Mind/Body Medicine, sometimes also referred to as holistic healing or holistic medicine, has been at the root of philosophical, medical, and therapeutic discussions for ages. Mind/Body Medicine refers to the interaction between the mind, body, and spirit, specifically the ways in which emotional, mental, social and spiritual factors together can directly affect health. With the advent of modern medicine and pharmacology, mind-body medicine had been downplayed in the Western world until recently, when researchers and practitioners started to see the benefits of combining approaches.

For practitioners this means looking beneath the surface of symptoms and finding the more fundamental causes for the conditions we treat. By leaving behind the old Western school of thought that illness happens either in the mind or the body, practitioners can achieve a more complex and complete understanding of health and illness.

The resulting marriage of modern medical technology and traditional medicine has created new areas of study, such as functional medicine and complementary medicine. Scientific research in the areas of Psychoneuroimmunology and Psychoneuroendocrinology are providing findings that compliment the anecdotal mind-body medicine evidence that have been noted throughout history.

There are many areas where research has found Mind/Body Medicine to be potentially helpful, including:

• High blood pressure
• Asthma
• Coronary heart disease
• Obesity
• Insomnia
• Anxiety
• Diabetes
• Stomach and intestinal problems
• Menopausal symptoms

Techniques used in Mind/Body Medicine differ widely, but can involve diet, exercise, yoga, meditation, qigong, biofeedback, or hypnosis. These techniques can be used separately or in conjunction with pharmacological or other modern medical treatments depending on the particular health issue.

Here are some interesting facts and findings that involve Mind/Body Medicine:

• According the World Health Organization (WHO), if the major risk factors for chronic disease like poor diet, inactivity and tobacco use could be eliminated, at least 80% of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 Diabetes would be prevented as well.
• Women who participated in a mind/body program for stress reduction while undergoing IVF treatment have a significantly higher pregnancy rate than those who do not (52% versus 20%) (A. Domar et al., Fertility and Sterility, 2011).
• More than a third of Americans use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Of this figure, 1 in 30 are referred by a medical service provider (A. Nerurkar et al., Archives of Internal Medicine, 2011).
• Bacteria residing in the gut influences brain chemistry and behavior. These findings are important because several common types of gastrointestinal disease, including irritable bowel syndrome, are frequently associated with anxiety or depression (P. Bercik et al., Gastroenterology, 2011).
• A 2011 study linked Metabolic Syndrome to memory loss in older people. Metabolic syndrome can include factors like high blood pressure, excess belly fat, higher than normal triglycerides, high blood sugar and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (known as “good” cholesterol) (C. Raffaitin et al., Neurology, 2011).

By treating an individual as a whole and taking into consideration the “big picture” perspective of care in terms of causes, management, and treatment, Mind/Body Medicine can help repair the damage that can riddle our bodies.

If you want to find out more about Mind/Body Medicine approaches to health, you may want to check out these teleseminar series:

What is Hypnosis & NLP ?

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development and psychotherapy, that first appeared in Richard Bandler and John Grinder’s 1975 book The Structure of Magic I. NLP claims that there is a connection between neurological processes (neuro-), language (linguistic) and acquired behavioral patterns (programming), and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life. According to Bandler and Grinder, NLP can treat problems such as phobias, depression, tic disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, near-sightedness, allergy, the common cold, and learning disorders, often in a single session. They also claim that NLP can “model” the skills of exceptional people, allowing anyone to acquire them.

NLP has been adopted by some hypnotherapists, as well as by companies that run seminars marketed as “leadership training” to businesses and government agencies.

There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by NLP advocates, and it has been called as a pseudoscience. Scientific reviews have shown that NLP is based on outdated metaphors of for the brain’s inner workings, that are inconsistent with current neurological theory and contain numerous factual errors. Reviews also found that research that favored NLP contained significant methodological flaws, and that there were three times as many studies of a much higher quality that failed to reproduce the “extraordinary claims” made by Bandler, Grinder, and other NLP practitioners.