6. Using your mind to heal your body: Controlling positive forces

Laughter

Just how laughter and humour can have such a positive effect on the human body is still something of a mystery. It has been suggested that laughter helps by improving respirations, by lowering the blood pressure and, possibly, by incresing the supply of specific types of internally produced healing hormone. The diaphragm is relaxed, the lungs are exercised (with the result that the amount of oxygen in the blood turning is incresed) and the cardiovascular system is given a good tuning-up exercise.

Dr Paul Ekman of the University of California has claimed that the very act of flexing the facial muscles into a smile may produce a genuine and calming effect on the nervous sysytem, heart rate and respiratory system. Next time you're feeling miserable just try putting a rally cheerful smile on your face. You'll find it difficult to stay quite so sad. Try making your eyes sparkle with laughter and you'll notice the effect even more.

Humour also helps by diverting the patient's attention. When you're busy laughing at something that you're reading or watching, you 'forget' that you have a pain.

Laughter isn't just a pleasant experience. It is a positive, natural phenomenon which helps to ensure that the body benefits to the fullest extent. It may well be that laughter really is the best medicine.

There are number of ways you can add more laughter to you life:--

1. 
   
   You can try to spend as much time as possible with cheerful, happy people. Depression is contagious.
   
   
   
2. 
   
   Try not to take yourself too seriously.
   
   
   
3. 
   
   Make a list now of your favourite funny films and books.
   
   
   

The funny thing is, of course, that when you know that you've got something that you can rely on to cheer you up a little, you hardly ever need it. Just a tonic to pick up and read is enough.

We can't always lift ourselves out of the length of the slough of a cruelly destructive despair by watching funny films or reading funny books. When things are really bad, we often rely on the understanding of friends and relatives. Sadly, very few people visiting sick friends or relatives offer much in the way of positive encouragement through laughter. The average visitor turns up at the bedside clutching a brown paper bag full of grapes (which the patient never normally eats and doesn't like very much anyway) and then sits for half an hour or so offering an unispiring series of sorry anecdotes and dreary gossip. It's really hardly surprising that when the average visitors leaves the average bedside, the average patient is more miserable and depressed than ever.

If, on the other hand, visitors were to arrive at the hospital or bedside with a bag full of cheerful magazines and lively books and half an hour's worth of jolly stories and merry jokes, the patient would be much happier and much more cheerful on their departure. Smiles are as contagious as yawns and even the slightest of grins or the weakest of laughs can have a beneficial healing effect.

Purpose

The truth is, of course, that we do all need a purpose in our life. We need something to hope for, something to fight for and something to look forward to. Without purpose and meaning, out lives are hollow and unrewarding. With purpose and hopes we can survive the meanest of circumstances and the most distressing of problems. Purpose and ambition enable us to live through the worst of life crises.

Begin putting purpose into your life by making a list of all the goals and ambitions that you had when you were teenager. Try to think back and remember what hopes and aspirations fired your imagination at that age. Perhaps you dreamt of becoming an actor, a musician, a politician or an artist. Include all your ambitions on your list - long-term as well as short-term ones, reasonable exceptions alongside outrageous, wild dreams.

Then take a look through your list to see just how many of those dreams and ambitions still excite you. Forget your responsibilities and commitments for a few moments and try to revive and relive your teenage hopes and enthusiasms. Remember the talents you felt that you had and the energy that gave your life meaning.

Remove those unnecessary restrictions and your subconscious mind will spring to your help. Once you decide that you would like to take up painting (and that there really isn't anything to stop you taking up painting) you'll start to notice all sorts of hints and tips and possibilities that you would otherwise have missed.
Without ambitions and hopes and inspirations our lives are sterile and empty. With them you will have given yourself tremendous new powers with which to combat the stress and strains associated with your daily boredom, pressures and frustrations.

Whatever your age, your job and your personal responsibilities, your life needs purpose and direction as much as it needs food and oxygen. You need to be stretched, you need to take chances and you need to know that, whatever you may achieve, you have at least given yourself every chance of satisfying those early ambitions and dreams.

Optimism

If you look around among your friends, relatives and neighbours, you will probably find that most of the people you know are neither exceptionally optimistic nor exceptionally pessimistic. But you will find that most people do tend to be either largely one type or the other. And you will find too that the people who are mainly pessimistic tend, on the whole, to suffer more with their health than thhe individuals who are more potimistic.

