Classroom Edition: Mind, Body, Health part 1 with Cougar Hall

In this Classroom Edition of the Y Health Podcast, host Cougar Hall introduces listeners to one of Brigham Young University’s most impactful courses: Mind-Body Health (HLTH 383). As Part 1 of this series, Cougar draws from over 15 years of teaching the class to share the foundational principles of psychoneuroimmunology—the science of how our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors influence physical health and immune function.

This episode offers a meaningful glimpse into the course’s core topics, including stress, personality, resilience, sleep, relationships, and the powerful roles of humor, altruism, and mindfulness in overall well-being. Cougar also reflects on the lasting influence of his former professor and explains how he came to carry on the course’s legacy.

At the heart of the episode is a powerful concept known as the “Law of Present Moment Living”—a framework that challenges the common habit of postponing happiness until life feels perfect. Instead, listeners are invited to embrace both the good and the difficult aspects of life simultaneously, cultivating gratitude, awareness, and emotional balance in the present.

Whether you're a student, a health professional, or simply someone seeking greater peace and perspective, this first installment provides practical insights and timeless wisdom to help you live more fully—right here, right now.

Recorded, Edited & Produced by Averee Bates, Christy Gonzalez, Harper Xinyu Zhang, Madison McArthur, Kailey Hopkins, and Tanya Gale

Transcript

 Hello, this is Cougar Hall, host of the Y Health Podcast. Today I'm excited to bring you a classroom edition. This format is designed to share one or more key concepts from a course offered here at Brigham Young University that we hope you find beneficial without the pressure of course assignments or tests.

So breathe easy, sit back and enjoy.

Hello, this is Cougar Hall. I am. Often the host of the Y Health Podcast. Today I'm doing my very own classroom edition, uh, recording. And the class that I'm choosing to focus on today is a class called Health 3 83 Mind Body Health. I've been teaching this class for, I would say the better part of 15 years.

When I was an undergraduate in this department here at BYU in the mid nineties, I took this class from Dr. Keith Karen. And Dr. Karen, also the author of the textbook that we still use was amazing. And this was really his area of expertise. Was MINDBODY Health or what the The scientific name is Psycho Neuro Immunology, and I loved the class.

I think it was probably my favorite class at BYU. And when I was hired here in 2008, Dr. Karen was still on faculty, but a couple years later he retired and. Like often happens when someone retires kind of their favorite class or their research agenda or whatever programs they were running, they often fall by the wayside within a couple of years because there's no one to kind of pick up the torch and carry it.

And I, I think that. May have happened to MINDBODY Health, except that here I am a junior faculty member and I raised my hand in a faculty meeting and I said, wait, let's, let's not vote that class off the island because it was my favorite. And they said, well, yeah, I mean, who's gonna teach it though? And I had to admit that I am not an expert in psycho neuro immunology.

It's not what I research, it's not what my training was in. But I said, well, um, if I could use his textbook, which was fantastic, I think I could probably get through it. It might not be awesome at first, but I'll get there. And the response was, okay, fine. But you already have a full slate of classes to teach that you know the classes we hired you to teach.

So this will need to be something on the side, an evening class, a different type of offering. So that's what I've been doing. I've been, I've been teaching this as an evening class, so the class is typically on Monday and Wednesday evening, and I usually teach at fall and winter and spring. And what I wanna share today in the next five or 10 minutes is really how I start the class.

So if that's okay, the first thing we do is we define what psycho neuroimmunology is, and it is the scientific investigation of how the brain affects the body's immune cells. And how the immune system can be affected by emotions, behavior, I think attitudes, relationships to some extent. It's all these things that are really impactful on our health and on our wellbeing that aren't, you know, immunizations and nutrition and physical activity.

Some kind of, you know, mainstream public health topics, if you will. And maybe to help illustrate the type of topics that we cover in this course, I'll just read you just the topics of each chapter we have. We have 21 chapters. I won't give you all 21, but I'll give you a nice little sample. First is a stress, and then we have a chapter on personality and disease.

And the next chapter is kind of the other side of that coin, which is personality and resilience. So why some people don't get ill or when they do get ill, why they recover quickly. Uh, we have a chapter on explanatory style. We talk about locus of control, uh, a chapter on anger and hostility, which are really detrimental to our cardiovascular health.

