Positive Thinking 03 – Science and positive thinking

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Welcome to our discussion on positive thinking principles, we’ll discuss today about the scientific basis, for the importance of positive thinking, so let’s begin with a quote, William James states, the greatest discovery of my generation, is that human beings can alter their lives, by altering their attitudes of mind, William James is considered to be one of the pioneers, pioneers in the study of the mind, and before him, and to some extent, even after his times, for some time, his mainstream science was obsessed, with a school of thought, that viewed human beings simply as behavioral creatures, with little or no psychological dimension, no importance given to the psychological dimension, so for example, this stimuli, this reaction, this stimuli, this reaction, so humans were seen simply as behavioral creatures, who could be analyzed in terms of stimuli and reaction, but it was over time observed, that the same stimuli produced different reactions in different people, and this at one time was thought simply as a result of, unchangeable inner programming, so some people, for example, were thought to be negative, some people were thought to be positive, and that’s how they were considered to be always, but in due course of time, science has increasingly discovered that, not only is the behavioral and the psychological connected, in terms of the psychological being shaped by the behavioral, psychological shaping the behavioral, but also that the psychological is also changeable, that by changing the attitudes of the people, their behaviors can be changed, and this in fact is the greatest contribution, that spiritual wisdom can make to the human well-being, and by changing our psychological, and thereby bringing about behavioral changes, people can become more self-empowered, so now what has science found out about this over the decades, when we look at this, we discussed about positive and negative thoughts, so we will look at what science has found about, positive and negative thoughts in general, how they affect us, so now when we are cultivating positive thoughts, love, peacefulness, good wishes towards others, satisfaction, at that time the hormone endorphin is generated, now hormones are of course complex, and different mental emotions are accompanied, by different specific generation of hormones, but in a generic sense, the hormones that are conducive to our health, such as endorphin are generated when we think positive, in contrast when our thoughts are negative, hate, anger, irritation, envy, at that time the hormones such as adrenaline are generated, now rush of adrenaline may give us a spurt of energy, and this hormone is thought of as being associated with high performance, or peak performance, but that is only in short bursts of high energy, if there is excessive and continuous secretion of hormones, that can have negative effect in the long run, so overall the excessive focus of excessive cultivation, or excessive presence also even without our cultivation, excessive presence of negative thoughts, can be said to be causing us to bathe ourselves in negative health, in negative health or harm inducing or health spoiling hormones, whereas when we think positive, we are bathing ourselves in health inducing fluids, hormones, enzymes, so now moving onwards, since science has also found that people who have a negative disposition, who are pessimistic often, small disorders and diseases that come to them, people who are for example say depressed, so when people are depressed at that time, small diseases tend to stay for a longer time, and they are often more difficult to cure, similarly people who are stressed, they are also susceptible to a greater variety of symptoms, and those symptoms or the underlying causes of those symptoms, they also tend to stay longer, so in general the characteristics are such that, the negative thinking in terms of stress as well as depression, these are negative states of mind, so negative states of mind translate into negative states of physical being, negative states of health, in contrast there is placebo effect, placebo effect is basically when a patient is not given any treatment, but is simply given pills which resemble treatment, let me say the patient is given some sugar pills, something which looks like medicine but is actually not medicine, but just because the patient is given medicines, the patient feels as if I am becoming healthier, my health is improving, and in this way the patient gets better, so if there is no medicine given, and usually you think medicine is the cause of good health, then how is the patient’s health improving, that health is improving because of the patient’s immune system being triggered, so that means just the mental perception that I am being treated, that activates the healing system within the body, and the healing system cures the body, so based on principles such as the placebo effect, there is a whole field of mind-body medicine, that is becoming significantly active, and one aspect of mind-body medicine is also the field of psychoneuroimmunology, immunology is the study of the immune system, so neuro is basically related to the brain, psycho is related with the mind, so psychoneuroimmunology refers to the field of human health, study of human immune system, that the hormones which are conducive to health, which are generated in the brain, these are activated by the emotions of the mind, and therefore by cultivating positive emotions, we can actually improve our health, and we can perform actually much better, in terms of having better physical health leading to better performance, so here we have Dr. Carol Reeve, psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, there is a science that is emerging that says a positive attitude, it isn’t just a state of mind, it also has linkages to what’s going on in the brain and in the body, so in this way science is increasingly correlating, that positive attitude is not just a matter of attitude, it’s also a matter of the effect on our physical body, in real tangible health effects, so by thinking positive we can actually not only improve our overall performance, but we can actually improve our physical health also, so it is that consequential, now in future sessions we will discuss further, about how positive thinking can affect our long term destiny, Thank you, Hare Krishna,