How To Use The Mind-Body Connection For A Better Life

Mind-Body Connection in Ancient Times

In this video, we’ll cover the one most important thing you can do to improve your mental health, your productivity and your overall well being.

I have found thousands of videos sharing mental health tips, productivity tips, and avoiding burnout tips, but I didn’t find many connecting all those in a philosophical and psychophysiological context, so I thought why not create one?

Our journey today starts in the ancient Greek city of Miletus. The birthplace of the pre-Socratic philosopher, Thales.

Thales once asked a very simple question: “Who is happy?”. And if you know Greeks, then you know that when they ask you a question, it’s not for you to reply, but for them to give you the answer. So he said, "He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind and a docile nature."

Some 500 years later, the Roman poet Juvenal, said the famous “Mens sana in corpore sano” which means “a healthy body lives in a healthy mind”.

So today we’ll explore this mind and body connection. We’ll see how nailing the balance between our body and mind, we can help us improve our mental health, develop our character, and achieve the things we want to achieve in life.

The thing is that we think we know more nowadays than our ancestors, and yes, we do have more knowledge at a collective level, but we have lost the wisdom and the practical knowledge at the individual level.

This wisdom around the mind and body connection existed in the ancient Greek, Hindu, and Chinese, cultures but somewhere along the way, we lost it. And we have lost so many things throughout the centuries. If you think about it, no one knows how to work with stones to build the great pyramid of Giza today. No one knows how to work with marble to build a structure like the Parthenon temple, and no one has the slightest idea of how to build another Kapaleeshwarar Temple.

The link between mind and body has been a source of debate for a long time in the modern Western World, and we still don't know anything close to it, as our ancestors did.

But what more and more studies reveal, is how strong this link is. And one finding tops everything else. That our minds can help our bodies get better, and our bodies can help our minds get better.

The Mind-Body Connection in the Western World

This is something that is not used enough in the Western way of thought. The western way of thinking, especially in sciences, is suffering from the compartmentalisation of the human being to physical and psychological. Somatic and mental. Tangible and intangible.

Psychologists and psychiatrists are much more interested in helping us solve our problems with techniques that work either on a cognitive or emotional level, or techniques that change the chemistry of our brains with drugs.

To put it simply, there’s not enough focus in helping us solve our problems with techniques that work on the body and mind connection. On seeing the human organism as a system that weaves together the physical with the psychological.

But for many of us, changing at the level of our bodies may be the key to a better life.

If there’s one thing I want you to remember from this video then this is it:

Nurturing and Toxic Dynamics

Every living organism, from the simplest, tiniest, bacterium to the most complex organism on Earth, and by the way it’s not us, we all share one thing in common. We approach whatever is nurturing and we avoid whatever is toxic. That’s a principle that I’ll be using in many videos as I think it’s the cornerstone that governs both physical and psychological systems.

So, not only do we approach what’s nurturing and avoid what’s toxic, but we also manifest the effects of what’s nurturing and what’s toxic. We manifest them both physically and psychologically.

Here’s an example at the physical level: think of when you eat something nurturing that makes you feel so good, gives you energy and makes you feel so nice with your body! You walk straight, upwards with a smile on your face. Satisfied.

Now think of when you eat something toxic, that’s causing you food poisoning. Your body is in pain, it’s curved, it shrinks down.

And here’s an example at the psychological level: Think when you feel confident and great in your skin. That’s a nurturing psychological state. You again walk upward, chest out, shoulders back, eyes straight. Nothing can hurt you.

And now think when you feel depressed. You walk as if gravity pulls your entire body down, you slouch, you look down, you feel small. The toxic feeling of depression is inside of you.

So paying attention to this relationship between what’s nurturing and what’s toxic and how it weaves together the physical and psychological world, can help us learn a lot about ourselves.

It can help us learn about the character of the mind from the character of the body. And it can also help us learn about the character of the body from the character of the mind.

