Mind/Body Longevity: Emphasizing Emotional States for Getting Well and Staying Young
By Dr. Janet Hranicky Ph.D.
In Mind/Body Medicine, the emotional status of an individual is viewed as important if not more important than their physical status. We know that "how" someone is feeling has everything to do with their physical prognosis, their energy for healing, their pain level, and long term survival.
However, in the traditional model of medicine, patients are usually referred to psychiatry if they are displaying emotional distress. Their psychological consultation is seen as a separate deal and is not taken as an essential component of their diagnostic work-up. In Mind/Body Medicine, emotions are viewed as revealing the state of consciousness of a person. Consciousness has everything to do with the Bio-energy field. Disturbances in the Bio-energy field reflect disturbances in one's consciousness. These disturbances precede the development of illness.
Changes in consciousness shift the Bio-energy field, which alters the course of the disease. Spontaneous remission has everything to do with disturbances in Matter (i.e. Tumors) disappearing often quite quickly when healthy shifts occur in the strength, coherency, and flow in the energy field.
We will naturally move towards pleasure (comfort) emotionally and physically unless we have learned to "hold back" because of previous pain or because we have made a "conscious" decision to delay our gratification. Detachment is a defensive response to neutralize emotional pain, anger, and fear, so as to not feel discomfort. When we use detachment on a regular basis, we get good at numbing ourselves and we, emotionally, lose our normal feedback mechanisms that would ordinarily signal us to make some changes behaviorally. The long-term freezing (holding back) of emotions prohibits that emotion from being fluid. When any of our emotions become frozen, the energy is not discharged from the body.