The Body, Soul & Spirit Relationship - YLAM240014

SPEAKER A This programme presents ways to optimise health and wellbeing when considering lifestyle changes. Please consult with your health care provider to ensure they are suitable for you. SPEAKER B Hello and welcome. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. The word connection can make us think of many things. It might be a power supply, a phone signal or the Internet. It might be a friend, family or community. There are many things in life that only work well when properly connected. Stay with us as we talk more about the connection between the body, soul and spirit. SPEAKER A This is your lifestyle as medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia television. SPEAKER B It's wonderful to have you with us on this programme where we explore ways that you can shape your lifestyle as medicine. Today we are once again joined by health psychologist Jenifer Skues and we are continuing our discussion about the relationship between body, soul and spirit. This time we are focusing on the connection between these aspects. Jenifer, thank you so much for being with us again. SPEAKER C Thank you for having me here. SPEAKER B You're very welcome. So last time we spoke about what the meaning is of the soul and spirit in particular, because that's often an area that can be not quite so clear for people. So today we are looking more about how this whole system of body, soul and spirit is so closely connected. Tell us more about this. SPEAKER C Okay, we used a great diagram before, showing body, soul and spirit and how the Holy Spirit works with us in the last session. And what we want to do is explore this a bit more because we talked about bits and pieces and we want to see how the whole lot integrates and what that process is on all of those levels. So when you have a look at it, we're going to start at the bottom with the body, and the body receives information from the physical world. We are constantly having input to the body. And that because the body is made up of your brain as well, so it receives it in the five senses and that is stored in the brain's memory bank. We have a visual type memory, which is in context with where we're at. And we have an emotional memory and it's stored in video form. But it's $0.05 around video, because when we watch a video, we're watching and hearing. But our brain video has the other aspects as well. So when we recall information, we can recall it in the five senses. And this means that as we go through life, the body collects information, stores it in the brain and it becomes part of, obviously, the soul, because the soul will then use that information to action and develop. Okay, so, and the body is part of our conscious awareness, because we, those five senses, we connect to things, okay? And of course, in the brain and the mind is where we action those choices. And this is where the brain, which is still part of the body, has programmed beliefs. And they're in the cellular level of the brain, where we've got all these information pathways that are connected to the five senses. And the interesting part is that we don't delete the video, we actually maintain the video, but we don't remember everything at the same time. But any part of that video in our programme, brain can be recalled in the five senses or it can be triggered in the five senses. So, for example, a smell, and smells actually go to the back part of the brain and then into the front of the brain. So they're very subtle, but often you go, oh, there's something around here I don't like. And then you pick up the smell or someone's perfume or a particular fragrance, and you might think, oh, they're really nice people. And you pick up on the fragrance on the other senses. Touch is powerful. For some people, touch gives them a lot of warmth because it's connected to positive touch in the past. The problem is, if any of the senses that are active in a traumatic event are triggered, then we start living the past in the present. And that's where, when we look at the spirit, that's where, when we look at the spirit and the soul connection, if the soul is troubled because it now has a past memory coming into the present, then our spirit is compromised. Whereas if we have a good memory that is loaded in and the brain picks it up and it's programmed in and we remember that, it's like remembering a good holiday. When you put the photos and go, oh, I had such a good time, we can feel a spirit pick up. Okay. So what we focus on and what parts of the videos we have in our mind are triggered will determine how the soul senses, feels, develops and how the character develops. And it can be for good or for Badland. SPEAKER B So does with those videos. I'm really intrigued by this idea of videos going on in our minds, which we can retrieve at any point. Yeah. And it is true. It's just. Yeah, thinking of it that way is quite, quite interesting. Does it happen that if you think about a certain video, if you will, or memory from the past, whatever, if you think about that one over and over again, that it will remain more strongly in your mind, whereas if you don't think about it much better, focusing, let's say it's a negative experience. And you're not focusing on it, you're focusing on lots of the positive things that have happened in your life, that those negative ones won't be so strong in your mind somehow. SPEAKER C It can work that way. It is a use it or lose it principle with the brain, because if we. Because when we have a strong connection to something, what we do is we put in huge pathways, and when those. Those events are repeated over and over again, whether they're good or bad, that pathway becomes like a big motorway or an LA freeway in the brain. So you've got all these connections that are triggered at the same time, which is why trauma is so difficult for people, you know, because they have such a strong memory. But if you help the person to deal with it in the present and put it back, back in the past and debrief it, and their memory is actually in every cell of the body, so you actually have to debrief the whole system, the nervous system, the memory bank. And when you disconnect, connect that