Another article which has some relevance for me since there is a large Hmong population in the Twin Cities and I once taught writing to a class of mostly Hmong students.
What is your experience of the mind-body connection? Is it as powerful as this article claims? If positive thinking can make you healthy, can negative thoughts/beliefs make you unhealthy or even kill you? Do you believe in evil spirits or curses? Or do you have any strange sleep experiences to report?
I tend to disagree with the claim made in the article that the nightmares and cultural beliefs are the sole cause of the death cases during sleep among the Hmong people. I am more inclined to believe that the reason why they are literally dying in their dreams could be somewhat decently explained, to say the least, through a medical condition. After having conducted a brief research on the subject in question, namely the Sudden Death Syndrome, a more plausible explanation, which is also incidentally mentioned in the article, is that the “victims” are suffering from an inherited cardiac arrhythmia. The beliefs of the Hmong people can be simply viewed as an interpretation of the unknown as they are most likely unaware of their disease. However, this is natural. It is the way one justifies experiences, which cannot be explained within the boundaries of reason. Associating monsters with the events is one way of accomplishing that. Perhaps, the dread imposed by such beliefs upon the Hmong people contributes a tiny bit to the circumstances leading to the “victim’s” death. For example, the fear leads to increased blood pressure, which coupled with the genetic cardiac arrhythmia could prove a lethal combination. However, this is nothing but an individual case, which leads me to my second point.
ReplyDeleteThe claim that Chinese-Americans died younger than people, who were not born under a bad sign or ones not related to the concept at all, caught my attention. The research does not provide us with sufficient background information for us to be able to verify its validity. What I mean to say by this, is we do not know whether the Chinese-Americans are dying exactly because of their beliefs or due to genetic proneness to the given disease, which is lacking in people of other decent. In that regard, the research should not be awarded full credit as a mean to justifying the existence of “nocebos”.
As far as my experiences with the dream world are concerned, I have never suffered sleep paralysis, at least not consciously. However, I have experienced another equally fascinating phenomenon called lucid dreaming. What this essentially is, is a dream state, in which one is consciously aware of the fact that he is currently dreaming and is, therefore, able to control and influence the environment within the dream. This has happened to me only twice so far by pure chance and although several ways of engaging in lucid dreaming exist, I was countless times unsuccessful after attempting them. There is another variation to lucid dreaming, which is astral projection, where the mind is separated from the physical world and drifts away into the astral planes resulting in an out-of-body experience, but that is far beyond my comprehension to even dare try.
I agree with most of the points that create the foundation for this article. I believe that the influence that our emotions, beliefs and attitude have on both our physical and mental health is immense, and that the psychological state of a person can cause a huge difference in their lives. Ironically, thoughts and feelings, things that are completely abstract, are some of the most powerful things in this world.
ReplyDeleteConcerning the deaths of the Hmong people, I would have thought it very improbable for so many diverse people, from different regions in Southeast Asia, to die in their sleep shrouded in same mysterious circumstances without there being a medical link between them. However, since this was in the 1980s, when the religious percentage of the population was definitely higher than it is now, such a coincidence could have taken place. Coincidence, because I believe that is all it could have been, since the one hundred people that died must have similar thoughts, emotions and beliefs, or else the deaths would not have taken place under basically the same conditions.
Furthermore, I also agree with Lachezar’s proposition, that the sleep paralysis might not have been the direct cause of the death, as it was stated in the article, but one of the factors that contributed to the development of some a medical condition that these Hmong men shared.
Luckily, I have never experienced sleep paralysis or any other similar sensation that is linked with sleep. I find these phenomena as frightening as I find them fascinating, since it strikes me as something extremely uncomfortable to not have any control over one’s body. Moreover, since I do not remember almost all of my dreams, I cannot say if I have experienced any interesting ones, even though my siblings have told me that I frequently sit up in bed, talk and occasionally sleepwalk. On one occasion I called my sister in the middle of the night and had a long conversation with her, a phone call that I did not know about until she casually mentioned it to me the following day and as I checked the “recent calls” in my phone, I realized she was telling the truth.
Although I do not specifically believe in “evil spirits” and “curses”, I am confident that there is something supernatural in this world that is beyond the comprehension of a mere human being.
This article caught my attention straight away, even just by reading the title of it. It seemed to be very interesting because im really interested in beliefs and im quite superstitious.
