Your mind-body team is made up of your mind and your body. No surprise there! Your mind and body are closely related because they can both be

()given to you genetically
()created by you
()altered by some physical world event

Genetics

Your mind-body team is biologically based. There's no escaping your pear-shaped body (a gift from your mother) or your tendency to tinker with things better left alone (thanks, dad). Many of your traits and characteristics are filtered to you through generation after generation of peculiarly-shaped, oddly attributed, and strangely quirky humans.

Although it is true that some of your behaviors are learned from experience, there is logical proof that many are genetic. Consider twins who have been separated from birth. When reunited, they always have more in common than their eye color.

Your Creation

Either subconsciously or consciously, you look and feel the way you do because of your choice to look and feel that way. You create the face you present to the world (and the one you project to yourself).

Looks

Sometimes we are unhappy with the way we look because of genetics or an injury. It sounds simplistic, even Pollyanna-ish, but you do not have to feel bad because you don't look like your ideal person! The willingness to muck about feeling sub-par to others because of the way you look is a direct result of what you allow your mind to think.

Only you care about the way you look. The rest of us only care about who you are, how you treat us, and how your life affects and intersects our own.

Usually, if you are unhappy with the way you look, it is because of something you have chosen not to do. You chose not to wash your hair this morning. Or you chose to sit in front of your computer for six years straight without exercising your body (that was my choice?). It is your choice to radiate what you want the rest of us to see.

Feelings and Your Mind

The mind is a powerful tool. When you control your feelings and emotions, you create peace for yourself. (You create peace for everyone around you, too.) When you allow your mind to run away from you with feelings that cause wild thoughts and worry, then you are also creating something for yourself. But it isn't peace! Choosing to control your emotions, or choosing to let them control you, is strictly within your own power.

You create your own feelings in your mind. You tell yourself what you 'should' feel, and even go so far as to explain 'why' you feel that way. Usually, explaining why you feel a certain way puts the responsibility for that feeling onto another person or event.

You cannot change an event that has already occurred. You cannot change another person. But you can change your feeling about people or events to one that is healthy and aligns itself with your best interests.

Situational Change

Sometimes, your mind and body are altered by external circumstances. Damage to your mind is not necessarily reflected on your body, and damage to your body is not necessarily reflected in your mind.

Perhaps you have been physically disfigured or mentally abused at some point in your life. These things happen. The extent to which you allow them to affect you is completely up to you.

Your mind-body team is the result of your life experience. In a nutshell, your mind-body team is the result of everything you have experienced, thought and acted upon during your life.

Spirit

Your spirit is the one thing about you that cannot be altered by any life-event or mind-set. Your spirit fills your body no matter what your body looks like now or how it changes. Your spirit sends the same messages to your mind no matter what mind-set you've created for yourself.

Your spirit is yours and yours alone, but it is more than the person you see in the mirror and more than the person you project to the rest of us. Your spirit is a unique piece of God, just as a drop of seawater is a unique bit of the sea. You cannot alter something perfect. Choosing to ignore your spirit doesn't change it. Dissecting your spirit into a million bits only leaves you with a million bits of the most perfect thing you can imagine. You cannot take away from your spirit because it isn't within your power to do so.

I think we're put here in these bodies and with these minds so our spirits have the chance to become more. Our spirit's role is somewhat like being a mother. You tell your children what is best for them over and over and over again. You can't make them do it. You have to be patient and loving. You have to step back and just observe them making mistakes (because they're ignoring you anyway).

When those children make such a mess of things they don't know what to do, they call you. And there you are. You've been there all along. You may not be able to make the mess go away, but your children are at least willing to follow your advice because they know their way isn't working. Our spirits, like loving mothers, know and do what's best for us.

The Challenge

Your spirit is unique. It is yours. In many ways, spirit is in your care as much as you are in it's. If you go through life ignoring your spirit, how does it have the chance to become more? How can your spirit grow from the time you are born until the time you die if you ignore it?

Maybe, our purpose here is to grow love through communication with spirit. The connection between the mind-body team and spirit must be open and free-flowing at all times. We must learn to pay attention to tiny voices, gut instincts and intuition.

After we've paid attention, we have to act. After we've acted, we have to think about what it all means. While thinking about what it all means, we have to be willing to let the meaning permeate what we do and think for the rest of our lives ? we have to be willing to constantly change.

Change is the by-product of an open connection to spirit. Change is always a challenge because it can be uncomfortable and it is always unfamiliar. But you cannot change if your connection to spirit is closed.

The challenge is learning how to keep that connection open. Each spirit communicates in a different way. How does your spirit communicate with you?

Keep searching, learning, growing and changing. You will find your connection to spirit open.

Kellie Helget co-founded http://groups.msn.com/BlueladyMuse, an online community that promotes total wellness and offers information about althernative health choices. She believes that by following only what has heart and meaning, we can change the world - especially our own little bits of it. By following her heart and spirit meaning, she has co-created Bluelady Muse, located online at http://www.blueladymuse.com, to promote self-empowerment through wellness to women just like you.