One of the most important things to understand about our subconscious, with regard to subconscious-mind therapy and making changes to subconsciously based problems, is its connection with our emotional feelings. From a scientific point of view, our emotions are the end-result of the interaction between our thinking and our physical body. There is an element of thinking involved in our emotions, along with an element of physical response. Take, for example, the process expressed when we are embarrassed. An embarrassing thought, not only leads to the emotional feeling, but also physical changes to blood flow and the tiny capillaries in the skin of our neck and face: thought + physical response = emotion. And it all happens automatically, or subconsciously. We do not have to deliberately ‘make it happen’.
Our subconscious is both the storehouse and instigator of our emotions. The thinking element involved is often so quick and automatic, we are not aware of it at all. Furthermore, when an emotional feeling is sustained and strong enough, it can have an ongoing effect, at a physical level. I have never had the resources or inclination to research these matters scientifically, but others have. In her groundbreaking book, Molecules of Emotion, Dr. Candace B. Pert has shown that the connection between mind and body is in fact, what we usually call subconscious mind.
She bases this notion on research that shows the chemical interaction between mind and body – to the point where she sees them as being one and the same. Her scientific methods have shown that what we think and feel is relayed to our physical selves through an intricate network of biochemical activity. I have never doubted this understanding and it is good to have it confirmed in such a solid, scientific way, by a neuroscientist with Dr. Pert’s credentials.
The Subconscious Filing Cabinet
This is not to say that I think we are walking around in our subconscious mind, or that we wash our subconscious mind under the shower each morning. However, our physical body stores all of the information that is normally unavailable to us at a conscious level and it is essentially, part of this ‘information’ we are helping people change with the help of subconscious-mind therapy.
Our subconscious works automatically. It operates inside of us at a level we are unaware of with our outer consciousness and it involves far more than merely thought processes. It is the part of us responsible for automatically interpreting the information coming to us from the outside world. With the help of our nervous system and other ‘physical parts’, it converts that information into electrical and chemical processes and reactions that result in what we refer to as emotional feelings. Because these feelings are experienced in our body, they can affect our physiology in either positive or negative ways, according to whether they are positive or negative feelings. Much of this information is, therefore, in the form of what we might call physical ‘knowledge’, or physical ‘memory’. It is the memory of life experiences that have transcended our thoughts, ideas and conscious, intellectual memory.
The Body Remembers our Emotions
We might compare this to having had a thorn in our finger. There comes a time when the wound has healed. It no longer hurts, there is no visual sign that the injury ever took place, but it hurts again if the spot is touched. The body ‘remembers’ it was injured. Likewise, the bodymind remembers emotional injuries. The subconscious is just as much a part of us as our arms and legs and backsides and according to Dr. Pert, it may in fact be our arms and legs and backsides. It is the part of us that communicates with every other part through a complex system of biochemical activity involving our thinking, our nervous system, our consciousness and our non-consciousness. It ‘thinks’ and ‘feels’ with cells, chemicals and electrical impulses, rather than words, pictures and ideas. Although most of us would like to think that we are about ninety-five percent consciously aware of, and in charge of, all of our mental and physical behaviour, we are probably only about five percent aware consciously, and the rest is done subconsciously.
Can you imagine how complicated it would be to have all the information of your whole life available at a conscious level? They say we take in millions of bits of information every minute of the day. Just as well we have this effective system that deposits most of that information somewhere in the subconscious filing cabinet, where it can remain untouched forever or be retrieved later, if and when we need it.
Although with modern therapy methods we never bring this information to conscious awareness, it is, in a manner of speaking, still accessed by the subconscious, where it can be ‘re-assessed’ and changed.
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