Detoxify Your Mind

Detoxification of the mind is an essential preventative healthcare tool that is often neglected. Chronic stress, unresolved issues, and how you perceive your situation may be the most toxic toxin in your life.

Just as people remove products with harmful chemicals from their homes, people should also toss negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. A change in perspective can automatically improve blood quality, boost immune function, improve digestion, alter gene expression, and more! 

Stress management is a vital area to explore, especially if you are ill, even if you do not think so. It is a tool for unlocking the body’s innate healing power. Negative thought processes can be some of the most important toxins to eliminate in order for more of the body’s healing energy to be released.   

The following techniques tools can help identify toxic thoughts that should be dealt with and remove stored negative emotions, which can be one of the core reasons for vulnerability to illness or the inability to heal fully. 

If you are dealing with any chronic health issue, are subject to catching every cold or flu you are exposed to, or do not have the vitality and energy you want - the exercises below can be helpful. They will help detoxify the mind.  A clear mind and body are keys to complete healing and vital health.   

Steps to Take to Detoxify The Mind

Change Your Thinking 

• This is an invitation to become aware of your daily habits of thought patterns. Reassess how your think because simple changes can keep our chromosomes and cells healthy. Resilient thinking from the heart is our goal
• Studies show that negative thought patterns impact our Telomeres.  Waking up with a positive mindset (saying to yourself – TODAY WILL BE A GREAT DAY!) and avoiding pessimism, hostility, negative thoughts increase telomeres.  Negative thinking patterns decrease telomeres. Notice how you respond to difficult situations – feeling threatened or limited – these responses are linked to shorter telomeres. You can change your game today by addressing your thinking!!!
• First, you must identify what is toxic thinking?   Fear, worry, anxiety, anger, bitterness, negative outlook, envy, jealousy, despair, hopelessness, thought suppression, rumination on negative events, etc. (negative emotions) should be considered as toxic thoughts.
• Deal with why you are having these thoughts.  These feelings should be dealt with and not buried.  Toxic thoughts that are not dealt with are stored in the body and have a negative effect on the well-being of the person.  Stress poisons the bloodstream just as toxic chemicals do.  In other words, negative thought processes should be removed/changed - just as chemical exposures and processed foods are removed to take the immune stress load off the body.  
• Change/replace negative thought processes with healthy constructive thinking.  

Start with a Focus on Positive Healthy Constructive Thinking 

• Gratitude and the Brain– a genuine heartfelt sense of gratitude has been called a natural antidepressant!  Finding even the smallest item to be grateful for is a step forward to a positive mindset. 
• Fosters cognitive restructuring of the brain by evoking positive thinking
• Enhances dopamine and serotonin - the neurotransmitters responsible for happiness
• Reduces fear and anxiety by regulating the stress hormones
• Wires and fires new neural connections to the bliss center of the brain
• “The Mindfulness Awareness Research Center of UCLA stated that gratitude does change the neural structures in the brain, and make us feel happier and more content. Feeling grateful and appreciating others when they do something good for us triggers the ‘good’ hormones and regulates effective functioning of the immune system.”
• By consciously practicing gratitude every day, we can help these neural pathways to strengthen themselves and ultimately create a permanent grateful and positive nature within ourselves.
• Gratitude Journal – NO COST Writing in a gratitude journal daily for two weeks or for ten weeks (two days a week) resulted in more positive moods, optimism about the future, as well as better sleep.

Detoxify/Process Stored Trauma & Stuffed Feelings

• Stored emotions and stresses that we are even unaware of concerning unresolved issues or trauma or stuffed feelings can have an enormous impact on the body just as toxic waste stored in the fat tissue can contribute to the body's degeneration.   
• Detoxification of the mind can be done in different ways.  Some of the most powerful (documented by scientific studies) are found below.
• Expressive Writing – NO COST James Pennebaker, PhD – takes only 10-20 minutes to destress. Holding negative emotions in and not giving healthy expression i.e. stuffed feelings results in physical repercussions. 
• The Relaxation Technique –NO COST Dr. Herbert Benson, M.D. Harvard cardiologist. – ideally do 10 - 20 minutes twice a day
• EFT – Emotional Freedom Technique  Unresolved emotional issues can inhibit healing – EFT is a simple technique aimed at releasing these issues. See Video demonstration on Dr. Mercola’s website.  

