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The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity.

Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel,

if you grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune.

Our nervous system isn't just a fiction. It's part of our physical body. It can't be forever violated with impunity.

Chronic health problems sap the joy from life, whether suffering from a serious condition

like cancer or heart disease or from ailments of a body subjected to years of stress,

to live a vibrant life, we must heal the body.

In this two-part series, we explore how our mindset and the state of our character can make us sick, but also heal us.

In this first video, we explore how negative thought patterns, unresolved emotional states, stress, and trauma can lead to

disease, illness, and even premature death. I've come to believe that virtually all illness,

if not psychosomatic in foundation, has a definite psychosomatic component, wrote the neuroscientist Candice Pert.

Most of us intuitively recognize that there exists a tight coupling between body and mind.

So intimate is the relationship that it may be better to view the mind and body as two sides of the same coin,

or as a unitary phenomenon rather

than as two separate entities, or as Carl Jung wrote.

The distinction between mind and body is an artificial dichotomy.

In fact, so intimate is the intermingling of bodily and psychic traits that not only can we draw far-reaching inferences

as to the constitution of the psyche from the constitution of the body, but we can also infer from

psychic peculiarities the corresponding bodily characteristics. Most of us also recognize that

the state of our mind can influence the health or sickness of our body.

For example, it is well known that high levels of stress inhibit the immune system and increase the likelihood of sickness,

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