What Einstein taught us about mental health. Why your energy matters. 💫

Last weekend I went to a conference in London on human consciousness and evolution.  It occurred to me that most people would class this as ‘woo woo’, but when I started reading about quantum mechanics about 5 years ago, I realised that it isn’t at all.

We discussed a wide variety of topics from the Big Bang Theory, quantum physics, wormholes and transhumanism (bionic humans, not gender identity) to considering where we may hold our memories, intuition and kindness.

It was fascinating to hear how much we are discovering about the role of energy as a part of our evolution, our physiology and even the human psyche. 

The theories of quantum mechanics are barely more than a century old.  The scientific measurement and relevance of energy is a novel concept to most people, and especially Doctors and mental health professionals, in part because we haven’t had the tools to measure it scientifically until fairly recently. Nowadays, technology allows us to detect brain-waves and other vibrations, frequencies or energy within the body.

Mental health

Tuesday 10th October was World Mental Health Day and I wanted to introduce the concept of energy to help us understand aspects of mental health.

We are sentient beings, meaning we are able to perceive and feel things.  These perceptions, made by our senses, are transcribed into the physical.  We see, smell, taste, hear or touch something (or otherwise sense) and this creates a physical reaction in the body and leads to physical changes, such as building new neural connections in the brain, or strengthening those already in place.  You touch something that is too hot and you learn pretty quickly not to touch it again!  This neural pathway can now be detected in the brain using imaging such as MRI.

Quantum mechanics

The role of energy being transcribed into matter is not well understood or accepted, but it is something we are now proving with quantum mechanics.

Einstein’s theory of special relativity: e=mc2

Where:

e=energy

m=mass

c= the speed of light

shows us that mass and energy are interchangeable.  It also shows that there is far more energy in the universe than mass.

So applying quantum mechanics, or in this case, quantum biology, we can start to explain how energy, in the form of experiences or trauma, can affect us emotionally, mentally and even physically (mass).  Sadly, our western medical model still does not properly incorporate this.

We will discuss trauma in more detail next time.

Vibrations

Dr. David Hawkins proposed that emotions are associated with specific vibrational frequencies.  For example, the more positive emotions of love and gratitude have higher, more harmonious frequencies, whilst fear and anger may vibrate at lower, more discordant frequencies.  It is thought that these frequencies impact our overall well-being.

I did find one paper that tried to prove this [1], however this concept is not currently widely accepted or studied and will also require peer review scrutiny.  Whilst I do believe there are differences in the feelings of emotions, which have different impacts on the body (such as feeling happy versus the stress response), and these are modulated by many different physiological processes, including the vagus nerve, I remain open-minded.

Furthermore, the neuroscientist Dr Joe Dispenza believes that we can change our physiology, including chronic disease and physical disability, by changing our conscious state through meditation [2].  This can be measured scientifically using the electroencephalogram (EEG).  I am a great believer in the power of meditation and do believe that, at some basic level, we can improve our health by calming ourselves, and reducing our stress response, through meditation.  Whether or not we can achieve something as profound as to reverse complete spinal injury is unclear to me.

Now that we have covered how energy, as perceived through our senses, and our resultant emotions can impact us, next time, we’ll cover trauma as a cause of poor mental health and the novel methods we’re using to facilitate healing.

Mind

In the meantime, the charity Mind has some fantastic resources for those struggling with their mental health.  This is why Mental Health Getaway are supporting Mind when we climb Kilimanjaro, starting next Sunday!

We are doing well in the fund-raising campaign, however if you feel able to donate even just a small sum, we’d really appreciate your support here.

This means I won’t be posting next time as I’ll hopefully be summitting the highest peak in Africa!  In fact, we will be moving to writing these blogs monthly so we can spend our time better serving our audience.

Until next month…

Well wishes,

Andie. x

[1]  Human Emotion Detection via Brain Waves Study by Using Electroencephalogram (EEG)

Ismail et al, International Journal on Advanced Science Engineering, Information Technology, 2016, vol 6, no. 6

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/296919008.pdf

[2]  Large effects of brief meditation intervention on EEG spectra in meditation novices

Stapleton et al, International Brain Research Organization Reports, 2020 Dec; 9: 290–301.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7649620/

[3]  Chronic Stress Promotes Cancer Development

Dai et al, Frontiers in Oncology, 2020; 10: 1492.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7466429/

Image: Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay