Your subconscious mind cannot make decisions, but it can take direction.
Tips for using affirmations:
Here are some tips to remember when working with your subconscious:
When you want to program something by using affirmations, it is important how you talk to your subconscious. It knows when you are telling a lie.
If you say to your subconscious, I am healthy, as your way of affirming health, your subconscious will look at your current level of health and say, OK, if you call this health, we will maintain this level for you. If you say, I am becoming healthier every day, it gives the subconscious a process to work with.
If there is data in the subconscious that contradicts the affirmation you are using, the subconscious will bring that forward for you to clear. It is important to acknowledge your resistance rather than be afraid of it. Once the resistance is cleared, the affirmation becomes more powerful.
Another way to put the affirmation: I am willing to receive more and more good health and vitality into my life every day. You will become more willing and more able to receive good health. Here’s another example of a good way to talk to your subconscious: I am healthy enough – and becoming more healthy.
Three is a magic number to the subconscious. It will pay attention when you do or say something three times. It will begin to form a pattern. This is known in advertising as the “power of three.”
Your subconscious cannot make decisions. Decisions are always made on a conscious level. Your subconscious must follow it’s programming, regardless if it is positive or negative. If the programming is that you should always finish everything on your plate, it will always give you the message to clean off your plate until you change that message.
When you are working on a problem, or want to find the answer to something, try incubating it. Imagine an incubation chamber, locker, or cupboard and place the problem in there. Some people need to sleep on it, others will receive the solution when they are busy with something else. If nothing comes in three days go back to the incubation chamber and open it up. Spend some time with the issue and try again.
When you want to create something, use your imagination consciously. It doesn’t matter if you do not see an actual picture. You can sense it. When it comes to visualization, some people are seers and some are sensors. For example: you have a sore shoulder. You imagine a warm towel placed on it. The subconscious responds by dilating the blood vessels in that area to promote healing. What you imagine doesn’t have to be literal or accurate. Your subconscious mind understands your intention.
Your subconscious is a significant part of your mind. You can use it to help yourself create your own positive reality. Over time, you can become proficient at working with your subconscious mind. Once you understand how to talk to your subconscious, your affirmations will be effective and authentic.
For more information about how to work with your subconscious mind go to my Hypnosis page or Hypno-to-Go.
Visualization is a potent tool to reach your subconscious mind.
Working With the Subconscious
With effort, you can learn to go directly into the subconscious when you want to change, heal or create something. I have found guided visualization to be a potent tool to get into the subconscious. The subconscious mind loves images and responds well to them. Image combined with feeling – even more powerful.
Image + Feeling + Repetition = Clear Result
You can do a guided visualization for yourself, by reading into a tape recorder and then playing it back. Or maybe you can get a friend to read it to you.
As you prepare to start any kind of meditative work it is important to find a comfortable position to sit or lie down – to have a comfortable, safe space. If you have your own special way of relaxing, go ahead and do that. Or you can take three deep breaths, stretch, then relax. Set your goal of what you want to work on in your subconscious and then begin the visualization.
Your Subconscious Mind
Imagine your subconscious as a maze-like structure such as a big library, maze, warehouse or high tech lab. These particular images will allow you to more solidly connect with your subconscious.
Create a guide to help you navigate the vast, subterranean territory of the subconscious mind – a librarian, warehouse manager, lab tech, who knows everything about your subconscious and can guide you where you want to go. Every time you enter your subconscious, call your guide first, then tell them what you want to do or where you want to go.
Imagine going down into the library. Perhaps an elevator or stairs or manhole where you exit and there is the vista of your place. You go to the door of the library and step inside. There your guide meets you. If it’s a library, in the main room you’ll see rows of shelves with books that contain information. (I will use the library image for description purposes here but change the images according to what you’ve decided yours looks like.)
Your subconscious is a busy place. You may see workers shelving and sorting books. Off the main room are doors that lead to other areas of the building. There are maze-like hallways that have many rooms off them. Some hallways lead to stairs that go to other floors with more hallways and rooms.
To begin to familiarize yourself with your subconscious, you may want to start with a personal work station or a room where you can go and sit to visualize your goal.
There are many areas of the subconscious that you may want to explore over time. You can ask your guide to take you to the room of beliefs. There you can find the book of beliefs that holds all your beliefs. You can change a limiting belief into an expansive or healing belief.
If you are dealing with a health issue you can ask your guide to take you to the chamber of healing, where you can do some healing work. There, you may meet a healer or see a table with potions or medicines.
The forbidden zone is a place where you put all the things you do not ever want changed or accessed. As a child you hid painful experiences, traumas you never wanted to revisit, and decisions you made to help you survive. It’s painful, but you can be taken there by your guide to revisit those things. You can review old contracts stored in the forbidden zone and change or destroy them. You can plant a garden and seed it with new hopes, dreams and visions and let your subconscious work at manifesting them.
