MINDING CORONA – Is Your Mind More Powerful than the Virus? «

MINDING CORONA – Is Your Mind More Powerful than the Virus?

August 6, 2020 Minding Corona No Comments

The book MINDING CORONA has been written by me from March 2020 onwards.

The chapters are annotated with the date of writing. It is a story of my unfolding insights into the importance of the mind in the evolution of COVID-19 while the latter is taking the world by storm. Gradually, these insights have become more profound and multifaceted. Everything kept its place within a scientific tapestry.

I was able to draw on my knowledge from several domains: medicine, psychology, neurocognitive science, artificial intelligence, and my personal voyage since 1997 in the fields of autosuggestion, placebo, empathy, and subconceptual processing.

Seldom mentioned in mainstream media, nor academic output, minding corona may be more critical than corona itself. The mind may be more important than the virus. Yet the mind is invisible. You are looking from it, but you don’t see it. At present, all eyes are on the virus. We are fighting battles against the virus.

Meanwhile, what is happening is the result of an interplay between the virus and the immune system.

The latter is heavily intermingled with the mind. Most people who die from COVID-19 do so more through an overreaction from the immune system than through viral overload. So, why is in the first stage, the immune system reacting too weakly against the virus while, after that and with the virus mostly gone, it slams all doors much too hard while the immune systems of many people has been misconducted through years of chronic stress?

The relevant insights can be brought into practice immediately.

During these corona months, I have developed an app that is freely available to everyone (Google and Apple stores). It contains a number of guided meditative exercises that apply to any situation of acute-upon-chronic stress that leads to symptoms. COVID was ‘only’ the inspiration. Of course, the app does not cure. It is your mind that cures, as it does in many other circumstances.

If the present coronavirus acts like the other coronaviruses – and it appears to do so – then we are only in the eye of the storm in Europe and the US, despite the ongoing daily death toll. Worldwide, the situation is getting worse in many places. Moreover, even in a good case scenario, a vaccine will most probably have +/- 50% efficacy. Medications until now only bring partial relief. In many parts of the world, social distancing will not meet full social discipline. An already wrecked economy will receive new blows.

Since we have part of the answer within ourselves – costing nothing – we should take full advantage of this. On top of the present utter need, we may use what we have inside ourselves for many other occasions.