Beyond the mind-body dichotomy:
Viewing the mind as a process

Body, Mind and Spirit (or Soul) are convenient terms used to delineate different aspects of the human system.

Whatever touches one aspect has the potential to affect all aspects. This means that:
- what happens at the body level influences the mind;
- what happens with the mind helps mold the body.

Traditional thinking has been seeing mind (or soul) as distinct from body. Current scientific has shown a correlation between brain activity and mind processes. It is also expanded our definition of mind beyond its narrow definition.

In other words, what we call mind could be described as an interaction between our brain, the rest of our nervous system, the other systems in our body, and our environment (for the most part, the cultural and social factors that affect our engagement with the world).

Daniel Siegel, author of The Developing Mind and The Mindful Brain, says:

"We do think of the mind as a noun, rather than a verb, and that use of linguistic categorization—like the mind is a noun, an entity, rather than a process—gets us into a lot of trouble; because this is a fluid, dynamic, moving process, and when you really see it that way, all sorts of windows open up as opportunities to help people transform the process that is the mind. And rather than being fixed in the notion that the mind is like an object, when you see it as a verb, as a process, you can actually work with it in a more effective manner."

Source: 1/08 conversation with Daniel Siegel

Or: "The mind is an embodied and relational regulatory process."

Source: 6/10 conversation with Daniel Siegel

See more about mindfulness.