The days of denying that the mind and body are a unit are over, replaced with scientific evidence to the contrary. Some have trouble wrapping their brain around this phenomenon. While there is no requirement that you subscribe to this belief, if you are suffering with mental, physical or existential pain, you might want to consider revisiting your position.
I was trained in mind-body interventions at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Therapy.
I dedicated myself to practicing all aspects of what I learned so I could teach with authenticity.
One of the things that Dr. Herbert Benson, founder of the institute, and my teacher there propounded, was that overall health is like a three-legged stool. Doctors can offer surgery and pharmaceuticals. But according to Dr. Benson, as much as 75% of what brings people to their doctor results from a failure of the third leg – self-care, something that doctors cannot do for us.
Self-care can be defined as using your mind to take care of your body. The mind-body interventions that I learned, and that I teach, focus on this third aspect of health care.
Mind-Body approaches can be cognitive, meditative, or a combination of the two. Cognitively, you can ask yourself what needs to change for stress to be mitigated? What is the problem and what is the solution? For example, one exercise that I teach is called cognitive restructuring where you can learn to transform negative thoughts into affirmations.
Meditative approaches commonly rely on the breath, our built-in tranquilizer, which can serve as a metronome to hold your attention in both a mindless and mindful way, squeezing the tumult that is causing stress to the outskirts of your awareness. In this way, the spasm of stress can be broken.
One mind-body exercise that can reveal the truth about what is really going on is journaling, which can be both cognitive and meditative. Journaling is a recommended part of the program because at the very least, it is a way to discharge built-up tension, and at most it is a way of getting in touch with inner wisdom. When I wanted to be able to teach journaling’s effectiveness by virtue of my experience, I began to write in a journal daily.
One time, coincident with this practice, I developed a pain in my hip. Yoga relieved it for a little while. Massage relieved it for a little while. A hot bath relieved it for a little while. No matter what I did, the pain always came back.
But then, as I journaled in a stream of consciousness manner, I surprised myself by writing, “And Edith is a real pain in my a**.” No sooner were the words on paper than I felt the pain in my hip let go. My body was not going to ease up on the pain until I identified the source. Once I owned up to who Edith really was, my body let go of kicking me in the butt.
Perhaps you need an experience to open your eyes to the way that the body “speaks,” confirming the unity of mind and body. What we experience mentally lands in the body. What we feel in the body impacts the mind. It’s a two-way street.
Mind-body techniques have so much to teach – mostly about how we can be empowered to bring healing to ourselves by virtue of the self-care that Dr. Benson cited as the third leg of overall health care along with surgery and pharmaceuticals. Say it another way, empowerment is about developing mind-body coping skills that addresses awareness of messages that travel from mind to body and from body to mind.
Life Happens. It just happens with much more intensity at various times. Mind-Body stress reduction skills comprise a program for life, at the ready when stressful situations arise. Learning these ways of coping with stress is only the beginning. The bad news is that they only help if they are practiced. The good news is, if they are practiced, they can make all the difference.
Helen Adrienne 212-758-0125|, helen@helenadrienne.com
Copyright@Helen Adrienne 2025