Ok. Cool. So how do we learn about our psychosomatic character? Firstly we need to understand what character means. The etymology of the word character is: this which engraves. This which leaves a mark. So character originally meant “engraving tool” and then it got the meaning of ‘a mark made with a graving tool’. This engraved mark became a distinctive mark, the ‘character’ that marked one thing as different from another, and, eventually, the sum of the features which distinguish a thing or a person.

The same thing goes for our psyche when our life experiences leave a mark on us. And the sum of the marks of the experiences we had, form our character, both psychologically and physically.

How The Mind-Body Connection Shapes Our Character

Here’s an example. So imagine a girl or a boy going through puberty. They’re growing physically faster than their friends, than their classmates. Either in height or in certain parts of their body. What often happens then is that kids who grow faster are becoming more conscious of their bodies.

They feel that they can be seen more than their friends. So this might make them feel embarrassed and they usually don’t like to stand out.

Their solution to avoid the embarrassment is to hunch over to appear smaller or make themselves less visible.

In other words, the solution to a psychological challenge is a psychological adjustment. A characteristic, with the sense of the word we explained earlier, that follows you throughout life. Mind and body connection.

Another example is when you were young, maybe your parents put you down or made fun of you instead of showing you how to live well and how to do well. Their behaviour affects how you grow as an individual. Who you become is likely to be shaped by self-limiting thought patterns and negative emotions like anger, and anxiety.

But this way of thinking, feeling and being in not only in the mind. Our thoughts cause us to act or not act, and action is a physical thing. Emotions are felt in the mind, but they also show up in the body, and this affects the way our bodies are built. The things we carried around in our youth can weigh us down not only mentally, but also physically and make it hard for our bodies to work at their optimal levels.

So if you were brought up within a loving and caring environment that nurtures your needs and exposes you to the challenges of the world gradually, you grow up confident. You stand tall. You look the challenge straight in the eye and you’re ready for it.

If on the other hand you were brought up in a way that made you scared, you will tend to physically slouch, as if gravity is pulling you down. Your insecurity will make you want to hide from the world and its challenges.

By the way I’ve made a video about the psychology of the movie Joker. And in that video I explain how this whole system works. Watch it here to understand how these dynamics work.

So, we all know instinctively that a person's body shows what kind of person they are, which is why we can read people by watching how they move.

Another point is that we can see the relationship between our character and our body in the way we use language to describe psychological problems — for example we say someone is a pushovers, we say they lack guts, we say they are spineless, always on their toes, or we say that someone is not grounded.

So now we know how our body affects the mind and how the mind affect the body.

Therefore, one of the best ways to build a great character is to train our bodies to reach their highest potential.

Just like how we think and feel changes how our bodies are built, in the same way how we hold and move our bodies also changes how we think and feel.

One way to be brave, for example, would be to change how we deal with our feelings. In parallel, we can also start holding and moving our bodies in a way that shows and encourages bravery.

However, in order to employ this method for character development, we must first get our head around the physiological ideal toward which we should strive — because that’s our true north star which we’ll use to move towards that direction.

The Importance Of Personal Philosophy

And that’s a greater concept that it’s good to keep in mind, especially in this time and age where everyone is looking for 5 tips for better mental health, or 10 tips for better body posture, or 105 tips for increased productivity.

None of this matters if you haven’t found your own personal philosophy. Defining your own philosophy around your psychology and around your physiology is difficult but it’s also necessary.

So when it comes to finding our northern start about our body and mind connection, the first thing we need to realize is that the more mental disorders become common, the more people's bodies are also becoming abnormal.

And yes, there’s a big discussion here about what’s normal, but what is perceived as normal nowadays, should not be taken as a sign of health.

Movement Patterns Of Mind-Body Connection

What I mean by that is that if you observe closely the average person today you’ll notice that there’s rigidity, and awkwardness in movement. There’s either compulsivity or impulsivity in action. And we need to get away from all of these traits.

Because if you really think about the fundamentals of how certain emotions impact the body, you’ll find out that emotional imbalance, for example, brings impulsive movement. OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorders, on the other hand, bring rigidity in movement.

