How Your Subconscious is Running Your Nervous System and Your Life

Have you ever had a massage or a chiropractic adjustment and observe your body as relaxed and reset afterwards, only to feel a familiar pattern of tension in your shoulders or hips creep back in almost immediately? Or have you ever been going about your life and had your back or knee 'go out' when doing something you do every day, like picking up a pencil off the floor? Most of us would have to say, "yes," to this, along with a slew of other inexplicable bodily and emotional annoyances we experience from time to time....or all the time! We shrug them off as bi-products of getting old or unfortunate genetics or even bad luck, but in reality, oftentimes there are very real and very touchable patterns going on beneath the surface that contribute to these happenings. Addressing the issue on the physical level can be helpful and even enjoyable, in the case of a nice massage, but lasting healing and change comes from addressing the underlying subconscious causes: traumas, thoughts and toxicities that keep the nervous system in fight-or-flight and therefor the body prone to these problems in the first place.

If we think of an ideally functioning nervous system in very simple terms, we can divide it into two main parts: the central nervous system, which is comprised of the brain and spinal cord; and the peripheral nervous system, which is everything else. The peripheral nervous system can be further functionally divided into the somatic nervous system, which deals with sensory information and voluntary movements; and the autonomic nervous system, which controls all the stuff that happens on its own, like breathing and digestion. The autonomic nervous system gets really interesting when we further divide into the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, which are important for us to understand in relation to stress. (There's also the enteric nervous system, but we can save that for another day.) The parasympathetic system is what's in control when we're relaxed, letting us 'rest and digest,' as well as reproduce; the sympathetic system, on the other hand, takes control when we're threatened, sending us into 'fight, flight or freeze.' Both systems are beautiful, perfect and crucial to our survival. In fact, we oscillate between the two all the time, responding to our environments and activities constantly.

In a perfect world, when we're going about our days, the parasympathetic system is in control a lot of the time. When this is happening well, the heart rate and breathing are steady, posture is relatively relaxed, our food is digesting, and life is good. If you're out to lunch with friends on a Saturday, hopefully your body is in a mostly parasympathetic state. You're getting signals that the world is safe. If, however, you're out to lunch and suddenly a pack of wolves comes charging through the door of the restaurant, it's time for the sympathetic nervous system to take over! Your pupils dilate, heart rate increases, digestion of that lovely meal stops, and blood and energy rush to your extremities so you can RUN. You received a new signal -- not safe -- and your body acted on it. It's all perfect and necessary and wonderful. Then, once the threat has passed, the body slowly steps out of that stress response and back into parasympathetic mode, relaxed and ready to finish that meal.

If you think of a deer grazing in the meadow, this is the same process they go through when they hear and noise and see a predator approaching: fight or flight takes over and they split. Twenty minutes later, after a harrowing escape, they are back to munching on a new patch of wildflowers like nothing happened: always at the ready, but letting go immediately when the threat has passed. Always their systems are responding to the signals from the environment which tell them whether they are safe or not.

With humans, real life doesn't always work this way. We have imaginations, memories, nuanced emotions, and the ability to attach and write 'stories' to make sense of what we see and experience out there in the world, for better or worse. When something really stressful happens -- maybe one of those wolves almost got ahold of you -- we would call that a trauma, and it's like a trap door in the brain slams shut, allowing no new signals to come in and tell us we're safe, even when the coast is clear. We have a scary memory in our minds and bodies that keeps replaying, telling us that we are in danger. Just one of these instances can keep us in a subconscious state of fight-or-flight, or sympathetic dominance, constantly taking energy away from our rest and recovery. However, each of us has a whole lifetime of stresses built up -- some big, many small -- that are running the show from behind the scenes.

Unless, from the time you were born, you were able to consciously and completely feel, process and surrender the emotions associated with every traumatic experience ever --which nobody is! -- these are stored in your subconscious mind and therefor your nervous system and body. Add to that any daily stresses of modern life, like traffic and grocery prices, and sympathetic dominance eventually catches up in its various forms. Maybe it's in the form of a sore back (muscle tension); maybe it's Crohn's disease (digestion shut down); maybe it's anxiety or insomnia (elevated heart rate and hyperawareness); or maybe it's something bigger like infertility (because the body will always prioritize its own survival before giving energy to producing something new). It's not that the sympathetic nervous system is bad -- it's just that it's firing at the wrong time. Maybe even all the time.

Luckily, there is a way out of this mess! In fact, there are many ways, and they all involve uncovering, processing, and letting go of these subconscious traumas, thought patterns and toxicities that are keeping the body running the program you could call, 'I am not safe!' or 'This is not fair!' or any number of outdated and unhelpful taglines. It is not done by rehashing and talking endlessly about the issues and experiences that created these programs -- although there can be a time and place for that -- but through the body, where all of the patterns are stored...even the ones we don't remember. Certain meditations, forms of breath work, somatic release and even yoga, done with intention, can reveal and release on a bodily level things that we may have been holding for years.

BodyAwake Yoga, for example, anchors consciousness deep in the core of the body in order to bring attention to and energize areas that have been 'cut off' from the flow of life force, enabling the patterns that caused these imbalances to dissolve naturally, and healing to occur on many levels at once.

Similarly, work such as B.E.S.T. and T.E.P. almost surgically locate and identify subconscious patterns that are keeping the body in an unnecessary sympathetic state, remove them, and send new signals to the brain and body, through the nervous system, that it is safe to come out of stress and into the 'rest and digest' parasympathetic state of healing. Much of the time, there isn't even a need to remember and rehash; we simply correct the issue at the root level.

The Energy Codes and other tools, when practiced and applied to stressful circumstances in the present, help to keep new subconscious triggers from building up.

When we apply tools that work to repattern the subconscious mind, and take us out of emergency mode and into healing mode, everything else we do for our happiness, health and wellbeing becomes more enjoyable and effective. You can get that massage, enjoy that delicious and healthy meal with friends, play or exercise to your heart's content and have fun with all the wonderful toys and technologies available for our betterment, knowing that these positive inputs aren't butting up against a system unconsciously rejecting the new and positive in the name of safety and protection. You can become the self-healing, vibrant being you were meant to be.