What is the Mind Body Experience?

I write about, speak about, and guide people through the mind body experience. So what is it? I will break it down into into its primary component parts as I see them. Are these aspects of your experiences all that is happening within you at any given moment? No. Are they the most important sources of energy for your healing path? I believe so.

THE BELIEF CENTER (MIND): The beliefs you hold about yourself, others, and the world are what shape your personal reality. Your nervous system (brain and spinal cord) receives messaging from the beliefs you carry and interprets your moment-by-moment experience through this lens. For example, if you hold a belief that says, “You are not good enough,” your nervous system will filter all interactions and information take into your body through the lens of this belief. Your brain will literally perceive the world through this filtered information and attract experiences that align with the energetic frequency of this belief. I consider the word “mind” to represent the container of your beliefs, both in and outside of your awareness. With practice, you can create space for the mind to reveal the beliefs it is carrying so you may choose to release and transform the ones that no longer serve you. Beliefs are an energetic source held within you at a cellular level, in other words, a true source of intelligent matter, and represent the most powerful source of energy manifesting your experience. Just like gas for your car, you must choose the right kind that supports your environment and alignment for optimal performance. The kind of energetic source fueling your experience will dictate what is produced. The beliefs you hold are not just produced out of thin air, just as fuel for your car is not magically created. Beliefs are shaped by life experiences as well as your ancestry. You do not come into this world as a blank slate, but instead you arrive in this body carrying the limiting and unresolved beliefs of those who came before you. If your beliefs are the fuel for your experience, your life experiences and your ancestry are the fueling stations. Based on these experiences, beliefs are stored as energetic information and remain in your body until you set the intention to release them. The beliefs you carry are the greatest fuel source for your mind body experience.

EMOTIONS: The emotions you carry, which are produced by various organs throughout your body, are intimately linked to your beliefs. With every belief comes the production of an associated emotion state. Whether the beliefs were carried in ancestrally or formed by experiences in this lifetime, the body will produce an emotion aligned with that frequency and it will remain energetically stuck until you are ready to release that emotion with intention. I invite you to see that emotions are real energetic matter - energy in motion - meant to call you to action; however, if the nervous system has become wired by certain negative beliefs states, it will continue to elicit the associated negative emotions in all situations where the beliefs are triggered. The brain will continue to receive signals of threat or pain from the body and out of survival will establish fear-based patterns of escape to cope with these deeply held emotions. The brain’s reaction to deeply held emotions is a primary reason for compulsive or addictive behavior. As long as the beliefs and emotions remain held within the body, the brain’s neuropathways will become wired over time to produce certain impulses, sensations, behaviors etc. The nervous system is wired for survival and rather than create space for emotion energy to flow naturally, the brain will signal a myriad of symptoms to escape the perceived threat until you are able to expand your awareness and make decisions from a deeper and more vulnerable place within you.

You likely know what emotions feel like, but similar to beliefs, you cannot point to them or see them on an MRI scan. Emotions carry a powerful energetic frequency and, matched with your beliefs, create a filter through which you see a given moment or experience. Emotions can be positive or negative, higher or lower frequency. Based on the messages received around certain emotions in early life environments, the brain becomes conditioned to respond to different emotions in a certain way. Emotions like shame, guilt, anger, fear, or despair are examples of toxic emotions your brain may become familiar with and respond to with self-punishing, blaming, or avoidant thoughts and behavior.

For example, if you grew up in a household that validated anger but not sadness, your brain may perceive the anger as safe to emerge while signaling threat in response to sadness. In order to release the emotion energies you are carrying, you must be willing to practice going toward the more hidden emotions that remain trapped in your body outside of your brain’s mechanisms for survival and control. You were likely taught as a child to “control” your emotions, but the goal is not control. The goal is to recognize and understand them and to allow them to move through you. You do not need to control them nor do you need to be controlled by them; they can simply be honored for the powerful sources of energy that they are and released. When a life experience elicits an emotion, the body may produce a new emotion, but an old emotional part of you will also show up for you to honor, to be with, and move through or release. Emotions are like children in the car with you, they each have a voice and may need to speak at different times. When they do, you are invited to listen and to honor what they have to say because they represent core beliefs you have been carrying. However, you do not let your children take the wheel, you let them say their piece and keep your attention on the road. To extend the metaphor, at times you will need to pull off the road and stop driving to fully attend to an emotional voice. This is the delicate dance of the Mind Body Experience to be with and move through emotion energy as it flows through you with ease.

THOUGHTS: Thoughts are produced by the brain and are a product of your belief center or “mind.” If the beliefs are your fuel, then the thoughts are your engine or motor. In addition to being a product of the beliefs you carry, your thoughts will also match the frequency of the associated emotion state that is elicited by a particular belief. If fear emotion is being elicited by a limiting belief, the brain will produce fearful thoughts. However, with awareness you have the choice to listen to these thoughts, to quiet them, or to focus on a different source of energy or voice within you, one which align with and supports your highest truth. Often times, your engine may be running while your car is stopped. In fact, you may metaphorically leave the engine running for days, months, and years without even realizing it. Though you may have learned to be a “thoughtful” person in school, at home, and in society, it is important to learn to quiet or turn off the motor completely as often as you can, while also practicing to replace your current fuel with beliefs that actually serve your highest intention for life. Therefore, when thoughts do arise they will be of the highest quality to serve yourself and others. Think of your current car as having an outdated, gas-guzzling engine that consumes poor quality fuel and produces poor performance as a result. Continuing to live in this way is like using a gas motor in a Tesla and ignoring the incredible technological potential at your disposal.

