This mindset assumes that we don't have any control over our bodies.

How many stories have we heard, and I have seen examples of it myself, of people who are very old or terminally sick and who hold on just long enough to reach some major event (a wedding, a graduation, a birth, until the other spouse passes first, etc.) and then they quickly die afterward? Or conversely, how many spouses pass away shortly after the first spouse goes? Something in them just gives up. Or yogis or martial art masters and others who can control aspects of their bodily functions that we normally think are beyond our control.

Modern science is just beginning to understand the mind-body connection in a more systematic way.