Be in Health

First, lets discuss the difference between the conscious and the subconscious mind.

Here is a simple way to look at it. It has been said many times that we humans use only about 10% of our brain. What is really meant by this is that the conscious mind needs about 10% of our brains resources. In other words, thinking, moving about, making choices, planning, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling are all conscious activities, and take up 10% of the processing power of our brain.

If this is true, what is the other 90% of the brain doing? If the conscious mind takes up 10% of your brain, we can refer to the other 90% as the subconscious mind. This silent and unconscious majority of the brain is constantly busy storing information and keeping your body systems running efficiently. It is also important to understand that the subconscious mind exerts an unseen, yet profound influence over the things we do, and how we behave and feel.

Most people give little thought to their subconscious minds. But imagine for a moment having to take over the functions that your subconscious mind performs. Imagine the difficulty of instructing your digestive system how to digest your lunch, or telling your cells how to create enzymes and proteins. Imagine if you had to worry about keeping your heart beating or keeping air moving in and out of your lungs every moment of every day. And you think you have a full schedule now!

Like a computer, your subconscious mind is capable of storing vast amounts of information.

Brain surgery is often done while the patient is conscious. The brain has no pain-sensing nerves, and surgeons take advantage of this fact to get feedback from their patients while their brains are being delicately probed during surgery. 

Dr. Wilder Penfield discovered that under certain circumstances people who are undergoing brain surgery will have memories return to them when a certain area of the brain is stimulated. For example, the surgeon might touch an area of the brain with his electrode and the alert patient suddenly will remember a smell, or a sound from a particular moment in their life.

Often these flashes of memory are about events or scenes that would be unremembered under normal circumstances. If the same area of the brain is touched again with an electrode in the same precise spot, the same memory will be reexperienced.

If you are like me, sometimes it seems difficult to remember what happened yesterday. I believe, however, that your subconscious mind is an amazing recording device.

I believe that everything you`ve ever done in your entire life has been logged in your subconscious mind.

Every face you've ever seen in a crowd, every smell, every voice, every song, every taste, every touch and every sensation you have ever experienced has been recorded by your subconscious. Every virus, bacteria or fungus that has ever invaded your body, all your injuries, all your thoughts and feelings, and the entire history of every cell in your body has all been archived. Your subconscious is also aware of any trapped emotions that your body may be harboring, and it also knows exactly what effect these trapped emotions are having on your physical, emotional and mental well-being. All of this and more is tucked away in the subconscious mind.

Jefferson Lewis, Something Hidden: A Biography of Wilder Penfield (Goodread Biographies), (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Formac Publishing Company Ltd., 1951), 198. 

Dr Bradley Nelson, The Emotion Code:  Wellness Unmasked Publishing Mesquite, Nevada., 2007.  p27-30.