Mind Body Spirit And Fluttering Thoughts: The Power Of The Unconscious Mind

The unconscious mind is extremely powerful and dominant. In a state of the unconscious, let super-learn occurs. In that state, we perform things without limitations, constraints and restraints. We know no fear at all.

Everyone of us is controlled more than 90% of the time by our unconscious mind. Our body and mind operates constantly at an unconscious level. Examples are -

1. Now, feel the temperature of your body;

2. Notice the difference in temperature of your skin with that of the atmosphere;

3. Now, notice the weight of your feet;

4. Feel the heart beating against your chest; and

5. While you are reading this, be aware of all the sounds around you.

You realize that indeed how deeply we are controlled unconscious. Many of our mood swings, personality, character, mindset, attitude, and just "being" are operated unconsciously. Just imagine if only we can be offered more choices to positive re-wire ourselves to make quantum positive transformation, how much more effective each one of us can be. Such choices are possible; it is only for our taking.

Phobias and allergies are wiring down wrongly to our neuro-network at some point in time and totally, unconsciously. We can get rid of them by reeducating our neurology.

Robert Dilts develop an allergy process within NLP to get rid of allergies in a very short time without medication. The following is an extract from one of his articles.

According to immunologist Dr. Michael Levi, an allergy is like a "phobia" of the immune system. In the 1950’s Levi won the World Health Association Award for his research demonstrating that viruses were infectious. As a result of his many years of work with the immune system, Levi contends that, when a person develops an allergy, the immune system has in essence formed a kind of phobic reaction to a certain type of substance, and then begins to panic when it gets around it. Symptoms of an allergy are produced by the results of this type of phobic reaction. Levi also asserts that other forms of allergies are like a "tantrum" of the immune system -- that is, the immune system is throwing some sort of fit because it was not being taken care of properly, or was getting so fatigued and tired that it was striking out as a person or a child might have a tantrum.

In the same way that we learn and acquire emotional responses, our bodies learn and acquire immune responses. The fact that such deadly illnesses as small pox and polio have been virtually wiped off the face of the earth is a testament to the fact that our immune systems can learn.

The major issue in dealing with an allergy is reeducating the immune system. Our immune system has two basic ways of dealing with foreign material in our bodies - passive and active. A passive immune response is primarily carried out by macrophages - white cells in the blood stream that simply engulf and digest the foreign material. In fact, the term "macrophage" literally means "big eater." The active immune response is carried out by "killer" T cells - cells that attack and destroy foreign matter.

The purpose of the passive immune response is to remove non-living matter from the body. The purpose of the active immune response is to attack and destroy living cells, like bacteria, that endanger the body. In the case of the virus, this means attacking cells in our bodies. This is because of the way a virus operates. A virus is basically a little bundle of genetic material that cannot reproduce itself because it lacks the rest of the cell structure to support that process. So instead the virus acts as a kind of a parasite that takes over the cells of its host in order to reproduce, depleting the resources of the unwilling host. In order to rid the body of a particular virus, then, the immune system must recognize and destroy the infected cells in our own body. In some cases this is done by actually exploding the infected cell (through a chemical reaction). This is what causes the redness and irritation associated with infections and allergies.

In the case of an allergy the immune system has made a mistake, in that it is responding to a harmless non-living foreign material as if it were a virus. Similar to a phobia, the immune system is panicking and is in such a confused state that it is attacking our own bodies even though there is no danger. In some ways it is a kind of an "I'll show you, I'll just hit myself" reaction.

The goal of treating an allergy involves reeducating the immune system to utilize the passive rather than active protection in response to the foreign substance - a kind of physiological re-framing.

Like a phobia an allergy is a conditioned response. In fact, research has shown that allergies can be conditioned in guinea pigs using a procedure similar to that Pavlov used in his experiments with his dogs (Russel, Dark, et al, 1984). The researchers put the smell of peppermint into the guinea pigs' cages and then injected them with a substance that would naturally produce an active immune response. After repeating this five times over a short period of time, the researcher put the peppermint smell in the cage but did not inject the noxious substance. When they checked the blood of the guinea pigs they found that they were producing as full of an immune reaction as they would if they had been injected. Other studies (Ader & Cohen, 1981) demonstrated that rats could be conditioned to suppress immune responses.