Every job that has to be done can be looked at in a variety of different ways. A man laying bricks can think of himself as having a dull, tedious job that merely involves placing one brick next to another for hours on end. or he can think of himself as earning a living for himself and his family so that they can live together as comfortably and as happily as possible. Or he can think of himself as helping to create a house which some new family will excitedly turn into a home.

Try to establish a positive approach to everything you do and everyone you meet. Although you will sometimes be disappointed, you will gain far more from your life than if you constantly nurture a cautious, negative approach.

Through a similar sort of mental mechanism your interests and your memories will dominate your attitudes to other things in your life. if you have an unhappy experience when trying to put up a shelf, your impressions and memories of your skills with a hammer and a piece of wood will be negative. If you make a mistake in a business deal, you will be unsually cautious when you are in similar situations. If a relationship fails, you will remember that failure when trying to develop new relationships. Your attitudes and your memories will affect your responses and your approach to fresh encounters.

When things go wrong, as they most surely will in anyone's life, you should try to learn what you can from each unhappy experience and then forget about it. You should extract what useful memories you can from such experience as a lesson, not a punishment. If you brood on your failures, the chances are that they will recur, eventually growing in your mind, until they reach exaggerated and unmanageable proportions. Pessimists tend to think of their failures as unforgivable and eternally damning, whereas in truth they are priceless experiences without which none of us could change, progress or improve ourselves.

Its not suggestive that failure is welcome, of course. But if you fear failure, as many pessimist do, then you will never try new projects. You should learn to dominate your failures by sharing them rather than hiding them, and by using them rather than by allowing them to limit you.

Assertiveness

There are thousands of patients who suffer enormously because of their inability to assert themselves. They are pushed around by parents, family, friends, relatives, employers, doctors and just about everyone else they meet. Their lives are run by others. They find themselves making errands for people who could perfectly well run their own errands.

They find themselves sitting on committees and doing boring administrative jobs which no one esle wants. They find hemselves lumbered  with looking after the children while everyone else goes off to have a good time at a party.

They find themselves working overtime at the weekends and not getting paid for it.

They find themselves accepting dinner invitations, speaking engagements and so on that they would really like to refuse.

In restaurrants, the unassertive will never think of returning poorly cooked meals or complaining when they have been overcharged. In shops, they will buy things that they don't really need or want, because they are pressured to buy by a domineering salesman. In bus queus they'll find themselves being pushed out of the way by more self-important, assertive individuals.

Things reach a peak in hospital. There the unassertive patient will be put in bed, in pyjamas, and will stay there, confined and bound to conform. The unassertive patient will do what he is told to do, when he is told to do it. He will keep still and quiet and he won't ask questions.

Doctors and nurses like their patients to be unassertive because it makes the hospital easier to run. If all the patients keep still and don't ask too many questions, it makes life very easy for the nurses and the doctors. But the evidence shows that seriously ill patients who do not assert themselves are the patients who are the first to die. The patients who are considered 'model' patients and who are liked by the doctors and the nurses are the ones who don't survive.

The patients who survive are the assertive ones: the ones who demand information, who refuse to be dominted, who wrie down things that they are told, who wants to be put into a good position near a window or the television set, who won't accept administrative nonesense just because all accepts it, and who in short, stick up for themselves as individuals. They demand to be allowed out of bed. They demand to be allowed home. They aren't very much liked by the doctors or te nurses. But they get batter quickly and they survive.

The hospital situation is a rather special one, of course. But outside the hospital, the non-assertive individual can suffer in a nimber of ways. As well as being physically and mentally worn out from doing chores for other people, he will often suffer a great deal of frustration and hidden anger. These feelings can be intense and extremely destructive, producing a wide range of physical and mental problems. Headaches and stomach pains are just two common physical consequences of an individual's failure to assert himself.

To be assertive, you don't have to be aggressive rude or unpleasant. You simply have to be more aware of your own needs and wishes and more prepared to stand your ground when you are being put under pressure by someone else.

To begn with, you must remember to be straightforward and honest as often as possible. If you don't want to do something, say so. If you try to offer other people explanations or excuses, you'll probably end up trapping yourself and being manipulated into a corner.

