by June Milligan, M.Ed., CCHt |
Do you remember watching the old movie The Three Faces of Eve? It was based on a true story about a woman who had three distinct and separate personalities. The movie was well known for another reason because it was Paul Newman’s first glimpse of Joanne Woodward, who played Eve. Paul has said that he fell in love with Joanne while watching that movie, and you know the rest of the story.
One of the most important activities of the subconscious mind is that it “runs” your body. Most of the time it’s in complete charge of your physiology—you keep breathing whether you’re awake or asleep. Your heart keeps beating and thousands of other functions continue to take place whether you’re awake or asleep. You don’t have to consciously think about any of them.
In fact the subconscious mind is powerful enough to alter the physiology of the body instantly. In the case of multiple personalities, let’s say the one called Eve is personality number one. That personality may suffer from allergies. But when personality number two takes over (let’s call her Ann) there are no allergies. Instead, she may suffer from high blood pressure, or be perfectly healthy. When personality number three takes over, that one may suffer from diabetes, or be perfectly healthy. How amazing, that the subconscious mind can instantly alter the physiology and function of the body to that degree!
After learning this, the first thing that comes to mind is, “If the right words, the correct instructions and directions were conveyed to the subconscious mind through hypnosis, then any ailment should be able to be healed.”
Deepak Chopra was one of the first medical doctors in the country to understand and write about the extent of the mind-body connection. He believes that mind is in every cell. Recent research by Dr. Bruce Lipton (cellular biologist) and other scientists have shown that this is so. In Chopra’s book Quantum Healing, he relates the story of Timmy, a child with eleven different personalities. One of the personalities is allergic to orange juice. If that personality drinks orange juice, hives will immediately appear. If another personality “comes forward” while the orange juice is still being digested, the hives will immediately begin to disappear.
To quote Chopra, “This implies that the cells themselves are intelligent. Moreover, the intelligence is wrapped up in every molecule, not doled out to a special one like DNA, for the antibody and the orange juice meet end-to-end with very ordinary atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. To say that molecules make decisions defies current physical science—it’s as if salt sometimes feels like being salty and sometimes not. But to cross over from one event in the bodymind to another is always a projection of intelligence; it is only the remarkable swiftness and intensity of Timmy’s case that stuns us. Once we absorb the fact that he is “choosing” to be allergic—for how else could he turn his hives off and on—then we confront the possibility that we too, are (subconsciously) choosing our own diseases. We are not aware of this choice because it takes place below the level of our conscious thoughts. But if this is the case, and the choice has been made, we should be able to change it.”
Our conscious attitudes and beliefs can have as much of an impact on our health as our subconscious beliefs. While doing research for his book, the story of Timmy reminded Deepak of an incident within his own family. He tells the story of his mother who certainly was not plagued with multiple personalities. But she was terribly allergic to the pollen from certain flowers in their home state. Because of this, his father took her to another part of India every spring, where those flowers did not grow. One year they had to come back early, and on the way back, the plane made an unscheduled stop, causing Deepak’s mother to think that they had arrived home. She immediately broke out into hives and was having such a difficult time breathing that the flight staff became worried. When she was told that they were not yet landing at their home city, she immediately began to breathe normally, and the hives disappeared. Her belief that she always had hives and breathing problems in the spring at home, actually created them. That conscious belief became a subconscious belief, a self-fulfilling prophesy, and created the changes in her body which led to such discomfort.
There is much more to learn about the effect our conscious and subconscious minds have on our bodies, but we already know that the subconscious mind will take hypnotic suggestions and directions to reduce anxiety before surgery, to reduce blood loss, to decrease the amount of anesthetic needed, to reduce the time spent in the recovery room and to reduce the time necessary for healing. Your subconscious mind is your friend, and tries to keep you safe. The problem is, most of the time we are feeding our subconscious minds with anxieties and negativity. And since the subconscious mind can’t tell the difference between real and pretend, it believes that what you’re thinking is really happening, like Deepak’s mother, who thought she was back home, causing her body to react to an allergen, even though there was not one bit of pollen inside the aircraft.
This is an extremely exciting time to be alive. So many new findings and discoveries about the human mind-body connection are making it possible for us to be able to understand how our thoughts and feelings, both conscious and subconscious, are controlling our bodies. Scientists now believe that the human body may contain more than fifty trillion cells. And according to research at Harvard Medical School, each cell is busy conducting over a hundred thousand functions per second. What an incredible thing, to know that we’re able to consciously and subconsciously affect those cells every second by our thoughts, attitudes and deep beliefs. Through that knowledge, we are able to alter what Dr. Caroline Leaf calls our “thought-life” so that the thoughts coursing through our mindbody system are beneficial to our cells rather than toxic.
References:
- Quantum Healing by Dr. Deepak Chopra; Publisher: Bantam Books
- Who Switched Off My Brain by Dr. Carolyn Leaf; Publisher: Switch On Your Brain USA Inc.
- Medical Hypnosis by Tim Simmerman; Publisher: Peaceful Planet Press
For more info contact June Milligan, specializing in personal empowerment counseling, medical support hypnosis and eliminating emotional blocks to success at (775) 786-9111 or june@joyfulchanges.com.