A basic premise of psychoneuroimmunology (which is shared by NLP) is that immune responses, such as allergic reactions, can be influenced by psychological factors. There is a famous example of this, dating back to the turn of the century, documented by a physician named MacKenzie (1886) who was treating a woman with a violent allergic reaction to roses. He had an artificial rose in his office and was surprised to discover that his patient, not realizing that the rose was fake, manifested the full allergic reaction as soon as she saw the rose. The implication is that our autonomic nervous system (even our immune system) may be influenced as much by mental representations and expectations generated from within our central nervous system as by stimuli from the outside world.

Certainly, the immune system is capable of learning very quickly. Allergies are known to appear and disappear almost spontaneously. Patients with multiple personalities will have allergies in one personality and not in another. People often "outgrow" certain allergic reactions. The cells involved in active immune responses are produced in our bone marrow at the rate of about 80 million cells per minute. So once the reeducation process is done it can spread rapidly.

It is already known that allergies can, like a phobia, sometimes be treated through systematic desensitization procedures. However, like the phobia versions of these techniques, the process can be time consuming and often ineffectual. Using the model and techniques of NLP this desensitization process can be accelerated tremendously.

Both phobias and allergies also appear to be the result of what is called "response expectancy," a process which has strong mind-body implications. Response expectancy is the same process which is at the root of the placebo effect. People can very often bring on allergic response symptoms by the strength of their imagination, as MacKenzie’s patient with the allergy to roses demonstrated. From this perspective, allergic symptoms may be the result of a type of negative placebo effect.

Sometimes an allergy is the only excuse people allow themselves to take a rest, or to pay attention to their own health. It becomes a reminder for them to take care of themselves. Often, an allergy is a communication that a person is under a fair amount of emotional or physical stress. There are even some people who are afraid of accepting the responsibility that would come with realizing that they had that much influence on their own health.

In special cases, if a person’s father, mother, or some other significant person in his or her life has had allergies, an individual may unconsciously feel that having a similar allergy is way to stay connected with those significant others.

The purpose of identifying such positive intentions and secondary gains is to help the person add more choices. An underlying principal of NLP is that ecological change comes by adding new choices, not by taking away existing choices. Before a person is ready to shift an allergic reaction, he or she may need to find other ways of addressing certain life situations.

Finding these new choices is analogous to the change the immune system needs to make. Keep in mind that an allergy is often the result of the brain and the immune system together making a mistake. The body thinks that it's being invaded by something that is not, in fact, actually dangerous. The immune system becomes conditioned to try to defend itself against something that isn't really harmful. The smoke, cat dander, pollen and foods to which people develop allergies don't invade our cells like a virus. What happens is that the immune system thinks that it is being invaded, and so it strikes out at the body’s own cells. The symptoms of an allergy are the result of the immune system destroying healthy cells in the body in an attempt to protect itself from an invader that isn't really there.

Many allergies were developed at a time in a person’s life, or under conditions which have psychological similarities to this confusion of the immune system. The immune system is the body’s equivalent of a psychological self-concept. Many people develop allergies at a time when they are at a transition point with respect to their own sense of identity. At these times a person can feel their sense of ‘self’ being challenged or threatened by something from the outside. In this case the allergy may develop as a reflection of the psychological threat, and the resulting stress it produces. Allergies associated with asthma, for instance, are often related to traumatic experiences.

To address such situations, people may need to detach themselves from those early or traumatic experiences. Using NLP techniques such as Change Personal History, Re-framing or Re-imprinting, people can be helped to recognize that their identity has evolved and is different now than it was under those early circumstances. They can discover new ways of handling their life situations and their responses to crisis or danger, in the same way that the body can learn to have a different response to old triggers and stimuli. They can imagine how they would react differently if they took their current learnings, resources and abilities back into those early situations associated with the allergic response.

Two powerful and highly recommended books by Robert Dilts