceive and respond to the environment. We further propose that this occurs through three primary centers related to the body as a whole, the heart, and the brain.

The brain may relate to the mind in the form of thoughts; the body in the form of instinct; and the heart in the form of intuition. In other words, each has its own way of perceiving and responding to the world. And we are, perhaps, our strongest when we use thoughts, instinct, and intuition in tandem, drawing on each individual strength.

In bioenergetic terms, these three concepts relate to the primary three fields that make up the collective body-field: the brain corresponds to the morphic field (associated with the shape of the body); the body to the matrix field (associated with the connective tissues); and the heart to the heart field. Thus, all experiences are effectively processed and stored in the field, which gives us real-time feedback about how to respond to new events.

Conscious and Unconscious

Our conscious thoughts, then, relate to the brain or the morphic field only. This alone tells us that a great deal is stored in the body-field that we’re not consciously aware of. Therefore, our responses to life come from more than just our conscious awareness.

Even within the brain, we know that we see and hear much more than we consciously process. This has a lot to do with filters that sort out what’s most important to promote our safety and happiness. These filters consider past experiences that set our expectations as to what is and isn’t true.

The rest of what we see and hear is still processed, but just at a subconscious level.

When it comes to the mind-body connection, what we think consciously is important; but our complete belief system about life plays an even larger and much deeper role. If there are errors in that belief system, they must be addressed at this deeper level.

If we look back on the topic of placebos and health, it is not necessarily that we consciously think a sham pill will make us better. It may have far more to do with the fact that, for years, we have been programmed at the subconscious level to believe in the power of pills, no matter what we consciously think. This deep belief system may make the biggest difference of all, whether we take the real pill or the sham.

Tools and Hurdles

Since the information from the subconscious mind is stored in the body-field, everything we experience has the potential to affect the blueprint (body-field) of the physical body. In this way, the subconscious mind has a very real effect on the body’s activity.

If the body-field is altered in a positive or negative way, it can have positive or negative effects on our physical health, creating the “mind-body” connection.

This is why our environment and the people we spend time with are so important to our health and well-being. And why stress, shocks, and traumas affect our health as well. These can be physical (too much work / too little rest; injuries; exposure to toxins or pathogens), or mental (unsavory things seen, heard, or otherwise perceived).

So we can have experiences that lift and heal us at the conscious and subconscious levels, or those that injure us and need future healing. We note that the latter are hurdles, not dead ends; there is always opportunity for healing and progressing in our lives.

Brain Holograms

We’ve discussed heart, body, and brain all contributing to the information stored in the body-field – essentially our subconscious programming. But we’ll take a moment to look more closely at the brain’s role here, as it relates to a specialized area of bioenergetics.

As mentioned, the brain relates to the morphic field, which has to do with controlling the shape of the body. If something goes wrong with the morphic field, it can lead to inappropriate growths or wasting.

This field connects the brain to the rest of the body via the germ layers we initially develop from: the ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm. Emotional events disrupt the field in order to trigger a response; but in a healthy situation, they are quickly processed and become part of our life experience.

If the event is too strong or too prolonged for us to process, however, then the disruption remains an energetic oscillation in the field: what we call an emotional oscillator. Its presence alters the flow of information between the brain and body, within the morphic field. If not addressed, bioenergetics theory proposes that it can cause growth or wasting in the body, giving us a mechanism, for instance, for cancers that seem to stem from emotional events.

Conclusion

At a high level, we speak in bioenergetics about two key concepts in health: having enough energy (from which everything is built) and controlling how that energy is used. So the processing of information must be efficient (conserving energy) and accurate if we’re to build a healthy body.

As we’ve seen here, how we process information has everything to do with our “mind” – not only our conscious thinking, but everything we perceive or experience about our environment and how we process it. This is a broad concept of mind, but it shows how life shapes not only our thinking, but our deep-seated beliefs. And it shows why the mind-body connection must be completely interwoven with any holistic idea of health.