memory on all those levels, it's now living in the past and the person can think of it and they go, it wasn't nice, but it doesn't mow them down, so to speak. So this is sort of treating stress and trauma, and yet we can reverse what the body has taken on and how the brain has been programmed, but you need to understand it, which, again, is what I help people do. I educate people to understand what we're talking about now and help them identify it. But I find even though it's a use it or lose it, we never lose it totally. The outer core of the brain actually programmes it in on a permanent basis. Unless you damage the tissues or that area of the brain now, doesn't mean we'll ever resurrect it. But if we are compromised, particularly spiritually, and we start going back down that hill, then what can happen? We can resurrect that memory or that habit. So, yeah, I sort of see it as part of that old nature. The Bible refers to the fallen nature that is still present, but we don't need to use it. And we can only function in the present to be aware that the body's reacting like that again. And that's where giving people the tools to recognise and then do something about it, treat problem in the present, then it won't be repeated in the future. SPEAKER B Yes, yes, yes. So what I hear you're saying then is the experiences we have in life, say, with the physical world, with people that creates these memories, they can have an impact on our minds, but they can also have an impact on our spirit. But it sounds like also, if we are nurturing our spirit in the right way, that can also have an impact then on those memories as to how much they will affect our everyday lives. So again, we're talking about the connections and how integrated they are. SPEAKER C And part of that healthy integration is allowing God's spirit to work with our spirit. And when you do that, it strengthens our spirit, and then we can do that journey. We cannot do it just by. Well, psychology, if we don't include spirit, psychology could work for a while, but it's not going to necessarily treat the whole person. You can see where we need all that integration. SPEAKER B Yeah, yeah. And that's such a fascinating point that you just made there because I was just thinking back to the graph which we looked at earlier with a triangle and the fact that it has, you know, the physical body, right? It's connected with the physical world, right? Yes. And so that's. That's like something outside of the body that it's connected with. And then with the spirit, then the idea of the Holy Spirit, that's something outside of our spirit, if you will, that we're needing a connection to. And so I guess the point is we are not built to be on our own, are we? Like, we're built to have connections outside in big, powerful ways. SPEAKER C But when you look at that, even though if we separate our spirit from God's spirit, once we let that spirit back in, it's now in our heart and mind and is working through us. So we then integrate it and it quickens our spirit. There's a couple of good quotes there. There's a gentleman by the name of John G. Lake, and he stated a lot about the spirit of God. And he said, when touched by the spirit of God, a quickening takes place. And that quickening is very real. It's in the present, and you know, it's there. Right. And that's where the conscience works, and then the will can action it. So that will then help the soul to deal with whatever's happening. And it's a healing process. And that means the way the body reacts to the physical world or that environment changes. All right? So that means we can cope with the physical environmental input of. SPEAKER B That's really good. And that's really important, I guess, in this world, because there are many physical environmental inputs that aren't really good for us, whether it's because we get sickness or something is done to us that is unfair or something. And we have these negative experiences. SPEAKER C Yes, but how we deal with it is relevant to how strong our spirit is. And that's if we're connected to God's spirit, then we have the strength, the insight and the knowledge. And then if we learn and grow on the soul level, which is, again, that's where psychology can be good, because it teaches us awareness, how the brain works, how it's programmed, what we can do to change the programme. So this is where, on a practical level, the soul can work through the brain, through the mind, which then helps the character develop, because it's really a balancing of mind and emotions via the spirit. SPEAKER B Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, having it that way with those balancing together. So what would this look like in a situation? Say someone's got, like, a chronic health condition or, you know, they've got a health problem. What does it actually look like in terms of, you know, maybe they can't change their situation physically. How could they still experience the best possible health in terms of the connections with mind, body, spirit, even in a situation like that? SPEAKER C Well, it comes back to. Then this comes back to the soul, the attitude and what we. The strength of our spirit. So people who deny spirit suffer a lot more than people who connect with God's spirit and make their spirit thrive. And this is where you can get people, and you've probably met them, they don't complain. They're joyful, they're happy. And then you hear out here that they've been struggling with cancer or they have a major pain problem, but you wouldn't know. Whereas someone who is immersed in that is going to share it and show it. SPEAKER B Yeah. Yeah. Can think of people like that, both types easily. SPEAKER C Yeah. There's a poet I love. Her name's Annie Johnson Flint. You can read her poetry online. And she's a deceased a long time ago, but she was born with a major impairment, was in a wheelchair all her life and had chronic pain. Yet people never knew she was in pain. And she connected to God. She allowed his spirit to empower her spirit. She understood God's word, his truth. She embraced it. And she used to write poems constantly on the beauty of what God had shown her and the truths. And she never complained, even though you wouldn't have