We know that, but so much of that is identifying emotions and perceiving our life situations differently. There's a chapter, which I love, is on humor. There are benefits to smiling, there's benefits to humor. It's really kind of this natural anecdote to stress, right? A chapter on sleep, which I tell my students, is the most important topic that we don't talk about in health.

It impacts everything. All of our endocrine system, nervous system, immune system are fully recharged while we sleep, and most of us are still operating on a sleep debt day in and day out. We certainly have chapters on anxiety and on depression, on grief, the benefits of social support. We talk about loneliness, which is on the rise.

We talk about the health benefits of marriage and family, different parenting approaches. We talk about the health benefits of spirituality and religion, and those are different constructs, but both can be very important for our health and our wellbeing. We talk about the health benefits of altruism.

Which is selfless service, looking outside of ourselves, which is really one of the best things we can do when we are experiencing melancholy or we do have a diagnosis of depression or anxiety, is to look outside of ourselves. And it's really hard to do that. But that's what altruism is really helping us with.

And we do talk a little bit about nutrition 'cause there are, there are some nutritional approaches that will definitely impact our mental and our emotional health for sure. And then we wrap up with a, a chapter on behavioral medicine. And so I love teaching this class one of my favorites. I think students, although I'm not the best instructor in the world, I think students generally really enjoy the class.

There is a aspect that really is a, about personal. You know, benefit application, if you will. And then certainly I try to push the students towards the professional application. That can be challenging. 'cause I, if I have 85 students, there's probably 85 different, you know, career paths there. But I, I ask them to really reflect on what, where do you see yourself landing professionally and how can you apply the principles that we're talking about in class to help others flourish, to improve the quality of life or the longevity of life or wellbeing.

For those individuals that you'll work with, I wanna share with, with everyone. I call this the law of present moment living. And in all honesty, I don't have the source anymore, which is terrible. I have looked online to find the source, but Dr. Keith, Karen presented this in 1995 when I took his class and I, it was something, it was a handout that I held onto.

So I start every class, each semester reading through the law of present moment living. It starts out, it says, be here now. Then it says, dragging the past into the present or living a life based on undefined future. Maybes is a certain ticket to despair. The law of present moment living is the only way out.

I know that sounds kind of dramatic, right? There's a little bit of the princess bride. There's the pit of despair. This is the, the only way out right is to live in the moment. It says, the essence of the law of present moment living is this. If you are taking part in activities and entertaining thoughts that do not support life, that make you wallow in misery and indulge in negative thinking, then no matter what you may claim to the contrary, you are polluting the moment.

So really descriptive words here. I love it. You're polluting the moment, you're wallowing in misery right now. We, we all have some misery in our lives. It may be that there's more misery than there are, you know, beautiful, bright, carefree moments. But is that really what we're focused on? Is our energy really engulfed by that negativity?

It continues. It says if you are immersed in life enhancing activities, and most of us are pretty familiar with this word immersion. We're not dipping our foot into the pool. We are immersed, we are, we are submerged. We are all the way in, right? So we're all the way in on life and life enhancing activities.

And enjoying them with positive enthusiasm, then you are living in the moment. This is a dimension of wellness. We are never going to know unless and until we cultivate a consciousness of living in the now. So that's kind of this first little introduction to the law. Present moment living is contrasting, you know, this, this.

Selection of negativity versus, you know, positivity. But here's the payoff pitch. In my opinion, it continues. It says we all carry a tendency to put life on hold pending the resolution of some problem. We may say, quote, when my life is better, I'll be able to start focusing on positive things. End quote.

And the point here is this is a huge mistake. If we put our life on hold, if we put happiness on hold, optimism, hope, faith, on hold until we resolve every issue in our life. If we, if we tackle every, every dark corner of negativity and we wipe that out. We're gonna be 95 years old and saying, those were the days I remember like, what?

What are we talking about? That's not gonna happen. I sometimes facetiously tell my students that, Hey, whatever pond we crawled out of, and then I wink at them and I'm like, okay, so our Heavenly Father who created this world for us, like this is a fundamental part of the plan. We are gonna have some really wonderful things in our lives, and we're gonna have some really difficult, challenging, negative things in our lives.