ReplyDeleteI believe that there are some connections between the mind and the body for sure because it is usually said that if u think positively your health status is at a better level as if you were thinking negatively. Simply this is the fact of being optimistic or pessimistic. I also believe that optimistic people live a happier life, since they see everything in a better way that prevents them from falling into depressions. The mind body connections can also include about thinking how well you feel. For example if you will think of being sick and depressed for too long, there is a greater chance to really get sick ad be depressed because our mind programmed it that way. Even though I believe in these connections that happen throughout our lives quite often, I don’t really tend to agree with this article that the mind body connections can be that serious to cause killing dreams, night mares and the sleep paralysis. However it could be true, that in some cultures people could have that strong control over their minds and bodies like the studies suggest. Some spirits are really strong. Astrology, horoscopes can be considered as the controls of our minds as well. Some people read it with total belief and some just read it through with no interest. It depends on how superstitious we are.
I totally agree that our “mind is so powerful” and that it can lead to problems of making us sick as I said before. The only paradox here I find is that the powerful mind can “even cause our own death” which is in some ways harsh to say. Sometimes, we cant really control our minds which can cause that we wont be able to prevent some possible problems. This can be when we are deeply in love or deeply sad.
Well, it is hard for me to say whether I believe in evil spirits because I fortunately never had a chance to experience such things but it could be true that they exist. If people say that good spirits exist, so then why shouldn’t the evil exist as well? In addition, I have many friends that tell me that they suffer from night mares sometimes, so a discussion could be made about it. However, I cant really argument about this because I don’t have any experiences from this branch.
In conclusion, I think that the claims of this article of our “mind causing our deaths” are a bit too powerful because I don’t think that our mind can affect our “local biology” that seriously. Otherwise, I believe that the mind body strong connections really exist and that it depends on us individually, how much we will let our selves to be under control of our minds.
@Lachezar
ReplyDeleteBased on my understanding of your comment, I think you say, that their belief only affected them in physical way (that physical changes related to mind state such as increased blood pressure were involved). I think, that if it was so, the doctors would have identified the problem as a disease. Yet, they do not know what caused death of Hmong men. It can be some mysterious infection or, as Hmongs belive, some acient magic.
Even though mysterious infection is more likely to be the cause, I still can not discard curse from consideration only because our science can not explain them. Someone might say that it is proved that they do not exist, but that is not true. They just aren't proved to exist.
I dislike that you discard this option, likely because of lack of scientific explanation.
And I also experienced Lucid dream. Once I was sleeping, woke up, and went to sleep again. I was thinking of one concert, and suddenly, I was there. I thought how awesome would it be if one girl was there, than she appeared. I knew it was just a dream, yet she turned me down when I asked her out. So much for controlling your dream :D
I found it very wise of Jana and Lachezar to connect the common beliefs of the Hmong men with their genetic cardiac arrhythmia causing the deadly mixture which lead to the 116 deaths under similar conditions. There’s nothing to add to this conclusion to make it sound more believable to me.
ReplyDelete@ Sabi: I will continue with the issue of the mind-body connection Sabi mentioned. Since I don’t believe in a personalised god (like the Christian merciful God) and I’m more inclined to the scientific study of the world, I reject the concept of either evil or good spirits. I found interesting what Sabi said that we can’t argument unless we have some personal experience. This also reminds of the statement some believers say that God cannot be pragmatically studied but understood only if you start to believe. Nevertheless, there for sure is a body-mind connection but it still remains one of the biggest philosophic as well as scientific problems. Although it is not yet scientifically explained (thus also beyond human comprehension as Jana suggested, I suppose), there already are studies dealing with this problem. For example the findings of the effect of positive thinking seem, as well to me as to Sabi, quite valid. Therefore I dare to say that human thoughts, emotions and beliefs can have such strong effect on our lives, i.e. faith, and the physical body in the second place. I know my assumption may sound ambitious but unlike every person commenting on this article before me I think that boundaries of the power of mind are further than our common sense allows them to be.
@Jana
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Jana’s statement that in the 1980 there were more religious people in the world than today. For example, to support her statement with numbers i found out the percentage of believers and non-believers in the whole world in 2000 and 2005. In 2000 the percentage of non-religious people was 12.7% and the number of religious was 87.3%. In 2005 the number of non-religious people in the world was 16% and 84% of religious people. According to this fact, I can state that the number of non-religious people is rising each year.
I also support the statement of Jana and Lachezar, which is saying that the sleep paralysis does not have to be the cause of the deaths of the Hmong men. There are several solutions to the question why the scientists could not figure out the cause of their death. For example the technology was not at the same level as it is today and also lack of the knowledge about the human mind and body. Moreover, I also don’t think that the sleep paralysis and the mysterious evil thing is the reason for their death. However, I do believe into the mind body control and that we can control our own health with our mind sometimes.