known, apparently, that she was in pain. And that's because of the spirit. If she was stuck in the body, she would have been complaining. And there are a lot of people out there who. All you hear about are their aches and pains. Yeah. So we can help them if they understand this process and they're willing to give it a go. SPEAKER B So in situations like that, what is the best way to start nurturing the spirit, to make sure that that is. That is healthy? Well, it's going to help improve your overall function. SPEAKER C One, I think it's a balance. How many people are workaholics that don't give themselves time, that drive till they drop, burn out, do all that? We have to make time, healthy time for ourselves. It's not self centred, it's helping us to self preserve. So that means doing things that nurture our spirit. And different people have different ways of doing it. I've got quite a collection of things I do and I make myself do these things. If I'm feeling down, if I'm feeling a bit flat or I noticed I've overdone it, my energy levels are low. I've got to make myself take time out because I'm a doer. I like doing. I like creating. Creating helps to lift the spirit. So the more we do that balance, the stronger the spirit gets our spirit, and the more that connection with God's spirit happens. And then what happens? We can then recharge and integrate and get that balance a lot quicker. SPEAKER B So I guess it's kind of like any sort of relationship, isn't it? We're talking about connection because you can't just do, like, make a one off connection and expect that that connection is going to stay strong. Like, you need to nurture it, you need to look after it and provide inputs that will keep that alive and healthy. SPEAKER C Yes, absolutely. There's a very good quote I'm going to share, and this is a doctor, Margaret Nagib, who works with people with trauma and that. And from a very biblical perspective, you know, she does a lot with healing. And she said, while the body connects us to the outside world, the soul connects us to our inner world, the spirit connects us with the spiritual realm. And it's only through the spirit that the soul and body can fully interact with God. So when you think about it, when we shut our spirit down, like, we disconnect, it's a bit like dialling God, picking up the phone, staying connected. And if we hang up, then what happens? The soul and the body start to go downhill because that support and that empowerment and that spirit from God isn't a with us. And I don't know any other way. There is nothing that man has created or made that I'm aware of that will do that job. SPEAKER B Yeah. So it highlights how important it is and it makes sense I mean, we were talking in the last couple of programmes about the biblical model of how we were created in Genesis two seven. And so with the body and then the spirit, and then we become a soul with those elements. Spirit came from God. And so if you cut that out, like, you've just cut out the life source, haven't you? SPEAKER C Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, it is. And therefore you drain the batteries, basically. Drain the brain, drain the body, drain the cells, you know, and this is where we. And we will, the last session, we're going to look more at that regeneration degeneration process. But one of the things we have that we can take a look at is our Health Message. A health message. And that's looking at the relationship between our lifestyle, lifestyle, mental health, emotional health, physical health and our spiritual health. Right, you can see on this diagram how the Brain, that frontal lobe of the Brain, right at the front there, you can see it's got PhySIcal HealtH, mental health and spiritual health. And that's connected to the left right hemispheres of the Brain where we have emotions, it goes into the emotional Brain, it also connects with the physical needs and that conscious awareness of the body. And then we actually have that doorway to the spiritual health, which is we've talked about with the Conscience, and that's the capacity to experience, and, I believe, express love, true love. It's easy to say you love someone, but what happens? Does the heart and spirit resonate with that love? And if it does, then this is where the connection to all the organs of the body is going to resonate. A lot of people I treat, they say, I'm so lonely, no one ever comes near me and I'm so down and nobody loves me, and I go, well, that's not true. And if, certainly if they've got a spiritual awareness, I ask them, do you think God loves you? And if they think, well, no, I'm not good enough, we can then talk about it more and look at faith and other factors. But generally, people in our world are feeling alone, isolated and unloved. Yet the brain wants that connection. The brain has a social aspect, it wants to be connected, it wants to be connected to God, it wants to be connected to self in a healthy way and connected to each other. And that's when you get that wonderful interplay, all the organs of the body, the cells will regenerate every part of the body. The beauty is, God has given us a self healing mechanism. We've got a built in system, we have a built in system that is constantly balancing everything, whether it be body temperature, appetite, sleep cycle. And it's only when we separate spirit from the soul, particularly, or we damage the body or get stuck in it, then the cells start to deteriorate. So this is where, if we want health, we have to connect in a way where the cell, where the body, the organs, but the organs will tell us we know if there's a problem. Instead of going, oh, it's what I ate or what I did, maybe we need to look at it a bit. SPEAKER B Differently and look at a whole picture of what connections are not quite lined up here. SPEAKER C Yeah, what am I doing wrong here? And this is where we've got to activate that brain switch on our awareness of the body. What is my body doing? What is my heart doing? Say to people, how are you going with your breathing? They say, anxious people say, oh, I don't breathe. I say, well, you'd be dead if you don't. And it's because they hold their breath, they're so anxious. That means they're not getting