Once you have solidly connected to the subconscious, you can create a signal as a short cut to get there faster. Tap your wrist three times or say a secret word and you find yourself at the door to the library, warehouse or lab with your guide there to greet you. Remember that it’s your subconscious. You can discover all kinds of places in the subconscious that work for you.
When doing a self-guided visualization you can end it by counting from one to five and bring your attention back to your body and the room. Take a deep breath and reorient yourself. It is fun to be able to go in and out of the subconscious at will and work with it as an ally.
When you take the time to solidly connect with your subconscious mind via a visualization like this, you begin the amazing process of taking ownership of this important and powerful part of your mind.
If you would like a hypno-recording that you can use time and time again or a personal session together to get you started, go to my contact page.
Your subconscious holds all the information about you – your self image, your world view, your beliefs, and attitudes.
It is a good idea to every so often go into the subconscious and clean out some of the old programs that are running that no longer work or serve your higher good. Like cleaning out a closet that is stuffed with old worn things.
There are many facets to the subconscious. Rooms if you like and chambers, and areas of the subconscious where information is stored.
Here are some examples:
The room of beliefs.
The chamber of healing.
The forbidden zone.
The incubation chamber.
The room of expertise.
The control center for the body.
The information warehouse.
The room of self-image.
The door to the past, the corridor of time, the river of time.
The hallways of future-think.
What do you believe?
A belief is a firmly held conviction you have accepted as true. You could go as far as to say that a belief is a personal rule you have decided you must abide by.
Your beliefs actively exist in your subconscious mind. Your subconscious works to consistently maintain your beliefs. It refers every piece of new data to existing beliefs and does it in less than a nanosecond. Accept or reject. The subconscious rejects what doesn’t fit with your belief system. But once the subconscious accepts an idea, it begins to execute it immediately. Simply put: What you believe is what you create.
Exploring old beliefs
It’s time to explore the messages you have accumulated through the years; that you got from the authority figures in your life when you were a child.
Perhaps they said things like:
You are bad, not good enough, unworthy, undeserving.
Success comes with too high a price.
You are selfish to want success or abundance.
Love is painful.
Find these messages, understand what they are and where they come from. See the patterns. Then you can go into the subconscious, review the seed events, feel the feelings of the child and adolescent, do the healing and reprogram the subconscious to reflect who you are becoming now.
You can change your beliefs:
You are good and worthy and deserving.
Success comes elegantly and effortlessly.
Abundace and success are your birthright.
Love is healing.
What do you think?
You are always communicating with your subconscious. There is a continuous loop, a flow of data between the subconscious and conscious mind. You convey information to the subconscious by thoughts, feelings and images and it sends messages to your conscious mind.
What do you dwell on?
Your habitual thinking is your story, script, tape. If you are not aware of your thoughts, then it is likely you are just running old thought patterns. You are telling yourself the same old stories and following the same old scripts. Can’t get a break? Nothing works out for you? You’re always unlucky?
You can learn how to work with your subconscious mind.
The function and structure of the subconscious is the same for everyone. However, the content is unique in each person based on your life experiences and conditioning.
Two people can have the same external experience and two completely different responses. For one person, going on the ferris wheel is thrilling and fun. But if a person has a fear of heights, it is threatening, even terrifying.
Your unique and powerful subconscious mind can become your ally and work for you rather than against you. The data in your subconscious is available to you to explore and change as you need to. It belongs to you! You control what goes into your subconscious and what you remove from it. As you clean out those closets, clear the old beliefs and change the old scripts and stories, it functions more positively and elegantly than ever before.
In part 3, I will show you how to enter your subconscious and work with it. You can learn to easily enter and exit your subconscious at will. You will create an image of your subconscious – mine is a library, where I go, using a quick signal to take me there. In my subconscious I may incubate a problem in my incubation chamber, or change a nagging belief in the room of beliefs, or create a new program. My subconscious guide is a young, hip librarian, who meets me at the entrance and sometimes we go to a seating area where I talk to her about what changes I want her to make for me. My (and your) subconscious is a vast and beautiful place to discover and explore more of through the years.
For more information about how to work with your subconscious mind go to my hypnosis page or my Hypno-to-Go page.
The subconscious mind – we all have one. But do we really know what it is, what it does or how to use it effectively?
Introduction
In the over 30 years I have worked as a clinical hypnotherapist, coach and counselor, I’ve come to understand and appreciate the role of the subconscious in our lives. It’s an amazing, but often hidden part of our mental make-up. I have created this blog series to help you learn more about your own mind and how to work with it effectively and elegantly.
The subconscious mind is a natural and powerful inner resource.
The more we know about our subconscious mind and the more we can consciously access it, the better our lives will be.
In this blog series, you are going to learn about the role of the subconscious as a record keeper and data organizer, the computer like aspects of the subconscious and it’s programming in terms of our beliefs, patterns, thoughts and feelings.
