Mind, Body, and Healing
Welcome to KohlhagenInstitute, the official blog of the David Kohlhagen Institute of Mind/Body Healing.
This blog—and indeed the Institute itself—has been a long time coming. I am David Kohlhagen, founder and director of the Institute. I have been a mental health professional for over thirty years. I have studied and practiced psychoanalytic psychotherapy, gestalt therapy, and the cognitive behavior therapies, and I have studied and practiced hypnotherapy for nearly thirteen years. I have also studied and practiced energy healing work—touch for health, touch for healing, and Pranic Healing. My work is holistic; I am interested in the simplest, most elegant and all-inclusive ways to achieve healing and wholeness. The human mind and body are simple, elegant, and fully capable of healing themselves under the right conditions. They are designed to be self-healing: they are aware of unbalanced and unhealthy conditions, and they take action to heal them in order to become connected, healthy, and whole.
Mind/Body and Bodymind
The mind and body are so intimately connected that they must be thought of as one continuous entity called the bodymind. Because the bodymind is in constant connection with all of its parts and functions, it is also in constant intercommunication among all of its parts and functions, down to the subtlest level of its being. For that reason, everything that goes on in the mind has an effect in the body, for better or for worse. Patterns in the mind (conscious and subconscious patterns, or habits, of thinking) gain traction in the bodymind and result in effects and conditions that become stable, lasting, and self-perpetuating. When the patterns in the mind are positive, the effect on the body is positive; when the patterns in the mind are negative, the effect on the body is negative. Negative patterns of thinking cause effects in the bodymind that are undesirable and noticeable; they are called symptoms, conditions, illnesses, and diseases. The bodymind has a natural state of healthiness which is its default setting. When negative habit patterns of mind are cleared up, the bodymind will return to its default setting of health.
Health and Healthcare
We have reached a critical point in this country with regard to health and healthcare. The present expense and rate of increase in the cost of healthcare (1) (2) is unaffordable for many people and it is unsustainable (3) (4); but it will go on increasing anyway. At some point we are going to have to come to terms with the fact that our government and insurance programs, doctors, hospitals, and legions of health care practitioners—in short, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men—have not been able to solve our many health issues for us. We’re sicker than we’ve ever been, we’re spending more money on healthcare—and sick care—than ever before, and the cost of healthcare continues to rise steeply. Couple that with the fact that healthcare coverage is out of reach for an increasing number of people. Sooner or later, if we want to live to a ripe age—and enjoy it—we are going to have to wake up to these facts and stop trying to hand responsibility for our health over to someone else.
The good news is that we can take responsibility for our own health, and we can solve our own health problems—just as soon as we realize that our health problems are caused by poor habits of mind. Remember the bodymind network, with its constant loops of communication: our body is doing what we’re telling it to do; it is taking on the shape, form, and condition that we hold in our mind. We can learn to adjust our mental habits in order to heal and resolve our physical health conditions.
World Bodymind
This blog will be a way to network, connect, and communicate with the world community of interested persons about the science and practice of mind/body healing, advances in mind/body healing, and about our personal and professional experiences with mind/body healing. We can think of this network as the world bodymind. This blog is open to everyone who has a story to tell, a research study, a plan for a research study, a book or article you’ve read, written, or are writing, or personal wisdom to share about mind/body healing. Welcome! We have much to discuss.
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