You should be careful not to try and solve people's problems for them when they're trying to involve you in something you are anxious to avoid.

You can also help yourself by trying to put yourself into the position of an outside observer. many people who are unassertive, fail to look after themselves effectively because they are frightened of how they will appear to other people. But if you do put yourself into someone else's shoes, you'll often find that your behaviour really isn't as terrible as you first thought it was.

Once you start standing up for yourself a little, you'll soon find that you feel less frustrated. you'll feel more comfortable with other people too. And, most surprisingly perhaps, you'll find that other people treat you with respect and consideration.

Loving and Caring

"During the last 3months of pregnancy, and for the 12months after the pregnancy has ended, a mother's lips will produce a sexually attractive chemicals designed to make her lips more kissable. Sebaceous glands along the borders of the newborn baby's lips produce similar chemicals and help ensure that the baby responds to it's mother's kisses in an appropriate way."

As we grow up, our need for a close, loving relationship with those who are nearest and dearest to us does not diminish. Childrenwho are neglected by their parents, and deprived of a normal relationship with their parents as they grow up, will become 'harder' and 'tougher' in both physical and emotional terms. They will respond more slowly to signs of physical disress or pain and they themselves show less affection to those around them.

Even in adulthood, our need for love, care and affection does not fall. the healing power of a cuddle has, indeed, been so well established that in 1985 it was announced that double beds would be provided in the maternity units of some hospitals in Lincolnshire, so that husbands could cuddle and comfort their wives. In other hospitals, doctor and nurses will often now turn a blind eye to patients in private rooms who want to turn vising hours into personalised therapeutic experiences. Withot these physical signs of affection, we become more brittle, less emotionally stable and more susceptible to fear, stress, pressure and distress.

There are nimber of simple ways in which you canincrease the amount of loving in your life.

1. Try not to hide your feelings for those who are close to you. Don't be afraid to tell someone if you love them. Don't be shy about offering a kiss or a cuddle. And remember that it is just as important that you do not shy away when someone who is close to you approaches with a kiss, a hug or some other sign of physical affection.
2. Try to get rid of old-fashioned prejudices about showing affection in public. Members of previous generations often thought it was wrong for courting couples to hold hands, for young mothers to breastfeed their babies in public or for couplles to exhanfe kisses in the street. These prejudices were based on nothing substantial than an unhealthy mixture of religious gulit and unnatural embarrassment. There is nothing unnatural about sex, courtship or love. A few decades ago, some people thought that nakedness wa a sin and sex a duty to be endured by those prepared to procreate for the sake of society. Those attitudes are outdated and the time has come for the prejudices that there they inspired to be discared too. Learn to accept that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with two people hugging, kisssing or cuddling in public. Until you have eradicated these fears and anxieties about public displays of affection, you will continue to find it difficult to enjoy or initiate private displays of affection.
3. Don't be shy about touching people - or allowing people to touch you. you may be able to break down some of your own barriers by having - or giving - a message.
4. Remember that children are particularly susceptible to a lack of affection. Newborn babies should be placed on their mother's stomach as soon as possible  after birth. And for the first few years of life, babies need to be touched as often as possible by the people who are closest to them. In our society, it is all too easy for a baby to tspend its days in a pram or cot well away from people. That can be a destructive experience. Parents should try to keep their babies as close to them as they possibly can.

And remember that when a child starts to pay an unsual amount of attention to a doll (such as a teddy bear, for example), that child is crying out for more parental affection and love. There is damger that the child who constantly needs to hug his teddy bear isn't getting enough affection from his parents.

Understanding your priorities

Failure to differentiate between those important problems which need a considerable amount of attention, and the far less significant problems which can be safely delegated, ignored or simply left to other people, doesn't just lead to economic or political disaster, of course. It can lead to wide variety of health problems. Pressures, worries and problems of all sizes can have an adverse effect on your body and your mind and the smaller problems and the insignificant worries can have just s devastating an effect on your health as the major problems.

If you fail to differentiate between the big problems and the little ones, and you fail to establish priorities in your life, you will suffer in a number of ways.

1. 
   
