Links Between Emotions and Health
“Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.”
Sometimes I like to lob scientific developments at my readers, particularly when I come across a study that has to do with the links between mind or emotions and physical health, because I think a true understanding of these is only beginning to dawn on the scientific community. To those outside of it, the concept of these links may seem pretty common sense, but it takes a long time for new ideas to be accepted through scientific experimentation. For those of you who enjoy a good scientific read, I’m attaching a research article here that you may find enticing. For those whose idea of bedtime reading is not a technical report about an experiment, let me just give you some takeaways from this article.
“People who experience warmer, more upbeat emotions live longer and healthier lives.”
“a recent longitudinal field experiment designed to test Fredrickson’s…broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions found that individuals randomly assigned to self-generate positive emotions reported experiencing fewer headaches and less chest pain, congestion, and weakness compared with a control group (Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, & Finkel, 2008). These first causal data lend support to the conclusion suggested by prospective correlations: Positive emotions build physical health.”
“Intriguingly, recent prospective evidence suggests that the causal link between positive emotions and physical health may run in the opposite direction as well: Physical health appears to promote positive emotions. “
Scientific evidence is growing that people who report feeling more positive emotions and less time spent in negative ones enjoy better health. I draw your attention to this not to vilify the having of emotions, which is a very normal part of human experience (there’s way too much of this going on already) but to suggest that if you want to remain healthy for as long as possible, you must pay attention to your emotional life and do what you can to lighten your load of unpleasant emotions in appropriate ways. Just ignoring your emotions and trying to pretend that if you deny the uncomfortable ones they will go away does not count! Doing that only causes them to build pressure inside you, until they worsen your quality of life and are impossible to ignore.
Having a toolbox of methods for dealing with your emotions is part of maintaining your physical health, so how about we prioritize learning these tools? If you haven’t yet learned how to Tap, there’s no time like the present! Check out the information here to learn the basics and start learning to work with your emotions in positive and health-affirming ways. Have a healthy week!