Go Even Deeper - Detoxify the Mind through Thought Fasting

Fasting from food can accelerate the detoxification of chemicals from the body's fat stores. Also, "fasting" from thinking can help accelerate the detoxification of stored emotions that are adversely affecting the body, even those not known by the conscious mind. The following is an example of a "thought fasting technique."  

• The Relaxation Response is a way to reduce stress as well as fast from thinking and clear out stored negative emotions.
• Programs to Retrain the Brain and Heal the Nervous System – for those with trauma, chronic illness, or chemical sensitivity
• Gupta – Amygdala Retraining  This technique helps to retrain the brain by identifying toxic thinking and breaking the vicious cycle of fear-based thinking.
• Dynamic Neural Retraining – Annie Hopper’s system of retraining the brain, like the Gupta program above, has enabled thousands of people to break fear-based thinking.
• Primal Trust – Brain retraining, nervous system healing.

The No-Cost Process Described 

• Gratitude Journal – see information above
• Expressive Writing - This is one of the most studied expressive writing healing tools. 
• Watch this highly acclaimed podcast about the long term studied effects of this expressive writing technique summarized below. This podcast will motivate you and provide details on how to execute the process: A Science-Supported Journaling Protocol to Improve Mental & Physical Health - Huberman Lab

• Research of James Pennebaker -“Writing to Heal: A Guided Journal for Recovering from Trauma and Emotional Upheaval” Chair of the Psych Department At The University of Texas. Google James Pennebaker - writing to heal – See You Tube Video about Expressive Writing.  Pennebaker has a lifetime of research on how writing affects the physical health or what happens when you write in a very specific way – what he calls Expressive Writing.  Study after study shows that expressive writing has a significant effect on mental health, physical health, and behavior. 
• Check out www.psy.utexas.edu/Pennebaker, click on the Writing and Health link. Quote from his research in a study where people were writing for only 10 - 15 minutes a day for four days – “On this tiny window of expressive writing the research showed that the writers that wrote about the most traumatic events in their life or an extremely important emotional issue that had affected them – expressing their deepest thoughts and feelings about it (in other words they showed up naked on the page – "here I am" – "this is what I am thinking" – "this is what I am worried, upset, mad about", etc.) had: 
• Lowered or stabilized/normalized blood pressure
• Higher immune function for six weeks after the study
• Improved mood
• Improved sleep
• Better physical health for six months
• More positive outlook on life
• Reduced anxiety
• Reduced depression
• Speedier healing after surgery
• Better ability to fight infection and cancer
• Increased killer cell activity – improved immunity.
• Improved working memory capacity for seven weeks
• Improved Grade Point Average in participating students
• It is a tool for health maintenance and prevention as well as an aid in healing the body.  Unloading unexpressed toxic thoughts that are held in the body provides a powerful healing effect.

• Science behind the process - “Molecules of Emotion” by Candace B. Pert, PhD - A research professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.  Candace Pert played a key role in the discovery of the brain’s opiate receptors and was featured in the PBS series - Healing and the Mind. 
• Pert is a neurobiologist that explains what is going on in the brain or reasons why expressive writing works - “The brain’s only food is glucose which is carried to the brain in the blood.  That flow is closely regulated by emotional peptides, which signal receptors on the blood vessel walls to constrict or dilate.  If the emotions are blocked due to denial, repression, trauma, post-traumatic stress, holding negative emotions in and not giving healthy expression i.e. stuffed feelings, the carotid artery is squeezed, which restricts and minimizes blood flow.  This deprives the brain of vital nourishment which can result in limited awareness, foggy and less alert thinking.”  (This is not the same as a blocked carotid artery from plaque.)  Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have shown that the brain lights up differently before, during, and after expressive writing.  Expressive writing activates a cluster of neurological pathways and researchers are committed to further research the implications of this.  
• “The Writing Cure:  How Expressive Writing Promotes Health and Emotional Well-Being” by Stephen J. Lepore, PhD and Joshua M Smyth, PhD.  This book presents groundbreaking research on the cognitive, emotional, and biological pathways through which disclosure and expressive writing influences mental and physical health.  It presents results of rigorous scientific scrutiny from studies of how expressive writing affects the immune system, physical well-being, the emotional status, as well as the measurable effect on persons suffering from physical illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, and other chronic illness.

