“Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens.”
Douglas Jerrold
Overview of This Page:
Healing the Mind as described throughout this blog does not involve changing the way you think. More accurately it does not involve intentionally changing the content of your thoughts. A healthy Mind is not the same thing as a “positive outlook” or “looking on the bright side”.
This page is my attempt to clarify the difference between “being happy” and “healing the Mind”.
Clarifying Intentions:
As you have learned (if not yet personally discovered); the Mind plays a huge role in the health of the physical body.
Health of the Mind from the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine could be described as the integration and balance of all the aspects of mental and bodily phenomena that make up the most subtle aspects of the human experience. These include aspects such as thoughts, emotions, cognition, consciousness, and somatic sensations (“feelings” that are not interpreted as “emotions”.)
Now I think it could be of benefit here to make a note that when we are talking about the Mind as seen through the lenses of TCM we are mostly concerned with how these subtle aspects of the human experience affect and are affected by the physical body.
This is often different from how the field of psychology approaches these same aspects of human experience.
While the field of psychology absolutely acknowledges this interconnection and even seeks to address this through therapies such as EMDR or hypnosis there is (in many cases) a significant amount of effort directed towards behavior and the pursuit of “being happy”.
Why Make This Distinction?
Intension matters.
- While these 2 different goals are interrelated…
- We are hardwired to be happy which means that for most people (almost everyone I have worked with clinically so far) as the Mind heals and emotions are “digested” increased happiness is a bi product.
- In the same way; when you are happy your body does in general function in a much healthier way. (Being happy tends to improve health)
- They have 2 different destinations in mind…
- Increased health and prevention of dis-ease of the human body.
- Improved ability to navigate the conditions of human life.
Up Next: Where Paths Diverge