Huh. I guess I interpreted the thread to be about the power of a positive attitude/perseverance more than the paranormal stuff. Maybe I misunderstood the first post.
Uh no, it was. I guess I'll state my original idea again: how does mental health/attitude influence the physical body?
tombb, of course the stuff is explainable. I am a scientist and engineer. However, you can't just do this stuff. It doesn't work that way. If it did, everybody would be doing it constantly. It takes an extreme situation or extreme amount of concentration to be able to reach those points. Duh they're not supernatural. Duh computers aren't actually random. I left this topic free to roam but not to an area that would obviously kill it (e.g. crap that isn't real, no offense Jake lol). Let's bring it back. How about the scenario I originally mentioned:
A scenario I've heard from quite a few people is if you eat all this healthy food but you hate it and it makes you feel like crap and your mental crappiness might (?) lead to physical crappiness. On the other hand, if you eat good tasting food (not terribly bad but some candy and stuff), you are generally in a better mood and your body then functions better. [Disclaimer: totally theoretical and based off nothing scientific. It is recommended that you don't follow this without reading the following discussion]
Alec, I agree.
Your immune system and endocrine glands for example are all things that can be taxed by continuous stress and negative states of mind, and prolonged unnecessary secretion of certain hormones can then cause other damage to organs and tissues. Those are all known and measurable effects and stem from the fact that the brain has some direct control of these systems (for important things like fight or flight reactions, if you are in severe fear your bowel movements will stop, your heart rate will increase, you will secrete all sorts of hormones, etc).
Even for the immune system, initial stress actually causes an increase in immune response. But if stress continues uninterrupted, the immune response actually returns to normal (sort of as a 'false alarm' reaction), and then can continue to decrease even further causing a sort of immune suppression due to stress.
And using techniques like visualization, mood and breathing control, focus etc can also be used strategically and improved with practice to improve body control and awareness and therefore sport performance.
For your example specifically, there are influences both ways. For example if you eat healthy foods you hate, there might be additional body-related reasons (not just personal taste) why you feel that way about them.
Regarding your example, if you are feeling a craving for a different type of food, that might be a sign you should listen to (depending on context and assuming you are not sort of in a 'detoxing' phase from some bad habit) and a manifestation of various hormonal balances and imbalances (ghrelin, leptin, insulin, cortisol etc).
If you feel tired of eating the same type of food it can also be a sign that your diet is imbalanced and your body is reacting to that and craving what is missing.
On the other hand it also goes a bit the opposite way too as you are suggesting, if you are stressed, emotionally unhappy etc it can affect your appetite, your health etc.
There is a bit of adaptation to consider, where for example you might miss candy and fried foods initially but you might also get used to and happy with other foods once you get past an initial adjustment.
In general, I would say yes you should try to be both happy and healthy, and not just one or another, because being unhappy can affect your diet (for example having depression or poor self-confidence and low body image can all lead to bad physiological consequences), and eating anything that makes you happy but becoming unhappy can even make you depressed and tired (chemical imbalances can do that, like the ancient Romans used to say, sit mens sana in corpore sano, a healthy mind in a healthy body). Usually it's good to have some allowance and flexibility to allow you to enjoy the good things in life, for example using moderation to control amounts and frequency to offset things.
And, actually, I would argue that you can use "mysticism" to make these things work. Any weird practice that can help to put you in the correct mental state to do these things is good. Call it whatever the hell you want, but it worked and that's what matters. If you want to call it "mysticism," then who cares. It's all about perception, not actuality. No, it's not literally magic but that's not the point.
Well I said you don't need to, not that you couldn't. If visualizing energy flows helps you control muscle tone and movement flow while doing martial arts, nothing wrong with that. But the same visualization will work even if you don't really believe in it and use it as a technique.
