Article December 25, 2000 Issue

Mind-body

Is there more to the connection?

By Nathan A. Talbot

There was ONCE a man who sat outside a temple in a city called Shiloh. He was worrying ... worrying about a particular religious shrine that was being carried into battle. Because the sacred shrine was so important to him, he was afraid it wasn't safe in the hands of the troops who carried it. Then he got word that the shrine had been stolen. He was so upset that he fell over backward and died.

That was the end of Eli, a priest in Israel (see I Sam. 4:12—18). You might say that this was an early example of the view that what happens in our thinking can have a lot to do with what happens in our body.

It has become more generally accepted that stress and other states of thought can lead to disturbances in the body. What has sometimes been called "the mind body connection" has taken on increased significance, especially in the last decade.

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