And my point and the point of the law of present moment living is that we can take them both at the same time. Our hearts are amazing. Our minds are amazing. We can hold on to all the good things, and I can express gratitude and love, and I can maintain hope and optimism. I, I can do that and also recognize and fully acknowledge that there are some things in my life that are far from perfect, that there is some work that I need to do, that there are, there are some negative, unpleasant, stressful, you name it, situations that I'm, I'm trying to resolve.

I'm trying to work those things out, or those are relationships that I'm trying to mend, but we can hold onto both. I plead with my students. Please do not put your happiness on hold until everything's perfect in your life. Let's not do that. You can't call a timeout until everything, okay, now we have all, everything's good.

Now all, all is well. Now we can move forward because there's always going to be something that's challenging. We have a loving heavenly Father who is. He's committed to stretching us and he will stretch you and bless you, and stretch you and bless you. So this is the law, present moment living and as we apply it to our lives, I think there's a couple things that we are confronted with.

One is we cannot continue to say, I'll be happy when, like we just make a decision that I'm happy now. And that doesn't mean things are perfect, but I'm happy now and I'm content now and I'm grateful now. If we continue to say I'll be happy when, and most of us have done this many times throughout our life, I'll be happy when I'm 16 and I can drive or I can date.

I'll be happy when I'm 18 and don't have to date in groups. I'll be happy when I am graduated with, you know, from high school or I'll be happy when I get into college. I'll be happy when I know what my major is. For many members of the church, I'll be happy when I have my mission call. Be happy when I'm in the MTC.

Be happy when I'm outta the MTC. Be happy when I'm a senior companion. This just goes on and on and on until I'll be happy when I'm married. I'll be happy when we have kids. Be happy when we have a house and now it's all be happy when the kids are out of the house and it continues indefinitely. And if we can't be happy right now, embracing all the good in our life and fully acknowledging.

The less than good. The, the negative, the heavy stuff, the hard stuff. Then we're never gonna be happy. And I just have this testimony and I, this law of present moment living there. There this is, there's some serious truth here that we have the capacity. To hold onto, to lean into, to experience both the pleasant and the unpleasant.

So the, the whole handout that was shared with me in 1995, it ends with this. It says, start now. The law of present moment living is the antithesis of procrastination. We can put off unpleasant activities, but in doing so, we also put off the enjoyable ones. We ration our pleasure and contentment as if the supply were limited.

It's as if I can't smile today. I can't serve others today. I can't really be joyful today because there's, there's this negativity we've, we've got just embrace both. And move forward with faith with goodness. Love it. So that's the law, present moment living, and that's how I begin every semester of MINDBODY Health.

I'll just wrap up with this thought, and this is a quote from James Barez, and it's really about mindfulness, which is a huge part of the MINDBODY Health curriculum. But he says mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different. I love that he says, he says, enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes, which it will.

So yeah, enjoy the moment. Be right here, right now. Enjoy all the pleasantries, and you know that they're gonna go away. You, you know that, that happiness is gonna be fleeting. There's gonna be some, there's gonna be something stressful that enters the door here, just around the corner, right? He continues. He says, be with the unpleasant.

Be with it. This is like a Brene Brown thought, like lean into it, like, you know, feel all the feels right. He says, be with the unpleasant. Without fearing it will always be this way, which it won't. That is, that is so powerful. When things are not going well, sit with it and acknowledge it's not always gonna be this way.

It's gonna improve. Things improve and when things are awesome, sit with it. Soak it up, like enjoy it and don't be so fearful that, oh no, when's the other shoe gonna drop? Oh, that's all good. Life keeps happening. This is what we signed up for. Take the good. Take the bad. Man, embrace it all and live like, wow, this is what we're supposed to do.

We're supposed to make some hay. Breathe it in, breathe it out. So I'll wrap up with that. That's my first classroom edition. Just your introduction to MINDBODY Health, some things that have been very helpful for me. Appreciate you listening. Thanks so much. Thank you for supporting the Y Health Podcast. We look forward to continuing to provide you with engaging discussions as well as more focused educational content through our new classroom edition.

And our timely public health service announcements. We really truly appreciate your support and hope that you find the Y Health Podcast beneficial.