Tonight, I'm going to be giving you a lot of information.

Have this talk about the ways that how we think affects our bodies and us physically

and what kinds of thoughts are actually physiologically healthy versus what kinds of thoughts

are associated with maladaptive physical states.

And we'll talk about, we'll have a meditation on the theme.

So that's the format.

So just jumping right in, it's very easy to assume that what happens in our heads stays in our heads, that if we are prone to

worrying, rehearsing possible out of conflicts, mulling over interpersonal wounds, grievances

about situations that unpleasant, they're unpleasant, but ultimately they don't have much of an effect on our bodies.

In philosophy, this is known as mind-body dualism. It's the old now entirely no longer taken seriously view that thoughts exist in this

private realm that floats above the physiological body but ultimately has very little effect

on our physiology or on our health.

And even traditional Buddhism in the Dharma, the Buddha sometimes referred to thoughts as bubbles floating above an ocean or flashes of light from bugs and stuff like that.

So on the one end, while he did foresee so much of the stress that certain thoughts can take their toll in the body,

and other times he kind of disregarded thoughts and how we think and what we think about as essentially unimportant.

But nothing to be further from the case.

There are giants in the field of behavioral psychology,

especially probably the greatest figurehead being Robert Sopolsky,

the head of Stanford Psychology Department, absolute genius and the most,

I'd say one of the most important psychologists, neuroscientists in the last 50 years.

And he took it upon himself to compile a massive mountain of clinical evidence showing that certain thought patterns, worrying, replaying interpersonal wounds and grievances, victimization beliefs, anticipatory worry, trigger the same exact

bodily stress as actual events that are occurring.

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