MedLink Health Connections Podcast

The Mind-Body Connection: How Physical and Mental Health Intertwine with Jordan Hoffman, LCSW

• MedLink Georgia • Season 1 • Episode 18

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Have you ever noticed your shoulders tensing up during a stressful moment? Or felt your heart racing before a big presentation? These aren't coincidences—they're powerful examples of the mind-body connection at work in your daily life.

In this enlightening conversation with Jordan Hoffman, Director of Behavioral Health Services at Medlink, we uncover the science behind how our physical and mental health systems communicate and influence each other constantly. Jordan brings over a decade of experience working in mental health and shares practical, accessible techniques for using this connection to your advantage.

What makes this discussion particularly valuable is how it transforms complex neurological concepts into simple daily practices. When anxiety strikes and your thoughts become overwhelming, Jordan explains how focusing on physical interventions—like paced breathing, lowering body temperature, or releasing muscle tension—can create a backdoor approach to calming your mind. "If we can't tell the brain to stop being anxious, can we tell the body to calm?" This powerful question becomes a gateway to understanding how we can influence our mental state through physical awareness.

You'll discover why mindfulness forms the foundation of a strong mind-body connection and learn specific grounding techniques that engage your senses to pull you out of anxious thought patterns. Jordan also shares accessible starting points for those not ready for therapy but wanting to strengthen this connection, including breathwork, yoga, meditation, and digital mindfulness tools that can integrate seamlessly into busy lives.

Subscribe to our podcast for more insightful conversations about health topics that affect your daily life, and visit medlinkga.org for additional resources to support your wellness journey. What physical signals might your body be sending you today that deserve your attention?

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Medlake Health Connections podcast, where we explore health and wellness topics that matter to our community. I'm your host, Tangela, and today we're talking about the mind-body connection, how physical health and mental health are linked, and why caring for both is so important. To help us dive into this conversation, I'm joined by Jordan Hoffman, our Director of Behavioral Health Services. Jordan, thank you so much for being here. To start, can you tell our listeners a little about yourself and your role here at Medlink?

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, Tangel. I'm happy to be here. Um, so I have been with Medlink for a little over eight years. I've worked in the mental health field for well over ten years now. I can't probably if I did the math, I don't really want to. Um, I love working with individuals and really helping them with their individual goals. Um very big on just how everything that we do affects ourselves. Part of why I love working with Medlink is we look at the whole person. So how the their physical health affects the mental health, which of course, you know, and every little thing is connected to one another. So, you know, if you're having issues with your feet and that's diabetic related, who need to see for that? And then you need to see a podiatrist and you need to see a therapist because you're stressed about it, and just everyone working together is so awesome.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for sharing that, Jordan. So let's start with the mind-body connection. How would you explain that in everyday terms?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, one of the things that I think is great about the term mind-body connection is the layman term really is right there. It is just the idea, and that's well-supported research, that our mind and our body are very connected. So our physical health is affected by our mental health, and our mental health is affected by our physical health. But even on a more minute level, what we do physically can influence how we feel emotionally in the moment, and vice versa. So if we physically feel stressed, that's gonna make us mentally feel stressed. And then we use that a lot in different types of therapy to really help the person learn to regulate because we can also sort of flip it on its head and how if we act differently or physically do things differently, or if we think differently, it affects the other. So we only have to affect one to really create change.

SPEAKER_00:

That makes sense. Can you give us some examples of how this connection is used in therapy or ways someone could practice it in daily life?

SPEAKER_01:

I think a great example is when somebody's having intense anxiety or even like true panic attacks that they may not even know why they're having it. And in that moment, those thoughts either are so jumbled or blanked out, or there's just no way they can stop the thoughts. They can't bring that anxious mind down any, they can't shut it down. So instead, when we have like the mind-body connection, one thing that's really great we can do is okay, we can sort of forget about the mind. Don't worry about stopping the anxious thoughts or trying to create them because some people it's the anxiety like blanks out their mind. They have no thoughts, they don't even know, they just feel panic. And so instead, it's can we focus on the body? Okay, can you take deep, soothing breaths? You know, pace breathing in through the nose for five, hold it for five, exhale for five. Can you bring down your body temperature? Very often when we're anxious or overwhelmed, our body temperature rises. We get really hot. So if we drink really cold water, using cold compresses to try to bring down the body temperature. If we can relax the body, can we physically think about okay, where am I holding tension in my body? Because that tension is feeding directly into the nervous system. That physical tension is telling the brain I'm anxious about something. So if we can't tell the brain to stop being anxious, can we tell the body to calm? So if we start calming the body, the mind starts relaxing with it. Um, it's really fascinating. You can see it like on any individual level. Like I know for myself I can be driving down the road and all of a sudden I'm feeling like really tense, like mentally. I know I'm anxious about like the traffic or the frustration or whatever it is, and then I realized, oh, like my shoulders are at my ears right now. I am like tensed up. Okay, can I relax my shoulders down? Can I relax into my seat? And then it's like, oh, whoosh, okay, I feel better. Like just in it kind of chicken or the egg. Was did I start tensing up and I felt anxious? Did I feel anxious and start tensing up? We don't really know, but either way, we just have to affect one of them. Um, and that's kind of how it helps in sort of a just sort of like a quick moment thing, but there's also a lot about the mind-body connection in terms of just the overall, like day-to-day things that we do, and that help also with like chronic conditions, you know, management of chronic pain, uh, general stress um management and real emotion regulation and how that is impacted by what we do both in terms of our mind and our body.

