Research Paper By Brett Avelin
(Awareness/Thought Coach, UNITED STATES)
Think Good Thoughts…Your Health May Depend On It
Can the way that people think actually affect the health of their bodies? The goal of this paper is to look in to this question and see if it is true that the way people think will affect their bodies level of health. It will look both in the immediate moment while one is thinking and how that affects the body as well as in the longer term whether or not our day to day thinking affects whether we contract various chronic diseases such as cardio-vascular issues and diabetes.
Finally this paper will look at the effectiveness of coaching in maintaining a level of thinking that is supportive of total body health and wellness and how it does that.
To begin let’s look at a case study from a clinic in rural Vermont in which a clients health dramatically shifted without the intervention of medications, supplements, surgery or any other interventions. The only thing that changed was the quality of the person’s thinking because of an interaction he had with his father.
The client had been working coming to the clinic (called Sojourns) for about a month. This clinic is knows for it’s innovative treatment regimens integrating both allopathic and holistic modalities. She initially saw a Naturopath and was coming because his symptoms had been growing steadily worse and he was losing weight rapidly. For years this person had been experiencing her body and life in general from a viewpoint that resulted in a constant feeling of anxiety. She was finding herself more and more reactive to foods as well as her environment. Even foods that are generally considered healthy would set off a chain of immune/allergic reactions that would result in her being very sick for days. She was down to eating almost exclusively rice and a few vegetables. Everything else caused abdominal bloating, pain, diarrhea and rashes. The anxiety increased each time she would eat. She would think
Will this food cause me pain?” and entertaining the question “What if I can’t eat anything at all eventually, will I die?.
One of the primary goals at the clinic was to strengthen the immune system in order to allow it to relax and accept more food choices.
The ND had tried many approaches, both dietary, energetic, and supplemental. The client was way too sensitive to be able to take any conventional medications other than an anti anxiety pill. The ND then referred the client to a Wellness Coach who worked as part of the team of practitioners. During the first visit the rapport was built and some goals were set between the client and the coach. Then at the second visit something came up around the clients relationship with her father and how she related to him. The coach then simply asked how she would like to be relating to him which was quite different. Between than and the next visit something amazing happened. She had had a conversation with her father that she described as ‘Never happened before” in which she simply stated how she would like to relate to him. In turn her father told her about the first months of her life in which she had been constantly crying. He, her mother, and the Doctors had thought it was some kind of colic and couldn’t find anything wrong.