   The number of problems you're exposed to will prove damaging simply because there are so many of them. If you allow yourself to worry about the scratch on your car and the missing button on your shirt sleeve, your mind will simply add these anxieties to the other more essential worries that you have. Unless you make a conscious decision to worries that you have. Unless you make a conscious decision to separate minor problems from major problems your mind will treat them all in the same way.
   
   
   
2. 
   
   While you are spending valuable time worrying about minor difficulties, you will fail to solve the major problems which need your attention.
   
   
   
3. 
   
   Your failure to establish genuine priorities in your life will mean that you spend too much time on the things which don't really matter and too little time on thhe things which do matter.
   
   
   

Learning how to differentiate between trivia and essentials in your life is an important part of staying alive and healthy.

Getting your priorities sorted out really isn't that difficult. but it will take a little time. The following list of suggestions should help you.

1.
Decide exactly what is important to you. But before you can decide which things are unimportant to you, you must know what your priorities are. You must decide what you want to do with your life.
Is it your family more important than your work?
Or must your career take precedence over evrything else?
Is your hobby more important than your work?
 What would you do - and no do - to further your ambitions?
What limits are there?
Is having time to sit and relax and enjoy life is more important than becoming rich and successful?
Are your children more important than anything else?
Is a wonderful home in a pleasant part of the country your main aim?
How important is your health?
And are you giving your health the attention it warrants?

Decide just how important money is to you.
What are your material needs? How far is your life being controlled by the material needs of the others?
If so, then just decide how important are their needs and the those individuals are to you.
Are the sacrifices you make are acceptable?
How far your needs are influenced by what you think other people want (as opposed to what they reallly want)?

When making list of things that are important to you, don't forget to include the simpler thngs in life. We tend to think about of homes, cars and material possessions as being the most important things in our lives. They may well be. But there are many pleasures available which won't cost you apenny to enjoy. You will have to be prepared to make some special efforts and leave a little time free from everyday hassles.

Work out how many of the important things in your life you need money for.
And work out how many need people.
Work out how many of the things you really enjoy are missing from your world because of your current lifestyle.

If your priorities have been determined by other people, you may well spend a large proportion of your time on striving for success that you don't really need or want, while at the same time missing out on the things which at the same time missing out on the things which should really give you pleasure.

2.
Make a list of all things in your life that are causing you stress.
Then look through your list and try to decide what you can do about the problems which are causing you the greatest amount of worry. You may be able to delegate some problems to others. You may be able to deal with worries by taking specific action. You may be able to find help or share tasks with other people.

By deciding what your priorities are, you should be able to concerntrate on the problems which are the most important to you and dismiss, shelve or deal with the less important problems.

While sorting through your problems, remember that it isn't stress that causes the difficulties so much as your response and reaction to stress.

3.
Learn to say 'no' to people when they want you to do things which are likely to eat into your time or disrupt your personal list of priorities. If you are constantly doing things that the strangers want you to do, the chances are that the people who really matter will suffer. Don't hesitate to refuse to take on the tasks that are particularly important to you or to those who matter in your life.

Remember too that no one is indispensable. If you wander into a cementery, you'll be surrounded by people who all thought that the world depended on their doing this or that in a hurry. Your saying 'no' occasionally isn't going to stop the world going round.

4.
When you are faced with a problem, try to see it in perspective.
Is a bad golf shot really likely to ruin your whole life?
Is a missing sock going to disrupt your whole week?
Is your career so delicately balanced that a missed train will result in your financial ruin?
Is a leaky washing machine going to stop you ever having any fun in life?

5.
Try to plan your life a little and put your ambitions, aims and priorities in some sort of perspective.
What do you want to be doing in 5, 10 or 15 years' time
How many things that you worry about every day would you spend your time on if this was your last day on earth?
And how important will some of today's major problems seem in five years' - or even six months' - time?

Then decide how best you can achieve your aims, and tackle your problems one by one. By being realisic and taking your problem one at a time, you would be far more successul than you would have dared imagine.

6.
Don't let yourself be fooled into spending time, effort and energy on products or ambitions that are not important to you.

7.
Don't ever make unrealistic goals for yourself. If you do, you'll end up suffering from stress and anxiety produced by frustration. When you've decided on your priorities and you're planning on changing your life, keep your immediate ambitions small and within reach. That way you'll get accustomed to success.