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Women Living Well: Mind/Body Connection - 2002
Student Papers
On Serendip
Even before this seminar series, I had always thought of the mind and body as being one entity. In order to achieve a healthy lifestyle, you must achieve a healthy mind and body. To achieve a healthy body, one must eat properly in order to get an adequate amount of nutrients, and one must also exercise to keep their body physically fit so their body is prepared for the day ahead of it. In order to achieve a healthy mind, one must get an adequate amount of sleep, so the mind as well as the body can have time to rest and sort out the events of the day. One must also find ways to reduce anxiety and stress on their mind, so they are able to work efficiently without being distracted from the stress and anxiety. Stress and anxiety are not good for the body either, because stress and anxiety causes the body to tense up and hold the stress and anxiety within the muscles causing the muscles to ache, which causes the person to be in a bad mood.
I am more aware of my actions and how those actions affect my body, now that the seminar series is over. I now think about how I treat my body and have improved my eating habits as well as my sleeping habits. It is difficult in an environment like Bryn Mawr to get an adequate amount of sleep and nutrition because of the time restraints class work puts on us. I believe that this series is helpful to remind people how they treat their body will affect them in the end. For instance, it reminded people why they get migraines or headaches as well as what not getting enough sleep does to your body.
By talking about the mind and body as interrelated, helps to put these problems in perspective, because you can tell someone that anxiety and stress will make them irritable and could possibly give them a headache, which just deals with the mind, but if they don't realize that the body is also involved, they won't understand why their muscles ache. People quickly forget that the mind and body are connected when dealing with pains and aches as well as symptoms occurring within their body.
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