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From: here

Our search to understand the true nature of the self has long engaged science and religion in a tug of war, but as studies examining the health benefits of prayer and meditation continue to emerge, their collaboration seems obvious for a holistic approach to life. Advances in neurobiology and medicine allow us to delve into the inner workings of the brain to find answers to our age-old questions. Doctors and clergy work hand in hand toward patients’ well-being. Many medical schools offer courses in spirituality, and divinity programs often include psychology requirements.

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Today, mind-body practices such as meditation and yoga are ubiquitous. Gyms offer classes and doctors prescribe them for conditions ranging from stress and allergies to cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. According to a recent Harvard Medical School study, more than one-third of Americans use at least one form of complementary and alternative medicine, now known as CAM.

While athletes and celebrities have helped popularize these practices, the techniques are anything but New Age. Dating back to the early Hindus and Buddhists in the sixth century B.C., people have used mind-body approaches to become more attuned with nature, the divine and themselves.

Walk softly but carry a BIG PEACE

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In the West, however, philosophers pulled away from this way of thinking, dividing the body from the mind and creating an impasse that researchers have only recently been able to surmount.

Early interest in the mind-body problem may be found in ancient Greece in Plato’s and Aristotle’s works. However, French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes is credited with the first systematic account of the mind-body connection in the 17th century. Descartes, a dualist, equated the mind with the soul and believed it was separate from the body. The soul’s contact with the body occurred only in the pineal gland, he said, a part of the brain he incorrectly thought was uniquely human. His theory laid the foundation for the future of philosophy and launched what today is considered the Cartesian impasse.

Over the last three centuries, a number of theories regarding the mind-body problem have emerged. Benedict de Spinoza from Amsterdam countered Descartes with double-aspect theory, or the notion that the mental and the physical are simply different aspects of the same substance: God.

In the first half of the 18th century, the immaterialists battled the materialists. Immaterialism states that no substance is mindless. In order for something to exist, it is either perceived by the mind or is the mind itself. Therefore, the mind and the body are not separate because the body is merely as the mind “sees” it. Materialism, on the other hand, says matter is fundamental, and the mental relies solely on the body’s actions.

In the 19th century, biologists and psychologists got in the game, looking at mind-body elements like the shape of the skull, behavior and cognition. And in the 20th century, advances in neuroscience enabled researchers to monitor the brain’s activity more closely to determine its impact on the body.

Today, mind-body discussions encompass the roles of feelings, spirituality, the nervous system, social influences and neurology. Researchers, including Antonio Damasio, the M.W. Van Allen Professor and Head of Neurology at the University of Iowa, examine how the inner workings of the mind affect memory, language, emotion and decision-making. Their results are reshaping the perception of how closely linked the mind and the body really are.

This topic is a joy!

for everyone!

or

is it just

mind?

Walk softly but carry a BIG PEACE