November 9, 2026
How thoughts affect the body — the patterns we live with
We do not always notice when something changes.
Our digestion becomes less comfortable. We go to the loo more often, or less. Our sleep becomes lighter. These changes can creep in so gradually that we adjust without really registering them. Then someone asks, “Has it always been like that?” We pause. Actually, no. But we cannot quite remember when it became this way. We might put it down to “just life”, without considering another part of our daily experience: the activity of our minds.
In my work as a Lifestyle Prescriptions® Health Coach, I explore how thoughts affect the body — and how familiar patterns of thinking and the bodily responses they influence can become part of everyday life without us noticing.
A simple exercise offers a way to begin exploring this relationship.
A moment on frosty grass
Imagine you are standing outside early on a winter morning. You are wearing a T-shirt and shorts, with bare feet on the grass. The ground is stiff with frost. Each blade presses cold against the soles of your feet. The icy air touches your bare arms and legs; a chilly breeze moves across your skin, giving you goosebumps. You see your breath as you breathe out.
Stay with the scene for a moment. What do you notice in your body?
Now let that image go.
Imagine instead lying on a beautiful beach. The sand beneath you is soft and warm. You feel the heat of the sun on your legs, arms, and face; you hear the lapping of waves on the shore, almost rocking you like a lullaby. You notice yourself sighing — in this moment, life feels so good.
Notice your experience again.
You might feel a suggestion of cold in the first scene, a tightening or an urge to draw yourself in. With the second, you might notice warmth or a sense of settling. Some people notice very little; there is no particular response to achieve. The room around you has stayed the same. Yet the imagined experience can influence how you feel within it.
Research into thermal imagery has examined both perceived temperature and measured skin temperature. A small experimental study found differences between warm and cold imagery, while also showing that felt temperature and measured physiological changes did not correspond neatly. The relationship seems more complex than simply imagining cold and becoming physically colder.
Thousands of thoughts each day
In 2020, researchers at Queen’s University estimated that we have around 6,200 thoughts a day. They arrived at this figure by identifying changes in brain activity that appeared to mark transitions between thoughts, then extrapolating across waking hours. It indicates the scale of our mental activity, rather than an exact daily count. Learning about the sheer volume of our thoughts, and the repetitive nature of thinking, was an important part of my own journey. It helped me recognise that returning to familiar thoughts is a normal part of the human experience.
We revisit conversations, rehearse what we might say, anticipate what lies ahead and return to unfinished concerns. Some repetition helps us plan, learn and make sense of experience. Other thoughts keep circling without bringing resolution.
Take a moment to reflect on your own experience. What subjects do you return to throughout the day? What are you rehearsing while making breakfast or driving? What occupies you when you wake during the night?
Repetition can become so familiar that we stop recognising it as repetition. We are simply thinking about work, the family, money or something someone said. Meanwhile, our bodies are involved in that experience. One study of everyday thinking and sleep found that repetitive evening thoughts were associated with longer time to fall asleep, reduced sleep efficiency, and shorter sleep duration, measured using wrist actigraphy.
What escapes our awareness?
In the imagery exercise, we deliberately introduce a scene and give ourselves time to notice a response. Everyday life rarely offers such a clear beginning and end. A concern can accompany us through the day. An expectation can influence how we approach a conversation before we have put it into words. Familiar patterns do not always announce themselves as conscious thoughts.
Research offers an interesting example of responses operating outside awareness. In a laboratory study, participants learned to associate different faces with higher or lower levels of heat pain. Later, their pain ratings changed according to which face appeared, even when the faces were presented too briefly for conscious recognition.
This does not tell us the cause of an individual’s symptoms. It does show that learned associations can influence bodily experience without conscious recognition of the cue. There are therefore two things worth becoming curious about: the patterns of thought and expectation we have grown accustomed to, and the bodily changes we have also come to accept as normal.
Bruce Lipton: perception, belief and biology
Cell biologist Bruce Lipton explores the relationship between perception, learned beliefs and biology in The Biology of Belief. He places particular emphasis on the distinction between our conscious intentions and patterns operating outside awareness.
His work invites us to consider how earlier learning influences our present experience. We can consciously want to feel at ease while carrying familiar expectations of criticism, conflict or having to cope alone. Those expectations can feel so ordinary that we have little reason to question them.
Lipton connects his account of perception and belief to epigenetics—the study of changes in gene regulation that do not alter the underlying DNA sequence. His emphasis on how learned perceptions and habitual responses shape our experience of health encourages curiosity about what a person has come to expect from life, how those expectations developed, and how they experience them now.
Dawson Church: emotional experience and physiological change
Dawson Church’s work adds a practical, research-based dimension to this exploration. Through his writing and research into Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), he examines how addressing emotional distress can be accompanied by measurable changes in the body.
EFT combines attention to a particular concern, feeling or memory with spoken phrases and tapping on specific points on the body.
In a 2012 randomised study involving 83 participants, Church and colleagues compared an hour of EFT with a supportive interview or no treatment. The EFT group showed a greater reduction in salivary cortisol, alongside improvements in reported psychological distress.
A 2020 replication involving 53 participants also found a cortisol reduction in the EFT group. The difference compared with psychoeducation was statistically significant; the difference compared with no treatment was not. Reported distress did not mirror the cortisol findings. These are findings about short-term responses, with further questions about how the different elements of EFT contribute.
Like Bruce Lipton, Church’s work also contributes to the foundation of my approach by exploring emotional experience and physiology together and offering a practical way to work with distress.
Making space to notice
Within Lifestyle Prescriptions® Health Coaching, I make time to explore the person’s experience alongside the changes they have noticed in their body.
When did something begin to feel different? What was happening in life around that time? What has become an ongoing concern? What do they notice as they speak about it?
We do not need to decide in advance what a symptom means. A bodily sensation does not reveal a particular belief, and we cannot assume a connection simply because two things happened together.
But we can make room for an enquiry that everyday life often overlooks. We can notice that our digestion has changed. We can also notice how much of the day we spend anticipating, rehearsing or worrying. We can explore whether there is a relationship, alongside appropriate attention to physical health and the circumstances of our lives.
Awareness gives us a starting point. From there, we can consider what would be helpful: support with a difficult situation, a change in a familiar pattern, an opportunity to process an experience, or more space to understand what we need.
The thoughts we live with deserve our attention. So do the gradual bodily changes wehave learnt to live with.
Loulou James | Founder of the Buttafly
Reflections from my work in natural back care and embodied spine health
May your spine be aligned, your body be at ease, and your spirit soar with vitality.