Sound Mind: Sound Body

Do you know how your feelings, beliefs, and emotions are impacting your physical health?

Learn about the effects of stress and how to manage your stress

Communication and the Relationship to Stress

Words set things in motion. But a conversation, a lecture, or written words are not the only means of communicating. The fact is there is communication with all life and everything else including ourselves. Nature has given us our senses to perceive, our brain to interpret, and our feelings to give us signals of how to act.Thoughts, imagination, dreams, and emotions can affect our communication. Some cause stress, some evoke pleasure. Our mind and body react accordingly. When out of balance, the mind and body often pay with dis-ease. One thing for sure is that energy broadcasts from our thoughts to our cells and to the emotions that impact our communications and actions.

Communication Definition

In this fast paced technical world we have gotten used to instant messaging, video conferences, social media, and smartphones in the most remote places. This is one definition of “something imparted, interchanged, or transmitted.” That something can be a document or message imparting news, views, information, etc. In a biological sense, the dictionary says that communication is the “activity by one organism that changes or has the potential to change the behavior of other organisms” It is also defined as “the transfer of information from one cell or molecule to another, as by chemical or electrical signals.” I might add that scientists are also including other energetic influences.

The Many Facets of Communication

There is good communication, bad communication, no communication and everything in between. There is communication strategy, effective communication, verbal and nonverbal. Body language and vibes given off speak volumes. Your relationships revolve around how you communicate to others. Your health and moods revolve around your relationships with others and your own thoughts. When things need to change, think of modifying what and how you communicate to others and your reactions to what is communicated to you.

Communication with Others and to Ourselves Impacts Physical Health

We all have challenges to overcome, setbacks and hardships in life, relationships to manage, and daily stresses. Our feelings, beliefs, and emotions all affect each other and how and what we communicate to both the outside world and to our own bodies. Consider what happens to the body:

Immunity is weakened from stressful troubled relationships
Stress can trigger inflammation, lack of growth, reduced productivity, mood changes and decreased lifespan
Emotional stress can cause your body to produce chemicals that have to be detoxified in the liver and hormones to be released
Natural healthy body cleansing of toxins slows down because detoxing the body isn’t a priority when physically or emotionally stressed
Emotional stress can be responsible for less intelligent thinking, impulsive or careless reactions, and accidents
Unshakable negative emotions can interfere with your quality of life, or cause you to react in unhealthy ways.

Identifying and Handling Stress

Just changing the way you think about something can turn a negative stressor into a positive one, an opportunity to see how you can improve things in your life. This change of thought and heart can push you to take constructive action and move on to an emotional state that is supportive to your health and happiness. Easier said than done, right?

While medication can numb you and take away some of the destructive painful thoughts, it doesn’t get to the root of the problem. The anguish often recurs or goes deeper contributing to physical illness. Putting out the fire is important, but the conventional treatment shouldn't stop there. The holistic approach works to dissolve the symptoms by addressing the source.