Knowing how to control your mind, which can lead to positive health changes in your body can improve your health, and the training to be able to do this is fairly simple. In this article, we will explain how the mind-body connection and training yourself to control it is a way for you to take charge of your health.

This Simple Mind-Body Training Can Improve Your Health

Training yourself to control your mind-body connection is a process of relaxation and self-hypnosis where you make suggestions to yourself about lowering your heart rate, blood pressure, reducing pain sensations or anything that is beneficial to your body to heal itself.

In a study of early stage breast cancer patients who were experiencing stress over their diagnosis, researchers found that autogenic training helped the women to show an improvement in their measures of anxiety and depression. The study also showed that women who could achieve a meditative state as opposed to a relaxed state were found to have an increase in their immune responses.

A meditative state helped with T and B cell markers, which give an indication of changes in immune system responses. These results are pretty remarkable, and they demonstrate the power of the mind-body connection.

Health Problems That This Simple Mind-Body Training Can Improve

Researchers who looked at multiple studies of the autogenic mind-body training found several health problems that can be positively impacted when people practice and learn these skills.

Physical problems helped by mind-body training:

  • Tension headache
  • Migraine
  • Mild to moderate hypertension
  • Coronary heart disease
  • Asthma
  • Pain
  • Cancer
  • Raynaud’s disease

Psychological problems helped by mind-body training:

  • Anxiety disorder
  • Depression
  • Insomnia

Other problems helped by mind-body training:

  • Negative mood
  • Negative thoughts
  • Poor quality of life

Relaxation Is Not Meditation

Relaxing is a great way to reduce stress in your body, but it is not the same as meditation. For example, when meditating, your brain achieves similar brain wave patterns to those seen in stages of sleep. You are in a type of trance state.

To achieve this meditative state and be able to make the mind-body connection, the best method is to listen to a recording of a person’s voice guiding you to meditate and do the exercises for the training.

How You Can Learn This Simple Mind-Body Training On Your Own

As you try autogenic training, distracting thoughts will come into your mind. Try to acknowledge the distracting thoughts and let them slip away as you focus on the mind-body training.

As you talk to yourself through this training, you will be practicing teaching yourself how to create sensations in your The sensations that you can learn to feel in your body are:

  • Heaviness
  • Warmth
  • Heartbeat changes
  • Breathing changes
  • Coolness
  • Calmness

You may want to ask someone to read this aloud to you as you relax and pay attention to the words and sensations that your body is experiencing. Alternatively, try an autogenic mind-body training video to help you as you learn to control your physical body and your health.

The Mind Body Training Script

An autogenic mind-body training script from Karen Urbanek follows. For each body part that you focus your attention on, Karen recommends that you repeat each body part relaxation phrase four to six times.

  • My right arm is heavy
  • My left arm is heavy
  • My arms feel completely calm
  • The right leg is heavy
  • My left leg is heavy
  • My legs feel completely calm
  • The right arm is warm
  • My left arm is warm
  • My right leg is warm
  • The left leg is warm
  • My legs and arms feel completely calm
  • My arms are heavy and warm
  • The legs are heavy and warm
  • My heartbeat is slow and relaxed
  • My heart feels calm
  • Breathing is slow and relaxed
  • Breathing is calm
  • My stomach is warm
  • It is relaxed
  • My stomach feels completely calm
  • My forehead is cool
  • The scalp is relaxed
  • My whole body is calm
  • My whole body is relaxed
  • I am calm and relaxed

The repetition, relaxation, and words that focus your attention on feeling sensations in your body all combine to help train you to make changes in your body. The words that are used are focused on creating feelings of peace and calm in your body.

This can also be used as a relaxation technique or meditation, not just for mind-body training purposes. You can further add positive affirmation statements for anything that you are personally working on, for example, if you want to control feelings of anxiety you can add, ‘I release my worries and I trust my inner voice.’