How Positive Emotions Can Impact Cancer & Healing

We’re ALL about positive thinking and mindfulness here at VegHealth, but did you know that such practices can profoundly impact how your body deals with Cancer?

 

This NB looks closer and offers a path to learning two effective techniques you can use to benefit any kind of healing.  

How Positive Emotions Can Impact Cancer

We’ve seen that stress and a negative mental or emotional state depresses the immune system. Fortunately, there’s plenty of research to show that healing trauma and turning negative emotions into positive ones can absolutely lead to a stronger immune system and better outcomes for keeping cancer and cancer metastasis at bay.

According to social psychologist Barbara Frederickson, this is called the “broaden and build theory” of positive emotions. While negative emotions create a “stiffening” sensation physically and energetically, positive emotions create an expansion on all levels.

The mind, then, naturally becomes open to possibility and likewise, so does the physical body. [1]

Emotional Acceptance

An important component of emotional healing around serious illness, and especially cancer, is called emotional acceptance.

According to Dr. Noam Shpancer, professor of psychology at Otterbein University in Ohio, emotional acceptance is defined as the “willingness and ability to accept and experience the negative emotion, to acknowledge it and absorb it.” [2]

In other words, before we can ever begin the process of healing our emotions, we first must acknowledge that they exist and that we are feeling them in the moment.

It wouldn’t seem like the simple act of accepting our emotions would be such a big deal. It turns out, however, that this first step is absolutely vital for emotional healing to occur.

A 2016 study conducted at the University of Arizona found that of the 150 women with cancer who were being taught techniques to regulate their emotions, those who had the highest amount of “emotional acceptance” around their situation and their feelings were also the ones who had the lowest rates of inflammatory cytokines in their system overall. [3]

Gratitude and Forgiveness

Another powerful positive emotion directly linked to physical healing is gratitude. First of all, eliciting feelings of gratitude through visualization or in another way has been shown to promote the production of healing hormones and downgrade the production of cortisol.

A study sponsored by the American Psychological Association and conducted by researchers at the U.C. San Diego Center for Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health as well as the Chopra Foundation found that patients who had more “outward tendencies” towards gratitude slept better at night.

They also found that these patients were less likely to be depressed and that they had less overall systemic inflammation. [4]

Forgiveness is another powerful state that can have a profound effect on mental health. Forgiveness as a practice can help heal deep trauma connected to grief and grievances from the past.

Research shows that forgiveness is linked to a reduction in psychiatric disorders such as major anxiety and clinical depression. A few studies even correlate forgiveness to lower mortality rates.

One of the reasons why forgiveness is so healing is because when you forgive, you also melt long-standing feelings of anger and resentment.

Professionals often refer to anger as the “toxic emotion” because of its direct correlation to illness and disease. A 2009 study conducted at University College London found that unresolved anger and hostility may lead directly to heart disease. [5]

ACTIONS FOR HEALING: 2 Evidence-Based Tools To Heal Your Trauma, Flip Your Thinking, and Upgrade Your Emotions

Now that you have an understanding that healing trauma and cultivating positive emotions such as gratitude and forgiveness can lead to greater healing in the body, you might wonder…

How in the world do I get started in doing this?

Well, our dear friend and colleague Nathan Crane has listed out two key modalities that have been proven to help calm the mind and so you can choose how you respond to the things life throws at you… Including diagnoses you don’t want.

Discover these 2 exercises and more about the power of emotion in conquering cancer and other health conditions in his digital book, The #1 Cancer-Causing Toxin…That No One Is Talking About!

When you get access to this really valuable digital book today, you ALSO get a f-reeeee pass to the incredible docuseries, The Missing Link which STARTS TODAY

Nathan interviewed 31 world-leading experts to FINALLY reveal the common thread between many (most?) of the people who truly conquer cancer once and for all… And may well be the guarantee that the cancer will not keep coming back.  

>>Get your no-cost pass to The Missing Link that
starts TONIGHT at 8pm ET

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