In other words, someone with a weak sense of self, would usually be impulsive and frustrated.

While someone who wants to maintain control, or someone with a lot of ego, would usually have some sort of mechanical movement because everything needs to be planned in his mind in a certain way, so that he or she appears in a certain way. Because they don’t want to let go of the strict control. So they're stiff and rigid.

Now let’s look at how someone who is emotionally grounded would be carrying themselves. A person who is doing well within has a certain grace in how they move. They can also be aggressive. Or better put it, assertive. So basically being the opposite of passive.

So, what is a graceful movement? You can think about it as the movement that is the outcome of someone who is not self-conscious and moves with ease. They don’t worry about how others see them, but that’s different from not taking care of one's self. They move with an effortless coordination.

Now let’s spend a couple of minutes talking about the assertiveness in motion.

The assertive person doesn't just sit around and wait for life to just happen. Instead, he or she is proactive. People like this move through life looking for what they need. All living things are naturally aggressive/assertive, and they should be because, without it, they wouldn't be able to stay alive.

Remember the natural inclination we have towards what’s nurturing versus what’s toxic? Sometimes toxic things are being imposed to us by others. Be it at work, in a marriage in a friendly relationship, and if you lack the capacity of being assertive to define your boundaries, then toxicity takes you over gradually.

I made another video a couple of weeks ago where I explain how to know yourself, and I speak about this extensively. You can find it here.

So, a sin that we commit against ourselves, is that we, humans, are the only living thing that can trick ourselves into thinking that being passive is a good way to live.

And one part of that comes from our Christian beliefs, which made us think that a good person is one who endures everything without saying anything, like turning the other cheek when you’re being slapped, and another part of it comes from the overcorrection that is happening in our societies now and this emerge of the woke movement and the blind political correctness.

Our urge to be aggressive, when something toxic is happening to us, can be suppressed but it cannot be taken away. So if this impulse to push what’s not good for you either psychologically or physiologically, is not expressed, then what will eventually happen is that at some point, since this energy hasn’t found a healthy way out, it will explode within you.

More and more doctors nowadays find links between many autoimmune diseases and people's inability to expressing in a healthy way their emotions.

So then the question becomes, “how does one with healthy aggression act?”

Alexander Lowen and “The Voice of the Body”

Alexander Lowen was a great psychotherapist and in his book “The Voice of the Body”, which I have used for today’s video, says that the part of our body which is mainly responsible for our aggression, is our legs.

Our legs are what move us through life, so having weak or stiff legs or living a more passive life will make it harder to be aggressive. When we stand with our weight on the balls of our feet and our knees slightly bent, it can make us feel more aggressive. But our connection to the ground can also make us more or less aggressive, as Lowen puts it:

“Having some ground to stand on has both a psychological and a literal meaning. Psychologically, it means that a person has a good reason or cause for his aggressive action. Without the inner conviction, right or wrong, that one’s aggression is justified, it would be difficult to move forward effectively. . . In another sense, the term "having some ground to stand on" means that a person feels he has the right to be on this earth and to share in the life of the earth. He feels that he has the right to be (to want, to move towards, and to take).

To evaluate how strongly a person feels this right we can measure how strongly he can hold his ground. Broadly speaking, we can say that the more grounded a person is in his legs, the more strongly he can hold his ground. He will feel that he has some ground to stand on and, therefore, some standing as a person." Alexander Lowen, The Voice of the Body

Final Words

As you see, throughout the video I’m not sharing any tips for anything. We are just exploring psychological, biological and philosophical concepts that you can use to define your own philosophy of life and how you will move forward.

I believe that’s the first step to a well-lived life and not sharing tips to hack life. Life is not to be hacked. Life is to be lived. Not to be cheated with tips and tricks that might work in the short term. But in the long term what matters is your own north star. Your own philosophy of life.

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I’m Dimitris, and I share insights and tools for a well-lived life!