WHAT'S IN YOUR MIND CAN CURE YOUR BODY

By Ronnie Stillwater

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It seems that the more days that I feel sunshine inside myself, the healthier I am. My body talks to me and tells me that it needs something to pull me out of gloom whenever I fall into it. Then, as the song says, "I think about sunshine."

Pain is not the only way that the body speaks of disease. There are other more subtle voices, and sunshine is not the only image to pull inside yourself. Guided imagery is what they call it. Imagery is the flow of thoughts about things you can see, hear, feel, smell, or taste. The problem is to clear the communication between the mind and body so that when the body speaks, the mind will see, hear, and feel things that heal rather than things that make you edgy or uneasy.

When I get the feeling that I am out of rhythm or out of sync, I know this is a message from my body to my mind. Twitching, palpations and contractions come when my body is trying to tell me slow down, smell the roses, or I just get a funny feeling about something. You have to get in touch with how you feel and respect your feelings more than your thoughts sometime.

I'm not the kind to study this stuff systematically, and I don't get medical check-ups as often as I should. I think that everyone should go to a doctor for a check-up on a very regular basis because I don't think that most medical delinquents, which I am one, are going to be as lucky as I have been. Part of my luck has been this terrific communication between my soul, spirit, mind and body. In fact, I do not feel a separation between the four, and yet they are very separate. Everything is separate and isn't separate at the same time.

Everything seems to me to be different ways of looking at the same thing. This is why for the sake of soul, spirit, mind and body, I read my Soul Vibration every morning, without fail. My soul is my personal universe. It is my connection to the people, things and circumstances that are a part of my life situation, the things I carry in my consciousness. From my daily soul vibration, I get a sense of what I might want to focus on in my personal universe.

My spirit is my intangible self, which is not separated from the intangible existence of everything that I am conscious of, or even from all that I am unconscious of in the entire universe, since everything is connected. I like the Soul Affirmations that come because they remind me of something that is true about my spirit.

Mind is the word I use for brain activity which is the same as the definition at Medicinenet.com: "That which thinks, reasons, perceives, wills, and feels. The mind now appears in no way separate from the brain. In neuroscience, there is no duality between the mind and body. They are one." That's what I'm saying, brothers and sisters.

I know that mind is used by some to mean something beyond any specific individual, as in the Ernest Holmes book, The Science of Mind, which talks of Universal Mind, which my people call the Great Spirit. This broader use is fine with me since I think that nearly everything is just a different way of saying the same thing, which is both true and untrue at the same time.

Everything is like my name which means two opposite things all at once--Running Stillwater. I call myself "Ronnie" so that people who are not Native American will not suddenly "get it" and say "Oh, I get it! Running Stillwater!" And then they want to take a photograph with me to show to people back in Philadelphia.

There are all sorts of things that can help with the communication between body and spirit--music, prayer, meditation, nature, things that look great, smell wonderful, (Aromatherphy Piece) sound comforting, soothe our sense of touch, please our taste buds, bring back pleasant memories. One scientific experiment after another now tells us that things that delight our spirit also cure our bodies.

There are even some metaphysically inclined doctors who say that almost all illness originates in the mind. So, the secret to wellness, the key to enjoying your body is controlling what goes on in your mind, but the key to controlling what goes on in your mind is controlling what goes on in your body, and what goes on in your personal universe affects your intangible and tangible self. It's all a big circle like in the Native American Medicine Wheel. It's all there in Native American healing. All you have to do is be able to see it.

Did you know that the people you hang out with can make you sick? "That guy makes me sick," might be more than just a saying, brothers and sisters. That's what that saying "my spirit doesn't take to him" is for. Respect your feelings. Get away from that guy.

Your surroundings can make you sick. Or your crowd and your surroundings can be telling you that you are sick and you need to do something, brothers and sisters.

One thing that clouds the communication between mind and body is language, words. One of the goals of meditation, I say without having studied it, is to clear the mind of language. I have read that when meditating one should clear the mind of all unwanted thoughts. I take it even further. I try to clear the mind of all thoughts and since thoughts fly on the wings of words, I try to clear the mind of all words.

About the best way to clear the mind of words is to fill it with music. Music affects the chemistry of the brain says this book The Mozart Effect, Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind and Unlock the Creative Spirit, by Don Campbell. It is a truly amazing book, even though I skimmed it rather than read it so that what it says will not get in the way of what it means.

The book gives scientific proof that music can provide healing for all sorts of illnesses--strokes, dementia, chronic pain, high blood pressure, autism, attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, substance abuse, migraines, anxiety, dyslexia. I get what it means by looking at the subtitles:

Music masks unpleasant sounds and feelings
Music can slow down and equalize brain waves
Music affect respiration
Music affects the heart beat, pulse rate, and blood pressure
Music reduces muscle tension and improves body movement and coordination
Music affects body temperature
Music can regulate stress-related hormones
Music changes our perceptions of space
Music changes our perception of time

There are a lot more things that the subtitles say that music can do. All of these things affect the mind and therefore have a healing effect on the body. I don't read the entire book so the words can't get in the way of my knowing these things. Because my own body has already told me them. You can't let learning get in the way of knowing, because you might learn something that you can't know.

I recommend the book highly, especially since it deals with how music has been used in different cultures. I looked in there to see what the book says about Native American healing practices, and I was disappointed. There's stuff in there about chanting but nothing about how we use chanting as a means of the community being involved with the treatment of an individual's illness.

We believe that many illness come from being out of sync with the community or the family or out of harmony with the spirit world, which is why I stress soul as one of the sources of healing. I was mad at this writer Don Campbell, but I forgave him when I read--and it was one of the few passages I read word-for-word--the section called "The Tao of Rap."

He said in there that "Rap developed as a vocal martial art to protect people in the streets from the dehumanization of their world. Yes, it often seems emotionless, and at times it's indelicate. But as a form of self-therapy, it is highly effective. Rap enables the left brain to talk to the body, especially the deeper systems that govern instinctual response and survival." and I said, "Right on."

To me, all prayer is meditation. I realize that most people have to use words to pray, but words are usually used to ask for something and true prayer is nothing more than getting in touch with the spirit of the universe, God, so you can be with the Great Spirit, as we call it.

Being one with nature is the same as being one with God and therefore being one with nature is a high form of prayer. To be really out in nature is to move beyond words to the higher form of communication--a mountain, a stream the ocean can speak to you and if you listen they can cure you.

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