The Power of the Subconscious
You have probably heard statements like: we only use 5 percent of our brains. Well, if that were the case why is it the size that it is? Obviously the rest of the brain is still being used for something. It might be safer to say that our conscious mind only uses 5 % of our brain. Perhaps our unconscious mind uses the other 95%.
Now, think of all the things you never think about: Breathing, pulse rate, sweating, growing, healing, digesting, blinking, even waking up in the morning. The subconscious mind looks after all of this for you, and loads more. There are millions of things right now that you might not be conscious of until I mention them: like the feeling of the back of the chair on your shoulders, the sound of the fan in your computer, the memory of your first bicycle... As I mentioned them to you your brain’s filter diverted the information to your consciousness. Your brain monitors the sum total of everything that you are experiencing and only sends the important, relevant information to you, your conscious mind. The conscious mind can handle about seven bits of information at a time; the unconscious mind handles millions of bits of information every second. Here are some examples:
- Imagine you are in a crowded room where everyone is chatting away creating a hubbub of noise. If someone in the room starts taking about you and mentions your name, your filter will pick that out of the noise and alert you to it.
- You are scanning through a broadsheet newspaper and suddenly you just know that you saw the name ‘Britney’ somewhere on the page. You then have to spend ten minutes trying to find it again. Your unconscious takes in the whole page using your peripheral vision and will filter out the relevant bits and send the information to your conscious mind.
Your brain is, at this very moment taking in a staggering amount of information. If you were aware of all of it, with no filter in place, it would be like trying to listen to a thousand different radio stations at once! Thank goodness we only use 5% of our brains!
Your subconscious also stores your emotions. And I'm sure you already know how difficult it can be to over-ride emotions. The subconscious always wins. Walk across a plank spanning 2 tall buildings and your emotions will very quickly present themselves to you, even though your conscious mind knows you are perfectly capable of walking in a straight line. Similarly, if you have been nervous for an audition or performance before, you probably subconsciously believe that you will be again next time. This we can change using hypnosis. Wouldn't it be fantastic to go into any performance situation feeling confident and in control? And so long as you prepare properly there is no reason why you shouldn't. We just need to over-write some self-limiting beliefs with some empowering new ones. And we do it when we are in trance.
If the brain’s filter mechanism focuses on just one thing (this could be your breathing, or a sensation, or a thought,) all the other sensory information that is being monitored by your brain is not being forwarded to your consciousness - including the suggestions given to you in hypnosis. Your brain, amazing bit of kit that it is, still ‘hears’ the words - it just does not see the point of alerting your conscious mind to them. It hears the suggestions, thinks “Hmmm, I like the sound of that”, and accommodates it into your new beliefs and habits.
You would be forgiven for thinking that that you could go around hypnotizing people to give you all their money, or get them to tell your Geography teacher that he is an Orangutan, but fortunately the unconscious mind has another function: it is your very own guardian angel. It will under no circumstances accept any suggestions that are potentially harmful or against your code of ethics. You cannot be brainwashed, you cannot get stuck in trance forever and you will not quack like a duck unless that is something that you really want to do.
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