Science is gradually beginning to confirm what Ayurveda has said many thousand years ago. It has been an irrefutable fact in Ayurveda that mind has a profound effect on the physical body, the spiritual experience, and the overall quality of life. The mind, the body, and the spirit are all inextricably interconnected. When one is affected, the remaining suffer. This concept, when subjected to clinical settings, confirms the relationship of a healthy mind to overall well-being and that of an unhealthy mind to the progression of disease. Dr. Brian Sheen, director of Florida's Quantum Healing Center and a bestselling author, explored theories on how unexpressed thoughts and feelings can cause low thyroid. The therapy, he propounded, lies more in the spiritual aspects of mind than any medication.

This conforms to the Ayurvedic view that worry, anger, jealousy, hate, ill will, grudges, vindictiveness, irritation, resentment, guilt, depression, anxiety, lack of joy, and all other negative emotions and thoughts have a debilitating effect upon the body and are an open invitation to sickness and disease. Scientific evidence has confirmed a number of illnesses that have their roots embedded in the mind.

Michelle Longo O'Donnell, a noted clinician, says, "Over my 38 years as a health care provider, I came to see with increasing clarity that there was a definite connection among the thoughts, attitudes, beliefs and expectations that my patients held in their consciousness and the progress that we were able to make in restoring their health. For instance, where there were thoughts of fear or anger, bitterness over past hurts, habitual criticizing of the failures and shortcomings of others, etc., there was generally little to no progress made."

Dr. O'Donnell establishes his statement with a substantive, philosophical remark: "Let us each consider our body as a city set on a hill. Our mind is the wall that surrounds the city. Our spirit, our true self that lives within our consciousness, is the gatekeeper. We decide what thoughts we will allow to enter through the gates. We don't have to entertain every thought that comes along. We wouldn't allow a rapist, a thief or a murderer into our home without a fight. But we allow thoughts into our city that are equally destructive." Your thoughts, fears, and emotions often stimulate detectable physical conditions, though you are almost never conscious of this link or in conscious control of it. But the implications of this discovery, says Barbara H. Levine, author of Your Body Believes Every Word You Say, are stunning.

She says, "If you make disease happen, you also have the power to change
it, even to get rid of it. Disease often forces people to alter negative
thoughts, useless behaviors, and ill feelings. Through the power of your
mind, you control the matter that is your body. From the poly-pharmacy of more than fifty hormones produced in your brain, which stimulate various organs of your body, your mind does influence matter. Anything that interferes with the production and dispersal of these hormones has an impact on your body."

This hormonal response is clearly indicative of the relationship of stress with coronary artery disease. The relationship is already well established and is continuing as a subject of research. Perhaps that is why it is no more surprising to note that the most commonly reported incident preceding a heart attack is an emotionally upsetting event, particularly one that involves anger. Scientific evidence also supports the view that people who become easily emotionally upset are more likely to develop arteriosclerosis or hardening of the arteries.

Stress, if explored deeply, is nothing but a stray, negative response, which is very internal to you, towards a stressor, which is an external entity. Response is nothing but a thought, and a thought is nothing but a figment of the mind. To stem one, it is required to stop the other. Though this might sound unpalatable to the sensuous (who forever follow the dictates of the mind), it pays to mould the mind into a disciplined obedience. Of course, this does not mean that one should curb the emotions altogether, or it will result in another tangled web of suppressed desires.

Fortunately, here, Ayurveda comes to the rescue with the simple lifestyle it suggests. Diet, sleep, exercise, work, everything is balanced in such a way of life, so that the wandering, desiring mind is pacified gently. The "Sattvic" lifestyle and diet mentioned in Ayurveda offers a wondrous insight into the humankind's longing to still the straying mind. Evidently, the ancients too were instinctively aware of mind's potential to harm if left untended.

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