What Are The Biological Mind and Its Components?
By: Victoria Ichizli-Bartels
Tags: Mindfulness, Body, Mind, Self-awareness, Life

Have you noticed how you, like most others, tend to separate your mind from your body?

It’s almost like the centuries-old erroneous belief of humans to be more superior to other species. In the same manner, we seem to think that our minds rule our bodies.

Be it conscious, subconscious, or, as some add, super-conscious components of our minds, we often consider them separately from our bodies.

But that is not accurate because our minds are not isolated in generating our feelings, thoughts, sensations, and emotions. They team up with the rest of the body. They are a part of our bodies.

Here is what the Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal says in her acclaimed book Yoga for Pain Relief:

“We usually think of the mind as somehow separate from the body. The mind is this mysterious experience we have of being ourselves: it’s what we think, how we feel, and our ability to act with conscious intention. But here’s the thing: your mind is in your body. Sensations, emotions, thoughts — they all take place in the body.” — Kelly McGonigal, Yoga for Pain Relief

Thus, it is not only the subconscious part of our mind that gives us all that information and draws our attention to what is crucial for us and the world around us at any given moment to maintain the equilibrium. Some people call it intuition, others — heart or gut. The latter two might be the evidence of the vague awareness by us, humans, that our bodies are what we perceive to be our minds.

Here is what that entity, of which we think to be our minds, is in reality:

“Sensations, thoughts, and emotions are created and communicated by several systems of the body, including the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system. All of these systems are intimately connected to each other. Together, they compose the biological mind. Their interactions produce your experience of all sensation, thoughts, and emotions.” — Kelly McGonigal, Yoga for Pain Relief

I haven’t heard the expression “biological mind” before reading the quote above. But it makes very much sense, doesn’t it?

Just look at the title and subtitle of the book by Alan Jasanoff:

The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are.

It’s so telling.

Our minds are not isolated in producing all those unforgettable impressions, ideas, thoughts, worries, sensations, and emotions. They are the product of the collaboration between our brains, all the fantastic rest of our bodies, and the world around us.

Alan Jasanoff has even a term for this “arrogance” of the brain to generate an illusion of its superiority.

In a review of his book, I found the following:

“In his new book, The Biological Mind, neuroscientist Alan Jasanoff argues that when it comes to understanding the brain, our minds have been wandering — at least in how we define, speak about, and study them. Jasanoff suggests that many of us have become too enamored of the brain’s seeming centrality and complexity, something he terms the ‘cerebral mystique.’” — Evan Nesterak, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Behavioral Scientist, in “Understanding the Biological Mind”

Of course, it is easier to term something so unidentifiable with one term. It’s so easy to say that the part of us responsible for our rational thinking, forming speech, and recognizable thoughts, is the conscious mind. And it is easy to say that anything else is the subconscious mind. But that brings the misconception that everything takes place in our head. In reality, it doesn’t.

I will most probably continue thinking of the part of me that creates sensations, feelings, and impulses not graspable with words, as my subconscious, but I will remind myself that it is not just a part of my brain. It is a part of the whole of me.