WHAT IS YOUR BODY AND MIND GOING TO THINK
TAKING AN ACTION THAT TELLS YOUR MIND A GOOD MESSAGE
rough draft, but "gettable"
The road goes both ways: from the brain to the body and from the body to the brain...
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Anything you can volitionally do and/or interrupt the happening of with your body has an impact and influence on your mind. Therefore, you can volitionally affect your mind (via your body) - and when you get good at it, you will be able to largely control the mind (this would also include creating an actual "word" conversation besides the "body conversation"). And if you largely control it, you will be able to lower your stress level, lower the "negative" emotions, and increase the positive emotions.
But first, to believe that, you must understand how the body and the mind work.
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So, if you know that the body mostly operates in the primitive mind mode and that there is no super-thinker there with mystical super-powers, then you'll have a better idea of how to use the body to affect the mind.
I realize that this is a bit of a convoluted idea, as usually we don't think of the body as "thinking" - and that is true. However, the body's signals go directly to the primitive mind, which is very simplistic, taking things quite literally and quite narrowly, as it is evolved to be simple and quick and effective - and not a "thinker" that is in the same league with the higher brain.
The body and mind, as we've discussed, connect via the nerves (electrical signals running along wiring with the transmission aided by "conductors" int the form of chemicals).
The simple wiring signals that we care about in this piece are the ones that affect our peace of mind in a positive way or, especially, in a negative way. Simplistically speaking, our mind is most interested, in a sense, in signals that could indicate something is wrong that might impair our survival - and when it gets those signals it goes into survival mode, trying to repair or correct the (believed) danger.
However, it does not do the job of discriminating as to what is true. It only discriminates as to what is "associated" in the neuronal patterns that is "like" the stimulus or the thing seen or felt.
If you "hold your breath" for awhile, as I catch myself doing when I am anxiously trying to get somewhere (with no real threat involved), your body will interpret the signal as you being in danger and will activate the appropriate process to handle that. The reasoning will seem backwards here - though it actually metaphorically runs in a circle along the circuit, When we are in danger, our mind might use the strategy of causing you to hold your breath, perhaps to make sure you are ready and attentive to the danger so that you can handle it better. So, the "logic" of the primitive brain is "danger --> hold breath --> survive better" but also, dumbly, it is "if hold breath, it must indicate that there is a danger --> so I better going into gear to handle it."
The point here is not about that one point but the overall physical reality that "the signal runs both directions": from the brain to the body and from the body to the brain.
If you're under stress from some threat in your mind, you may start hyperventilating to get your body read to fight or flee. But as you hyperventilate, the signal is that there is danger, so the brain is reinforced to "think" that there is danger, so it will continue to cause the hyperventilation or may even escalate it. There is a constant back and forth of electrochemical signals, in a kind of a loop. Since emotions are simply electrochemicals that cause motion, if we stop the idea or the action that causes the brain to emit the chemicals, we will find that the emotion will cease fairly quickly and last no longer than 90 seconds. However, you'll notice that we experience the emotion as ongoing (or think it is), but it is only ongoing if we "re-up" it - if we repeat the cause of it, or re-cause it. If we don't repeat the thought that causes it, the emotion is no reinstigated or continued.
I go through repeating all of this, because I want to make the point that it makes a difference in how our brain operates if we use our body in particular ways.
If we are worried, we will tense our muscles to be ready for action to meet the danger. But if we notice that we are tensing our muscles and relax them, we will send a signal back to the brain that all is well - at least it will think so, since it associates being relaxed with there being no danger. This is a pure mechanical cause and effect relation - no woo woo is involved in that.
If you breathe deeply and slowly, your hyperventilation vicious cycle will stop (or at least it will tend to counteract the effect of your continued danger thoughts). I notice that if I am intent on not being lated getting somewhere, when I'm running close to being late, I will notice that my breathing is fast and shallow. To "stop that", I will often have to discipline myself to take 10 deep breaths to get myself back to normalized breathing - which will then be able to run on automatic at that pace, if I don't reintroduce any worry thought - the more the worry thoughts persist, the more I will have to keep intentionally breathing slowly and deeply, until the brain "gets" the message that all is well. When all is well, our breathing is slow and deep - our brain knows that, so our slow and deep breathing indicates that all is well. Sounds kinda stupid in a way, but that is the way the two primitive operate (nicknamed Dumb and Dumber). The number needed will be higher if you have the engrained habit of hyperventilate, tensing muscles, obsessively repeating nonsense danger thoughts. Of course, as with any bad habit you've engrained, you must repeat the good habit more in order to wire it in.
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Although you might not think of it this way, using your higher brain to deduce what the truth actually is and then physically (in your head or outloud) sending that message to the primitive brain is a strictly physical process. We are so sophisticated with our mental computer that we can make up abstract forces and explanations that are full of bullbleep, and then believing them as "the truth", that we forget that everything that occurs is actually occurring in the physical world. (See the discussion: What Is Reality? Know What It Is Or Suffer From Irreality.)
Given that all information stored in your brain got there somehow. All information stored in your body go there from something. A good portion of very basic "information" got there through the process of evolution, where the "information" is stored in our DNA - it dictates our potential and our inclinations (instincts, etc.).
All information beyond that came from something that happened in the world or directly in the form of information.
Some of what we hold as "data" is, however, not accurate. And if we do not discover that it is inaccurate we may use it to cause something in our world or body or mind.
If we use our higher brain to deduce what is actually true, we must send the information to the rest of the brain to use. But since the process is strictly mechanical, we cannot just throw information into the primitive brain and expect it to become the dominant information. All of what we do tends to be from our dominant pathways in the brain, which, of course, are strictly physical. But an action (perhaps thought to be a solution) will come from a situation triggering the brain to find an associated set of neuronal patterns and then the signal continuing down the pathway that is the deepest, in a sense, like river water it will go down the deepest "groove".
