Book Reflection

The Mind-Body Connection

I am reading the book What Are You Hungry for? By Deepak Chopra, MD  and I really enjoy how the book uses eating habits to describe the ways in which the Mind, Brain, and Body work together to bring happiness to our daily life. The book has began by describing that our lives are driven by the desire of fulfillment and happiness, and that in order to reach this, our Brain and Body are constantly changing.  However, when we feel unfulfilled and unhappy, we tend to pursue and indulge in bad habits that revolve around eating.  The ways we feed our brain with our perception of the world/environment also has a great impact. 

This book mentions that our mind brain and body are connected, and that treating our physical being can only occur if our mind and brain are included in the treatment process.  This is called The Mind-Body Connection; our body being the physical story of our brain which is fed by our mind on a regular basis.  The book describes that our mind is our perception of life, and it can be both negative or positive, our perceptions are then registered in our brain, and our brain sends chemical signals to the cells that change our body.  Our body is the result of our perception and the way that our brain is registering and processing this information. If our perception of life is negative then our physical being will feel bad, if our perception of life is positive then our physical being will be feel good.

The important message that the book provides is that: because our mind and body work together, we can only find fulfillment and happiness by reconnecting our mind and body, and being aware of what both need. 

The author describes three important areas in our brain, but most importantly describes that balance between the three can help us maintain a healthy lifestyle.  The Lower brain, the center of our impulse, tells us if we are hungry, afraid, aroused, or threatened; this area is satisfied when our body feels good. The Limbic system, the center of our emotions, tells us information about our mood and feelings; this area is satisfied when we are happy. The higher brain, the center of our decision making, tells us that we need to make a choice and act on it; this area is satisfied when we have made the right choice.  Interestingly, these areas of the brain are always at war where one or more of these three areas can easily be suppressed or dominated; leading to miscommunication and unbalance in our physical being.

The book provides a few examples:

• Case #1: Overweight individuals
• The Lower brain, being the center of our impulse sends constant information about being hungry.
• The Higher brain, being the center of our decision making, decides to eat at that moment in time. This area can also realize that the decision of eating is not right or healthy, but it is also being suppressed.  The eager to feel fulfilled and happy (which is being met by food) dominates our decision making.
• The Limbic system, being the center of our emotions, links eating with fulfillment. This area can also feel bad, but is most likely being suppressed.

• Case #2: Anorexic individual
• The Higher brain, the center of our decision making is dominant in the sense that the individual always feels or sees them self fat when they are not.
• The Lower brain, the center of our impulse which says I am hungry is being suppressed.
• The Limbic system, the center of our emotions which is sending information about not feeling good, is also being suppressed.

• Case #3: Overworked and Stress Individual
• The Lower brain, the center of our impulse is always sending primitive information (related to survival of the fittest) about being afraid of failure and needing to succeed, therefore also becoming dominant.
• The Higher brain, the center of our decision making is being over whelmed by information and the things that need to be done so that they do not fail is dominant.
• The Limbic system, the center of our emotions which sends information about being unhappy, unsatisfied, and unhealthy, is being suppressed.

Citation:
Chopra, D. (2013). The Mind-Body Connection. In What are you hungry for? (First ed., pp. 1-33). Brooks, Newyork: Harmony Books.