I will also cover the role of the subconscious in keeping the body healthy, in sleep and in the mind/body connection. I will show you how to work with the subconscious to change limiting and stressful patterns and habits, attitudes and beliefs. You will learn how to effectively communicate with the subconscious. You can understand the basic working principles and functions of the subconscious mind and understand the relationship between the conscious and subconscious minds and how they interact. Then you can consciously access your subconscious, its information and its functions and utilize it to enhance your daily life.
The key is to make friends with your subconscious and then to form an alliance with it.
The subconscious as record keeper
Your subconscious is processing and organizing all the data of your life 24/7/365. Every thought, every word, every deed, waking and sleeping, is stored in the data banks of your subconscious mind. Your subconscious is, in a sense, recording your life as you are living it.
The subconscious organizes all this data according to its programs, patterns, messages and templates. These come from your past – the experiences and people who have influenced you.
Carved within the templates of your subconscious mind are deep reserves of memory, association, feelings and perceptions.
The subconconscious never sleeps
Your subconscious has survival programs running to keep your heart beating and all your physical systems functioning harmoniously. It is responsible for creativity, imagination, intuition, sleeping and dreaming. Every night when you go to sleep, your subconscious goes through its checklist of all your major systems. It oversees all the physical repairs.
While you sleep, the subconscious provides you with the dreams you need for emotional health and balance. Each night when you sleep, you are healing and renewing your body and mind, courtesy of your subconscious.
By tapping into the power of the subconscious, you can accelerate healing and boost longevity. Your subconscious can help you to be healthy and strong. You can work with it to change habits and patterns that are unhealthy, destructive or have outlived their usefulness. You can replace them with habits and patterns that are supportive, happy and healthy.
The subconscious in computer mode
Your conscious mind is linear. Your subconscious is non-linear. It knows everything, all the time, all at once.
Imagine trying to hold all the data of your life in your conscious awareness at all times. You could not do it; trying would make you crazy. However, your subconscious is beautifully designed to do exactly that and more.
Though your subconscious is very computer-like in its function, it is more conscious than you are and it cares about you. It is aware and understands everything that you tell it and everything that you ask of it. It knows how to do things for you that you consciously do not know how to do.
You have no secrets from your subconscious. But your subconscious may have secrets from you.
It is where suppressed urges, desires, fears, doubts and limitations are located. It is where old, worn choices and beliefs are still active. Your subconscious holds all the information about you – your self- image, your world view, your beliefs and attitudes.
It is important to understand the old messages, scripts and stories that you tell yourself that still have impact, so you can reprogramme the ones that no longer serve you, and re-write the scripts and stories that hold you back from what you want.
Interactive levels of the mind
Although your subconscious is very aware and conscious, like a computer, it is not designed to make decisions. It must do what it has been programmed by you to do. It must give you the messages it has been programmed to give you even if those messages are negative.
Your conscious mind is the reasoning part of your mind – it is the decision maker. It uses logic and reason to think things out and solve problems. Once a decision is made, your conscious mind feeds information to your subconscious – which assesses the information and fits it into the correct files, templates, scripts, tapes and patterns and uses it to strengthen what is already there. Though your subconscious wants to help you carry out your decision, it may have conflicting data which is more powerful. Your conscious and subconscious work together to make these choices work for you.
Though your subconscious wants to help you carry out your decision, it may have conflicting data which is more powerful. Therefore some decisions can get rejected by the subconscious.
Everyone has experienced making a decision to change a habit they don’t like and later sabotaging it , even though they don’t want to.
In this respect, your subconscious mind can either be your greatest obstacle by stopping from succeeding or it can be your most powerful ally in helping you create the changes you desire.
When you want to create or manifest something in your life, the subconscious filters what you seek through its templates. It is at the subconscious level that manifestation can get skewed.
Your subconscious can be programmed.
There are proven ways to process and change the old programs, messages, templates and patterns. I have found hypnosis to be a powerful way to create changes in the subconscious. It can be given more expansive, realistic, positive, adult messages and it will be as faithful to the new messages as the old ones.
By tapping into the power of the subconscious, you can accelerate healing and boost longevity. You can work with it to change patterns that are unhealthy, destructive or have outlived their usefulness. Your subconscious can help you to be healthy, happy and strong.
Now that you are beginning to understand scope of how the subconscious works and its role as a record keeper and data organizer, In part 2, I will show you how to change the negative programs in the subconscious to create greater success and harmony, so that your your conscious and subconscious mind are working together to create what you desire.
It is a good idea to every so often go into the subconscious and clean out some of the old programs that are running that no longer work or serve your higher good. Like cleaning out a closet that is stuffed with old worn things. 
I will also cover the role of the subconscious in keeping the body healthy, in sleep and in the mind/body connection. I will show you how to work with the subconscious to change limiting and stressful patterns and habits, attitudes and beliefs. You will learn how to effectively communicate with the subconscious. You can understand the basic working principles and functions of the subconscious mind and understand the relationship between the conscious and subconscious minds and how they interact. Then you can consciously access your subconscious, its information and its functions and utilize it to enhance your daily life.