BEFORE HEART ATTACK, STROKE, OR CANCER STRIKES

Mind-Body Connection

Our perceptions about ourselves and the world around us are learned behavior. These perceptions or thoughts have been formed through conditioning by parents, teachers, friends and society. In turn your parents, teachers, friends and society were conditioned through the same influences. This repetition of conditioning or programming has been repeated for thousands of years.

We have all been taught to believe that sickness is inevitable, aging is inescapable and stress is just a part of modern life. We have also come to accept that anger, pessimism and helplessness are inevitable to some degree or another.

We as a society have unwittingly agreed to participate in this fiction. It is time to discard these assumptions because the fact is that sickness, premature aging, stress and all forms of emotionalism are not inevitable. To understand why this is true, you must first understand the origin of negative thought patterns and impulses that cause these problems. Once you understand this, you can learn how to suppress and eliminate them from your life. To do that we must first take a brief look at our ancestors, for it is from earliest man that we began to inherit many of the negative impulses that cause us to think and act the way we do.

Paleolithic Man

Man first appeared on the earth during the era anthropologists refer to as the Paleolithic Period. For the purposes of this program, it is important to understand more about this early man, for it is here in the Paleolithic era, some 200,000 to 250,000 years ago, that modern man’s genetic codes began to form.

Most of early man’s responses to the environment were emotional and were based purely on survival. Paleolithic Man’s capacity for logical thinking was not very well developed. For example, he knew a predator when he saw one, so his emotional instinct of “fright and flight” allowed him to survive in most cases. Let me repeat that: “his emotional instinct.” Although he most certainly experienced a physical sensation in his body, its cause was emotional. Early man also knew enough to find shelter from the elements and he understood hunger—in other words, the basest survival instincts or emotions.

Early man perceived most of the events in his environment as stressors; therefore, his impulses or thoughts were mostly negative, in the sense that they caused him fear and anxiety. Impulses like fright and flight that helped him stay alive, elevated his blood pressure, causing him great anxiety. He also experienced other emotions in response to his environment such as anger, greed, animosity and pessimism, perhaps rightly so since his world was so harsh; in turn, his responses were raw. In short, he needed these emotions or thought patterns to survive. That is why we call them “survival mechanisms.” Modern man no longer needs these negative emotions or traits to survive; nevertheless, we remain predisposed to these genetic codes.

In addition to these emotions, we inherited the physical makeup of our ancestors, which would be a good thing if it were not for our modern dietary and exercise habits. Early man, despite all his emotional frailties, was quite healthy in the physical sense. He had to be to fit to endure his environment. In fact, unlike modern man he had an almost perfect diet and exercise regimen for his needs. He ran away from predators when danger was eminent. He stalked prey and gathered various forms of vegetation for food. He walked when he needed and he slept when he became tired. In other words, Paleolithic Man never consciously thought about “getting his daily exercise” or worried about his calorie count. His lifestyle naturally provided him with aerobic and anaerobic conditioning—a consistent way to maintain a proper and healthy balance of muscle and fat.

Paleolithic Man’s diet was also nearly as perfect. He ate only when he was hungry and in small portions continually throughout the day, not because he was bored or depressed, but because his system naturally told him when he needed fuel. He ate what he found around him such as berries, vegetation, meat, fish and insects. His body sought out the proper balance of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. He ingested the right amount of roughage, vitamins and minerals.

As humankind evolved and life became more and more complicated, we began to lose the ability to cope with our environment. Although our lives are no longer a matter of daily survival (some would argue that point), our environment is nearly as stressful as early man’s. Because we have not learned how to suppress our acquired negative impulses, we deal with our environment in much the same way he did—on an emotional level. In addition, not all of our negative impulses have been acquired through our genetics. Many of our perceived stressors, and our reactions to them, stem from our interpersonal relationships. Some of these we acquired growing up in negative environments or dysfunctional families. Others we managed to foist on ourselves by our selfishness and lack of sensitivity for others. The result of all of this creates havoc in our minds and bodies. Where we were once suited perfectly for our environments, we have now become perfectly unsuitable.