oxygen, carbon dioxide. That means the lungs are suffering. They get panic attacks, they struggle to breathe, they overbreathe. And fear is the motivator and that's programmed in. Over the years, you know, we've looked at that past, present connection, so they. Then the fear is triggered and then they go into this space and they hold the breath. That means the heart rate's up, it's spiking, it's uneven, it's out of balance. That means left right brain is out of balance. So instead of being able to reason and rationalise, they are working with their emotions. You know, my fears I fear. Or they're working on the negative emotions they've dragged up. And that means your right brain's functioning with the emotional memory and the left brain thinking brain is supporting it. By all, it's true, and I'm really in trouble here. And it supports. And every negative thought, what do you remember goes to every cell of the body. SPEAKER B So how does. Sorry, how does, how does what we think help and impact this connection with the soul and spirit? Like, there's obviously an interrelation there. How does that work? SPEAKER C Well, you've got to be aware of what your thoughts are. Now, thinking can be very subtle. We've got layers of thinking. Like, I know what I'm thinking at the moment, but in the background there might be a noise or something and I've got another thought happening, but I'm still focused on what I'm thinking now. But if I'm not careful, another thought will take over. How often do you think, oh, I'm going to read this book and enjoy and relax. Next thing, you're thinking of every other thing. So thoughts have to be disciplined, and to do that, we need to be aware of what am I thinking at any given time. And if it's not a good thought, how can I be realistic and turn it into something constructive? We can't just think positive, although I'll think the opposite, because we have to believe the opposite. You know, people do these affirmations. Unless you believe the affirmation, it's not going to work. It's like, well, tell yourself you're a nice person or you're a good person, and the person doesn't believe it. They can say it a hundred times, but those thoughts won't action as contrary to what their internal structure is, telling them, what their characters tell. So this is where your thoughts need to match what's happening, right. And how they integrate. So, again, picking up on thoughts, training the brain to stay focused. And this is where, when we look at that, the brain and the body and, you know, the gut is important, it's a second brain. So what we put in our gut and the nutrients we have, this is where we're the whole package. Yes. And so the brain has to understand that, in fact, knowledge is powerful. Science stated, and this is a scientific research, that when the brain knows how it works, it works smarter. So if I teach your brain to know more about how it works, like give you a format, a programme, that visual image, your brain will work a lot better. SPEAKER B So that's why we want lots of people to watch these programmes, you know, because they'll get smarter brains as a result. SPEAKER C Reprogram the brain. SPEAKER B Yeah, that's it. SPEAKER C The right programme and get rid of the wrong programme, which I've been working on my whole life, basically going from the wrong programme, self destruction, to being able to live. I'm healthier now than I was in my twenties and thirties. SPEAKER B Wow. Yeah. SPEAKER C That's because of what I'm teaching. Teaching is a good thing. SPEAKER B Personal journey for you as well. Yeah, absolutely. SPEAKER C Yeah. That's why I can share it, because I know what it's like to be there. God always uses anything bad he will use for good, so we can use our experience to help others. SPEAKER B Absolutely, yeah. That's very interesting how you're sharing about all those, the connections and how integrated it is. And also, I think, the fact that you were mentioning about thoughts and how they can affect your spirituality and then what your beliefs are. And also if your brain knows how it should work, it will work better. Because I think lots of people probably don't realise fully how impacting the spirit element is in terms of our whole person function. And if they understood that more and then corrected any beliefs that are not helpful in relation to spirit and spirituality, that would then probably help them to enhance that aspect of their being and then their overall well being as a result. SPEAKER C Yes, most people are overwhelmed by everything because what can I change? So we pick one thing to work on, because the change process, for one thing is the same for other things. So give them the map and they work on one thing and then they transfer it to other things. So it's not as hard as you think. Getting a starting point and knowing how to change, what to change, how to change and it's in the thing. SPEAKER B That's good. You make it sound very easy, but I know you have a lot of experience, like, yeah, you just start here and go there and there at the. SPEAKER C Mind, as they say. SPEAKER B Yeah, that's it, yeah, very good. Oh, thank you so much for sharing these things with us once again. I know we have another session still to go on this particular topic we're discussing, but, yeah, thank you for elaborating and enhancing our understanding about the connections between the mind, body, soul, spirit, all of those together, because that's really, really important, I think, to appreciate. So thank you for joining us. We have been talking with health psychologist Jenifer Skues about how the body, soul and spirit are connected and what this means for our health. In the next programme, we will focus on how we can restore connection with these aspects when we have become disconnected as a course of everyday life. So join us for that discussion as I know that it will be very helpful for you to listen to. If you have questions or comments about this programme or if there's a topic you would like us to discuss, do contact us on [email protected]. And always remember to shape your lifestyle as medicine. SPEAKER A You've been listening to Your Lifestyle as Medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia television.