SPEAKER_00:

Got it. Okay, and part of this seems to be about self-awareness. How do you help someone start noticing their own thoughts, feelings, or body signals?

SPEAKER_01:

I do a lot of work with mindfulness, which is you know, the general idea of learning and training your brain to be very present. Because it does take practice, you know, it takes that awareness of the here and now. And I think it's and it's really difficult in today's time, you know, how often are we doing multiple things? How often is what we're thinking about what we're doing? You know, how much are we in tune with not just our body, but the present moment, you know? Um so we can there's a lot of different ways of practicing mindfulness, you know, that just using what we call grounding, which would be our sensory, what do you five things you see, four things you feel, three things you hear, two things you smell, um trying to use our physical senses to draw our attention to the present. Um it also has the added effect, which is just um if we are feeling really anxious or something in that moment, all of our senses are part of, are not part of the limbic system and our emotions are called in the limbic system of the brain. So if we shift our focus and we're stuck in the limbic system, we can sort of help shift out of it by shifting into one of the other lobes of the brain, like the occipital lobe, where we, which is where sight's processed, or um the temporal temporal lobe, temporal lobe, um, where we hear, so that it's actually shifting us out of the limbic system um and getting into some of the other parts of the brain that are not emotionally based.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, and let's say someone wants to try this but isn't quite ready to see a therapist. What are some ways they could start practicing the mind-body connection on their own?

SPEAKER_01:

Things like breath work, you know, focus on our breathing, how to take pace breathing, deep inhales, um, other activities like yoga, meditation, um, that all sort of focus on that connection of the mind-the-body, but also a lot about the present moment. You know, yoga is a great example of it's very much about your breath and about movement in that moment. Um, so there's a lot of just exercise people can do on their own. There's mindfulness apps that you can do. Um, I have one that like sends me every couple days, like every day, I get like a mindfulness moment text message that like reminds me to be mindful. I think it technically comes for health insurance.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Um is where I got it from. Um it's like mindfulness moment, and it just tells you like a little mindful phrase, but it just comes the text message, and it's also a great way just to remind yourself to check in. So, like when I get it, I'm like, oh, okay, that's a great moment for me. Just like, can I pause for a second to kind of check in with myself, check in with how I'm feeling? Um, can I check in with what's going on throughout the day? And what do I need to do for my own like self-care and for that um mindfulness? And part of when we have that mindfulness and we start having awareness, it's it really helps again with that mind-body connection because there is research that shows that people who have a strong mind-body connection have that real internal awareness, typically do have better stress management, um, improved sleep, and part of it being because they're in tune with noticing like those little things of I'm slightly stressed, I'm slightly overwhelmed. What am I doing to correct that? Or am I letting it build up? You know, that we think about people when they're struggling with sleep, if they're feeling really stressed and overwhelmed, or when people might hit that tipping point where they have an emotional reaction, that whether it's an angry outburst, or they cry, or they just need to they kind of shut down, how much of that buildup that's happened that they weren't checking in with themselves and taking care of.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much, Jordan, for sharing your insight today. This was such a valuable discussion about the mind-body connection, self-care, and mindfulness. I know our listeners will walk away with a lot of practical tips they can apply in their own lives. Thank you for tuning in to the Medlink Health Connections podcast. We hope you found today's episode informative and inspiring. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Remember, the information shared in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not replace professional medical advice. Always consult with your healthcare provider for aiding medical concerns. Stay connected with us on social media and visit our website at medlinkga.org for more resources and updates. Until next time, stay healthy and take care.