Mental Health Means Keeping Our Minds Healthy

As we come to the end of Mental Health Awareness Month, let us take some time to reflect on the significance of this month.  Acknowledging and being aware of the importance of mental health, I believe, cannot be just a one off – once a year tribute or remembrance. If anything, it serves to remind us that it is an everyday journey. A journey back to ourselves, our core, our very being in this world.

With this intention, let us dive into mental health and its facets.

Mental health is often understood as keeping our minds healthy and it refers to our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. This makes it sound as though our well-being is driven solely by our mind (mental) well-being. However, we now know that our psychological well-being is directly connected to other parts of our body: our body and soul. What I believe makes us whole, is the very connection and nurturing of our mind, body and soul – that which makes us whole, human and helps us thrive as physical and spiritual beings.

Mind.

Your mind is your thinking mind (both conscious and unconscious) that is responsible for your beliefs, thoughts, and actions. Your body is the physical aspect of yourself that carries you through life and allows you to experience the world through your five senses. To take steps to understand how our being works, we need to ask ourselves some questions: Can the mind or body function detached to the soul? Let’s think about that for a second. Karen Jensen, author of “Three Brains: How the Heart, Brain, and Gut Influence Mental Identity”, suggests we have three brains that interact with one another to influence our physical and mental health. If we follow that and take a walk along our body from head to toe, we observe that all the three brains represent the three aspects of the self.All three parts that make our entity. They are intrinsically linked. The brain is the mind, the gut is the body, and the heart is the soul. These three “control centers” are connected via the nervous system, and their interaction with each other decide our results in our overall state of being.

Let’s dive deeper into the organ that contains our mind. How do we make sense of how we feel and make meaning of our lives through our brain? Why do we sometimes feel so bad, low, frustrated (negative) or why do we get sparked with a feeling of excitement, gladness or peace (positive)? Well, when we go about our day, doing things, and reacting to life, one of the processes that happens is when our body recognises a feeling or sensation. Our brain extracts meaning to what we experience and translates it into an emotion. Our brain tries to identify and interpret what we experience through our understanding of what is happening from previous experience (sub-conscious) but also consciously, by rationalising and analysing. One person’s mind take’s a difference route in the thought process, to someone else’s. We differ, because our experiences in the past differ.

Let’s try this exercise to help you understand. Close your eyes and imagine something you are scared of standing in front of you, for example an insect that you fear. Now, when you imagine it being only a foot away from you, do you feel some sensations in the body? What sensation is it and can you identify the location? What are the emotions you would relate to this feeling? Now can you see that there are bodily sensations that happen first and we start relating it to emotions ? These emotions are learnt and ingrained in our bodies as we grow up. As adults, we have a whole collection of emotions related to particular sensations. Unless we become aware of how our body and mind work together, we will continue to respond with the same emotions around a particular event, or thing (like the insect). Time after time.

Our nervous system is not as simple as the example above, however, you may now start seeing that the mind or mental aspects are not as isolated from our body as we may have assumed. So now, let’s look at the mental aspects of our well-being. Do you remember a feeling of heaviness in the body, that made us cry because it felt so uncomfortable? Perhaps it was the day your parents left you at the gate on the first day of school. This might have been recorded in our memory box as being sad and feeling abandoned, a feeling of loneliness. Now 20 years later, every time we feel the same feeling in the body, our mind may identify it as a feeling of loss again, or that someone is going to abandon you and you are going to be alone, sad and scared. Which makes us react to this in some way to protect ourselves. This reaction may have served you the first situation but maybe it is not required now and may not serve you well.

Let us reflect on the third component of our being, to complete our wholeness: our soul. So what is our soul? The soul corresponds to the heart-brain connection. I see it as who you truly are through your heart. Reflect on whether you are forcing yourself to be someone you are not, behaving in was that don’t feel correct for you. Or perhaps you have not spent a lot of time, allowing yourself to really see into your heart and give yourself time to realise and understand the things you truly want to be doing in life. What do I truly enjoy doing? What does my heart say is right or wrong, beneficial and not beneficial for me? Am I just following what I have been taught and learned from society?

