Like many folks at some time or another, I've witnessed some amazing events or been given incredible anecdotes suggesting a mind-body-spirit connection. What exactly is going on here?

I have seen somebody carry a 250-pound man on his back while he walked bare foot over a pathway laden with shards of broken glass. His feet were totally unscathed after the event.

When I was at university, my tutor studied psychosomatic affects on asthmatics. One day, one of his subjects was told of her father's unexpected sudden death. Five minutes after hearing the terrible news, she died of a massive asthma attack.

Some of the most extraordinary phenomenon I've ever come across was that from studies conducted on multiple personality disorder (MPD) patients. These are individuals who had gone through traumatic and painful experiences (usually stemmed from child abuse). They had considered the experiences to be too painful to bear. So in order to cope with the situations, they somehow chose to switch off from being their normal selves and take on a different personality to deal with things. What makes this unique is that one personality may have no memory of the existence of the other.

As life goes by for an MPD, an increasing number of these amnesically compartmentalized personalities can develop. Each personality with its own unique trait develops usually to deal with the different traumatic and painful situations.

-Some of the things that have happened with these individuals are quite incredible. It could be said that their minds can affect their behaviour to such an extent that it defies the very nature of reality.

For examples, from studies, one MPD patient has been known to produce all the symptoms of type-2 diabetes. Then, when switching to another personality, become normal in blood glucose regulation.

Another MPD was known to have one personality that was belligerent in character, always making trouble and alcoholically intoxicated. However, he could quickly switch to a mild-mannered personality and become totally sober, completely unaffected by the drink.

Some MPD patients have been known to change eye colour during their different personalities....

It could be said that the mind-body-spirit connection has been shown from studies using the placebo effect: One group of subjects, not knowing that there was no medicine involved, only a sugar pill they had each taken, were then told that they would be made well. The outcome produced a significant number of subjects who got well. This contrasted with the other group who were actually told that the pill was only a sugar tablet: This group did not produce any significant results.

Why did the first group produce a significant number of well individuals, when both groups with the same ailment took exactly the same thing, an ineffective sugar pill? The subjects that soon got well from the first group demonstrated the power of the faith they had in this situation -Yet another example of the mind-body-spirit connection.

Indeed, the mind-body-spirit connection covers a wide range of subjects. Whether it's related to the bio-psychological model which entails thoughts, emotions, behaviours and social factors that affect health, or the more far-reaching such as out-of-body or near-death experiences, it clearly shows that there is a whole lot more to the nature of reality than what we currently understand and we would do well to learn more from.