Mind/Body Therapies

Mind\body therapies  are treatment approaches and tools designed to enhance the mind’s positive impact on the body. Rooted in ancient healing principles, they offer a natural way of attaining inner clarity, personal fulfillment, and physical and emotional health. They are therapies and practices which include behavioral, psychological, social, expressive, and spiritual approaches. They often focus on increasing awareness of mental states, and using this increased awareness to guide our mental states in a better, less destructive direction. Mind\body therapies also use the body to affect the mind, such as yoga, aromatherapy, reiki, meditation, to name a few.

The mind and body are physiologically inseparable. The brain, nervous and endocrine systems are constantly communicating bio-chemically to all the organs of our body. The thoughts and emotional responses we have send chemical messages that impact how our organ systems function.  This means that our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and attitudes can positively or adversely affect our biological functioning. In other words, our mind affects the health of our body. Conversely, how we care for and what we do with our physical body, through diet, exercise and physical attitude, can impact our mental state.  

The mind consists of mental states such as thoughts, emotions, beliefs, attitudes, and images. The brain is the hardware that allows us to experience these mental states. Our mental states can be fully conscious or unconscious. We can have emotional reactions to situations without being aware of why we are reacting. Each mental state has a physiology associated with it—a positive or negative effect felt in the physical body. For example, the mental state of anxiety causes you to produce stress hormones.

Ultimately mind\body and body\mind therapies are interrelated: the body affects the mind, which in turn impacts the body. For example, by practicing mindfulness and meditation, one can calm the nervous system, which improves the body’s ability to deal with conditions such as diabetes, anxiety and depression.

We invite you to browse through our many mind\body therapies. Our practitioners can help you develop a deeper connection to yourself through restoring a balanced connection between mind and body.