How To -  Steps to Take for Most Effective – Expressive Writing

• Set your intention – I want to express my deepest thoughts and feelings
• Pour your feelings out on the page -  don’t hold back your true feelings 
• Start by writing about the most upsetting experiences of your entire life that you can recall or you can address a stressful event from the day.   
• Write by hand – with pen and paper - not on the computer.  
• Write continuously for the entire time – 15 -  20 minutes.  
• Write very fast – do not sit there and think of what you are going to say – just let it pour out – do not worry about spelling, punctuation, neatness (you may not be able to read it)
• Activate all your senses when you write – expressive writing has been found to be more effective when all senses are engaged.
• Sight - Eyes are activated  
• Touch – is activated / pen – paper
• Hearing - Ears – play background music – specific music theta brain wave music (can google free downloads) or classical music such as Mozart
• Throw away/tear up when finished.
• Drink water at the end – hydrates the body – for detoxification on the physical level.  Unleashing stored emotional toxicity can cause a physical release of toxicity as well.

Relaxation Response - Thought Fasting

• This promotes the release of long held stress in the body. Hans Selye, who is considered the father of stress research, was an endocrinologist that gave a scientific explanation for biological stress and what happens to the body when it goes into the Fight or Flight mode.  Dr. Herbert Benson, M.D. of Harvard University later discovered that when a process like the Relaxation Response is practiced regularly that the body goes into what is the physiological opposite mode from the “Fight or Flight Stress Response”.   The rest or fast from thinking facilitates the body going into a deep relaxation state, which allows the release of unconscious tension and stress which results in a freeing of the body’s healing energy.  

• The Relaxation Response - This is an invaluable tool for healing, especially for those under long-term stress affecting the adrenal glands or those with serious chronic disease.
• Dr. Herbert Benson, M.D. (cardiologist – associate Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Division of Behavioral Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) has written books on this revitalizing, therapeutic technique, which has been extensively tested in the laboratories of Harvard Medical School and Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital.  The technique releases the energy from long held stress, which contributes to stress-triggered illnesses – including high blood pressure.  Once learned it takes only ten to twenty minutes twice a day. 
• This technique is medicine for those who suffer from adrenal exhaustion and extreme stress. The technique has been shown to be helpful for the chemically sensitive, those with cancer, heart disease, and the chronically ill.
• Practice the following very simple relaxation response two times a day for 10 to 20 minutes. It is best performed on an empty stomach in the a.m. before breakfast and before the evening meal in the afternoon. This take If you can only do it once a day it is still helpful (especially in the morning).
• Sit quietly in a chair with the back straight in a comfortable position.
• Close your eyes.
• As much as you can deeply relax your muscles, beginning at your feet and progressing up to your face.  Keep them relaxed as much as possible.
• Breathe through your nose.  Become aware of your breathing.  As you breathe in and out, focus on your breathing silently in your mind to yourself.   Breathe easily and naturally.
• Continue for 10 to 20 minutes.  When you finish, sit quietly for several minutes, at first with your eyes closed and later with your eyes opened.  Do not stand up for a few minutes.
• Do not worry about whether you are successful in achieving a deep level of relaxation or the relaxation response.   Maintain a passive attitude and permit relaxation to occur at its own pace.  When distracting thoughts occur, try to ignore them by not dwelling upon them and return to the focus on the breath.  With practice, the relaxation response should come with little effort.  Practice the technique once or twice daily, but not within two hours after any meal, since the digestive processes interfere with the elicitation of the Relaxation Response.
• Experiencing the “relaxation response” is a state where the body and mind seem to be suspended or disappear from consciousness.

Read Dr. Benson’s book “The Relaxation Response” for more information.  

A HEART AT PEACE GIVES LIFE TO THE BODY – PROVERBS 14:30