Your mind–body information network sends messages in seconds that control your motivation
Located in the frontal lobe of your brain is the command center that assigns priorities, allocates resources, and gives direction to cognitive mental activity. Learning, decision-making, and judgement are delegated to the hippocampus area where brain chemicals are stimulated to make important connections and hardwire neurons into successful learned patterns.
At any moment in time, you have a continuous flow of information from billions of cells throughout your body and mind. The signals they send can determine negative or positive reactions in your brain and throughout your body, stimulating the production of attitude-changing hormones that determine how motivated you will feel. By using cognitive strategies to plan your workouts and running regularly, you can exert a great deal of control over what signals are sent—whether the brain hormones are positive or not.
Candace Pert, PhD, in her informative book, Molecules of Emotion, explains how the brain is “extremely well connected” to the rest of the body at a molecular level, “so much so that the term mobile brain is an apt description of the psychosomatic network through which intelligent information travels from one system to another.”[1]
Secretions of hormones are constantly being produced due to current mental and physical conditions. Pert says that current feelings and beliefs will determine which of these peptide secretions are made. These substances lock onto the receptor molecules on the outer edge of most cells, sending information, giving directions, and significantly affecting our motivation and energy level.
Receptor sites receive information from the outside environment “with information substances such as hormones, antigens, drugs, peptides or neurotransmitters. The information processing occurs at the receptor where the signal to the cell can be modulated by the action of other receptors, the physiology of the cell and even past events and memories of them.”[2]
“Peptides (hormones) serve to weave the body’s organs and systems into a single web that reacts to both internal and external environmental changes with complex subtly orchestrated responses.”[3]
So the old concept that the mind is separate from the body is not correct, according to the research.
Here is what molecular biologist Bruce Lipton says about this approach:
“This new perspective on human biology does not view the body as just a mechanical device, but incorporates the role of mind and spirit. This breakthrough in the science of biology is fundamental to healing for it shows us that when we change our perceptions or beliefs we send totally different messages to our cells. In effect, we reprogram them. This new biology reveals why people can have spontaneous remissions or recover from injuries thought to be permanent disabilities.”[4]
For more than three decades, I have believed and written that running brings together body, mind, and spirit better than any other activity I have researched or experienced. John Raty, MD, Candace Pert, PhD, Bruce Lipton, PhD, and John Sarno, MD, have analyzed the internal connections throughout our organism and have helped me understand the biological and mental framework which can be used to boost our motivation and tap into our potential.
Here’s how Candace Pert explains why we feel so good after “playing” (such as during a good run): “When we are playing, we are stretching our emotional expressive ranges, loosening up our biochemical flow of information, getting unstuck, and healing our feelings”[5]
The mind is a very powerful network of information transmitters embedded throughout the body, connecting most cells. Conscious mental-training techniques can harness this powerful system by sending positive messages. These actions stimulate positive secretions which can change attitude within a few moments.