Video: Are Your Thoughts Making You Sick?
In the words of psychooncologist Lawrence LeShan, PhD: “Feelings affect body chemistry, which affects the development or regression of a tumor, just as body chemistry affects feelings.” In other words, what Dr. LeShan was saying was that…
Video: Mind Moves Matter
When Deepak Chopra was a young medical resident, training in endocrinology, he had a patient with widely metastasized liver cancer. As was sometimes the case fifty years ago, doctors would sometimes lie to the patient about the seriousness of…
Video: Belief Becomes Biology
Norman Cousins helped create the psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) Program at UCLA. He is most known for his book: Anatomy of An Illness, in which he described his personal experiences overcoming a life-threatening illness by increasing his level…
Self-Limiting Beliefs Limit Happiness
One of my mentors, Dr. Jeanne Achterberg once said: “No thought, no emotion, is without biochemical, electrochemical activity; and the activity leaves no cell untouched.” There is an ancient expression that is often said to someone who worries…
Video: You Don’t Have to Believe Everything You Think
A belief is healthy if it catalyzes positive emotion. Negative, self-defeating or self-deprecating beliefs are unhealthy because they catalyze emotional distress and bodily stress, which is very bad for our health and wellbeing. Although negative…
Video: Friendly People Have Better Immune Function
In this study, after controlling for potential confounding variables, research psychologists discovered that the most friendly, openhearted people have the lowest rates of cancer and the most optimally functioning immune systems. In other studies,…
Video: Your Friends and Family May Save Your Life
A study done in the San Francisco Bay Area (Alameda County) over a nine year period showed that the people with the highest quality and quantity of social support and connections had the lowest rates of sickness and death.
An eight year follow-up…
Video: The Mind and Healing
“The human mind is the most underutilized and poorly utilized health resource available to us" (M. Rossman, MD). As important as it is to eat a nutrient-dense diet, get plenty of daily exercise and sleep, if you are not training your mind…
Video: Attributes Most Associated with Wellbeing and Mastery
By adopting the behavior of the happiest people, you will increase your level of wellbeing and increase psychological flexibility, thereby reducing stress, which contributes to improved health.