The Mind and The Body

1963 Nobel Prize winner and renowned brain researcher Sir John Carew Eccles proposed a theory of philosophical dualism. That is, the mind is a non-physical substance, an invisible entity, separate from the physical world but without violating the principles of energy conservation.

Eccles calls the fundamental neural units of the brain "dendrons", and proposes that the 40 million dendrons in the cerebral cortex region are linked with special mental units, or "psychons", collectively representing the conscious experience. In willed actions, psychons act on dendrons and, for a moment, increase the probability of the firing of selected neurons. This, as suggested by Eccles, is how you consciously make your body move.

The woman who lifted a car with her own hands displayed the willed action of a mother desperate to save her child. Whether this story is fact or urban legend, super-human feats have been documented elsewhere for years, often in circumstances where the mind facilitates physical acts deemed otherwise impossible.

Neurons on their own don’t always fire to activate muscle fibers; something must activate these neurons, and, according to Eccles, it is the dendrons that trigger them, but they themselves must first be triggered by the mental units, the psychons, or the conscious mind.

The invisible mind, then, controls the physical brain. And since the brain generally orchestrates movement of the body, it is then reasonable to say that your mind can be a very powerful determinant of what you can achieve physically.

You might follow the substantial view, which argues that the mind has its base in the brain but is separate and independent of it, or you might subscribe to the functional view, which holds that the mind is entirely dependent on the functions of the brain and can have no existence beyond the brain - nor can it survive the death of the brain.

Or you might have your own belief and can debate any detail of the mind as it refers to the human intellect and consciousness, but you can’t deny the fact that the mind is tightly intertwined with the body.

According to recent literature, the mind can help make the body healthy or pass it into the hands of disease – the mind can indeed modulate the functions of the immune system. Psychoneuroimmunology and psychoneuroendocrinology are areas of research examining the relationship between the mind, the immune system, the nervous system, and the endocrine system, whereby the brain and body communicate with each other closely in a multidirectional flow of information that consists of hormones and neurotransmitters.

Your mental attitude, then, can determine who you are, how you are, what you do, and how you do it. It can make you great or it can break you.

Attitude, a direct manifest of the mind, can also determine whether you reach your fitness goals or fall short of them. In exercising the general attitude is that the mind is not intimately involved when indeed it should be.

We’re talking about the illusive mind that transpires into the will power to push for an extra repetition, an extra 10 seconds of intense work, or fighting to save an otherwise missed lift in Olympic weightlifting. Your mind gives birth to the mental drive that pushes your body harder in order to achieve positive changes. Your attitude toward these things is kin to the mind.

And then there is the mind as it relates to training intelligence, such understanding as much as you can about exercising, recognizing appropriate rest periods, and being familiar with various methods of recovery and restoration (nutrition, food-intake timing, sleep, hot baths, massage, meditation, etc.).

To attain fitness success, you must study, understand and effectively utilize the literature, advices, hints, and tricks as often as possible. The journey to optimal fitness isn’t that of a passive process but of an active one, and perhaps it’s even ok to pave this path with a bit of mania. Just as lovers of art, enthusiasts of cars and fans of Star Wars are maniacs, hobbyists, and geeks, so too should fans of fitness be buffs, addicts or fanatics.

Among the mind’s many attributes that make us human, perhaps the most amazing of all is its ability to visualize. “You must visualize to actualize,” the saying goes. Visualization is perhaps one of the most underestimated features of the mind when it comes to fitness-related endeavor.

Sadly, many people adopt a fitness routine only to follow it aimlessly, wandering into the gym and going through the motion, cheating themselves out of the results they otherwise might enjoy had they engaged in visualization.

Visualize your performance. Visualize your ability to work harder. Visualize your body’s transformation. The ability to visualize is perhaps the greatest gift to the human species.

It has been the impetus to some of the greatest inventions of mankind, those things which improve life and advance the human conditions. This ability to visualize great things for the world is the same mechanism by which you will actualize your fitness success. Without it, you’ll continue to shadow-box a faceless goal.

A healthy body is dependent on a healthy mind. Likewise, a hard-working body is dependent on a hard-working mind. So when you come to the gym, don’t forget to bring your workout shoes, but more importantly is remembering to bring a mind that is charged up for a tough workout.

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The Mind and the Body

July 19, 2006 Print This Article Share

Author: HyperStrike Certified Personal Trainers

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