Learning when to rely on the engine and when to use more advanced and aligned technology - A.K.A. your intuitive source of knowing - is vital. At times, you may feel a particularly powerful, inspiring, or creative thought emerge, in which case, listen to it! Take it in and let it call you to action or nourish you and move you toward your truth. Just be sure to check-in or assess the thoughts that emerge and determine in they are for your highest good. Your true self will never be punishing, shaming, blaming, or judgmental. So this should be quite an easy test to determine which thoughts are meant for you and which are not. Most thoughts are the result of outdated programming in the brain relying on outdated beliefs and associated emotion states. If there is a message that you are needing to hear for your highest good, it will come from a deeper, more resonant place within you or from an aligned external experience, person, or symbol. The messages meant for you are channeled by a source of knowing beyond thought, a source connected to your spirit team and the energy of all things. You have likely disowned this advanced technology in place of a gas-guzzling engine you have been conditioned to rely upon for so long. You may practice saying, “No, thank you” to the harmful thoughts cycling through your head, and, in effect, begin rewiring your brain to only respond to the energy-rich fuel of your choice. Practice recognizing the automatic or reactive thoughts so you can discern when your car is reverting to autopilot and dictating how fast or slow, stressed or relaxed, you get to be. With increased awareness, you will be able to stay more aligned and focused on the road meant for you, rather than taking every emotional detour along the way. Your mind body experience is unfolding exactly as it should and if the thoughts tell you differently, they are based in emotion energy that is no longer serving you and it is time for an upgrade.

PHYSICAL SENSATIONS: Your physical sensations are a form of communication from your nervous system regarding information from your perceived environment. The process of healing pain is acknowledging that, outside of obvious physical injury or life-threatening harm, physical sensations rarely represent the truth of your experience because they are manifestations of your nervous system’s wiring and inner threat detection system. Even in the case of a life-threatening situation, your nervous system will be signaling sensations based on your belief system, not the objective experience. Your physical body is the vessel that receives and carries forth all of your nervous system’s communication, therefore, the body never intends to harm or betray you, but only to deliver the messages it receives. Unlike the body of a car, your body repairs itself after injury. A dent in your car will last until you get it fixed, but a broken bone or cut in your body will heal. If you incur organ or nerve damage, then yes, you too will need assistance. However, all lingering pain sensation deemed “chronic,” especially anything derived from the musculoskeletal system, is an experience representing the learned pattern of communication from your system’s wiring, which may be outdated and require an upgrade. The upgrade includes recognizing the outdated belief and emotion energy in the body continuously signaling the brain and creating space for their release. The beliefs and emotions are energetic blockages in your nervous system like faulty parts in your vehicle. The physical sensations that result from these blockages are like notifications on your car’s dashboard that signal “low tire pressure,” when there really is none. The source of that signaling error is faulty wiring that needs to be addressed, both in the car and the nervous system.

The path to healing physical sensations that no longer serve you involves rewiring the communication system between brain and body and clearing the energetic blockages in your nervous system, otherwise known as the emotion and belief energy keeping you stuck and in an outdated mode of performance. Of course, you are an embodied being and there will always be sensations for you to navigate just as there will always be emotions and beliefs to practice releasing, but with awareness you can understand the source of these sensations and move through them with ease rather than unnecessary and toxic reactivity spiraling you into fear and despair. With practice, your car will no longer need to display a myriad of warnings across your dashboard as you upgrade the wiring to accurately detect threat and safety within the body. You can upgrade your nervous system to see the truth of who you are beneath all the wiring - an expansive energetic source that is capable of speeds far greater than what you have come to accept.

INTUITION: Intuition is the source within you that emerges once you recognize you are not the previous things mentioned. Once you set the intention to expand awareness of your brain’s neural patterns, your nervous system signaling, your emotional waves, and your limiting beliefs, you discover a deeper truth within you that has always been there. Some may refer to intuition as listening to your heart and gut, which collect and send more sensory and emotion information to the brain than vice versa. I agree that connecting to these parts of you is vital and brings you closer to a truer sense of knowing. Additionally, your intuition holds the key to your connection with Spirit or the energetic source of all things. You are an energetic being at your source and, with practice, you can connect more deeply to this truth, which resonates at the highest frequency of love, gratitude, and peace. The truth of who you are never punishes, blames, shames, or judges… it only loves. To connect more deeply to your intuitive home is to relinquish the chains of fear conditioned by survival patterns in your brain and throughout your nervous system. As you clear the energetic blockages throughout your body, you clear a path to this energetic home. With practice, you can align with this frequency as a long-term home rather than a short-term vacation you take every so often. From this home, you remain in love, in alignment, and in conviction with the path meant for you to walk in this life, and with knowing it need not involve so much suffering. Cultivating intuition is like learning to drive. At first, you do not recognize any of the signals on the road or within the car, but with practice, you begin to discern which symbols mean what, where they come from, and which ones are meant for you. From a place of intuitive guidance, you learn the power of your mind and body as energetic sources of information communicating with you at all times, as well as the power of your environment and the energies of others. Energy medicine is an expansive field and provides a framework for understanding the mind body experience on a level beyond traditional medical and psychological landscapes. The practice of connecting with this framework for your experience is the practice of moving from automobiles to air travel.