ABSTRACT
We hope the overview of MindBody interventions in Chapter 1 has strengthened your interest in the field of MindBody medicine. These powerful interventions focus on employing the mind to become a positive influence on our health. In Chapter 2, we consider just how this influence on our health might happen and propose a way of understanding what the mind does that brings about this influence. We propose that the mental activities such as perception, belief, memory, willing, and the like are the media by which the mind influences health and well-being. By specifying mental activities by name, we intend to improve the accuracy of Mind-Body interventions. For example, to talk about changing a person’s belief (a mental activity) by MindBody interventions seems to us more accurate than talking about changing their thinking. Observe that belief is a more specific activity than just the general term thinking. Our intention is that this level of specificity will improve the accuracy of MindBody interventions as well as deepen the potential of MindBody research. This seems a more useful approach than attempting to work with more abstract terms like thinking. This chapter helps clarify this concept of “mental activity” (the term “mental activity” was coined by the first author).