Do you feel you may be detached from your soul or you may be going against your soul? The detachment from your soul has has an impact on how you perceive the world around you, how you perceive yourself, as well as how you act and allow others to treat you. For example, by trying to fit into a world that tells you, you should be a certain way, it may be contributing to telling your mind and body that you are not good enough, almost constantly. Then we may start trying to please other people to try and make them like you or make yourself feel as if you are not worthy enough, as you are. This can spiral and you may see you are spending a lot of time, throughout your life trying to prove that you are worthy. You may be hiding  how you really feel with those around you, working too hard to prove to yourself and others that you are valuable, worthy. That can get very tiring and ultimately overwhelming for the body, mind and soul.

So holistically, how do we start looking after our mental health and well-being? By processing our past, our patterns, un-learning what no longer serves us and re-learning to connect to messages from our body, mind and soul. This takes time. Be kind to yourself. One day at a time.

Ready to try out some methods to engage with your mind body and soul?

Here are a few tips

MIND :

– Meditate : The main purpose of meditation is to strengthen your conscious mind, so you can use your subconscious mind to understand yourself, gain better control over your mind and body and get access to your higher intelligence. There are many different ways to meditate. If you’re new to meditation, you might want to start with guided meditations. Starting with even 5 mins will do wonders. Insight timer is a great app with thousands of free mediations available to all.

– Prioritise your sleep : Sleep is a crucial element for your mind, body, and soul. The quality and quantity of your sleep can affect everything from your mood to your metabolism. The average adult needs between seven and nine hours of sleep per night. The right amount of sleep depends on the person, so pay attention to the amount you need to feel good the next day and prioritise getting that amount of hours as much as possible.

– Learn something new : By doing something new, you are making your nervous system ignite in order to cater for and adjust to the newness of an activity. Your nervous system cannot rely on its ‘automatic’ system so it needs to pay attention and create new messages

– Find your passion: might mean making time for something that you can do that lights you up. Or, you may want to change your career in order to pursue your passion professionally.

– Take time off : In our ‘always-online’, ‘switched-on’ culture, burnout is often considered a badge of honour. Instead, make time for yourself to rest and relax, without having to produce results. Make that something to be proud of.

– Create a mind that looks forward to growth: Having a growth mindset can help you overcome challenges by seeing them as opportunities to grow. To start seeing what needs to be worked on within you in a situation in order to engage in life in a way that allows you to feel better about yourself. Some things we have to let go, some situations cannot be changed. But we can choose how to respond.

BODY :

– Incorporate movement: look for activities or exercise that bring you joy. It might be joining a class or taking up cycling or martial arts. You can also find ways to be more active in your daily life, such as walking. Basically, just move your body more.

– Eat well: Nourish your body with food that’s good for you. Your gut has a huge network of neurons that sends messages to your brain, so what you eat can influence your mood, thoughts, feelings and beliefs.

– Yoga: helps relieve emotional tension stored in the muscles and fibers of the body. At the same time, it calms the mind by bringing your attention to the present moment.

– Breath-work: Forming a habit to breathe deeply throughout the day can also help you manage your emotions more effectively. Breathing techniques have many benefits, including reducing stress, increasing energy, and elevating mood and concentration.

SOUL :

– Be truly you: spend time investigating who you are, what you like and don’t like in life. When you start fearlessly doing things or being the way you truly desire, your soul starts to feel joy in life again. This also includes setting boundaries on how you allow people to treat you.

– Consciously practice being grateful: remind yourself daily what you are grateful for, such as the parts of yourself you appreciate, work, personal life, home, friends, habits or daily practices.

– Be compassionate to yourself and others: accept that you did the best you could do at the time with the knowledge and resources you had at a given time. Allow yourself to ask for guidance from therapists, coaches and healers, and try to integrate new changes with the support you receive from others. Have an understanding of your mistakes and failures. Also, translate this to how you behave with other people, and be compassionate.

– Time in nature: spend time just being in nature and observing the beauty around you. This will have immense benefits for your body, mind, and soul. There is a growing body of research known as eco-psychology. Look into it. Go on, walk barefoot on soil! Feel the ground you are walking on.

– Look for a purpose in life: connect with something greater than yourself. Find faith, help people, volunteer and be of service to others or mother earth. This will bring you a sense of purpose and contribution to humanity and our planet.

A holistic approach to your well-being involves bringing these three aspects of the self into balance to create harmony and health. So, let’s not waste more time of your precious life and make yourself a priority. Sending lots of love.

 

Words – Umana