Pregnancy and the Mind-Body Connection

While the concept and practice of the mind-body connection has been part of ancient cultures, it is really only in the past 50 years that it has been embraced by the Western mindset. Until then, the mind body relationship was a vague concept embraced by people who did yoga and meditated. Now that the understanding of the true value of the mind body relationship has taken hold, people everywhere have made wonderful changes in their lives using mind body therapy and related techniques.

It Begins Long Before We Realize It

When a woman wants to become pregnant, the mind body relationship can become a mind body problem. It is true that our earliest experiences indelibly imprint our minds and we internalize what we perceive to be truths about ourselves and our world when we are tiny infants. We learn that we have an effect upon our environment by the responses elicited through our behaviors - case in point, crying as an infant, being picked up, nurtured and fed. We learn that our action has a reaction. It is also true that some of a woman's most powerful concepts about her ability to reproduce are formed long before the decision to start a family is made. Along with our parental concepts and attitudes about the body and it's procreative abilities, as young children the ideas around children are internalized. Whether a child is a blessing or a curse, loved or unloved, valued, safe and welcome into a family or not are all internalized in childhood. Mental and emotional concepts dictate the hormonal profile of a person, so much so that the mind-body relationship and balance is profoundly affected by "feelings that are not felt", emotions that are unconscious, buried deep in recesses of the mind and body and often connected to childhood trauma or neglect.

Effect on Fertility

These unconscious feelings have a profound effect upon the ability of a woman to conceive. Infertility can often be the result of a mind body problem and by exploring the unconscious ideas being held in the mind, and therefore in the body as well, it is possible to free the body to procreate. The bonus is that by doing so, a woman is better prepared for conception and also for parenting. Dealing with limiting beliefs that are held in the mind and body is done through mind body therapy - a concept that is new as the dawn and old as the hills.

Mind Body Relationship and Baby

It is scientifically proven that a woman's moods have a significant and profound effect upon her unborn baby. The birth outcome and the baby's brain development are upset when a woman is fearful and anxious. Such emotions trigger premature delivery and the baby receives messages communicated through stress hormones that the world he or she is being born into is unsafe. As a result, a baby born to a fretting, anxious, mother is usually fussy and hard to comfort. The baby picks up the emotional charges the mother has internalized. Knowing this helps parents understand the importance of the pregnant woman being loved and supported, and having feelings of joy and peace. The baby picks it all up from the mother's body and will respond in kind when born.

Mind Body Dualism and Physicalism

There a different concepts relating to the mind body connection, one of them being mind body dualism, which generally ascribes to the idea that the mind and body are totally separate entities and are, as a result, not one and the same. This is the basic and only concept of mind body dualism and is consistent with ancient scriptures and biblical thought, which says that man was created with a body and soul. The philosophy of dualism teaches the difference between brain or matter and mind, or soul. The mind-body-spirit connection is one that embraces dualism and takes it to the dimension of reaching into a deeper or higher realm. The alternative concept is called physicalism which holds that the mind and body are totally the same and are strictly material rather than supernatural. It denies the emotions, thoughts, desires, and beliefs because materials do not have such capabilities or properties. Physicalism is the foundational belief of materialism and evolutionism that are the basis of secular humanism.