Empowerment through an unusual partnership

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This is a story about how my life was empowered through an unusual partnership, starting with when I began to understand the self-aware part – the conscious mind – and the part of me that is not – the nonconscious mind.

I am not referring to that condition you are in when you fall on your head and end up with everything blacked out or when you go for an operation and they put you under a narcotic sleep – we call that one the unconscious. The nonconscious mind is that part of you awake but you don’t notice it and think it is not there.

Perhaps one can call it one’s shadow?

Which one makes the choices?

I learned along the way that our conscious mind makes decisions and sets directions, it thinks, analyses, and it acts as if it is the only one in control. You can refer to it as the logical self. And you might understand the nonconscious mind as the brain. Although, the mind is not the brain. That is a story for another day…

The influence of the nonconscious mind

My nonconscious mind, and yours too, has a far greater influence, and can accomplish far more, than the conscious. I learned that my nonconscious mind controls most of my behaviour, whether I understand its purpose consciously or not. I learned that I need to build a bridge of trust between my conscious and nonconscious mind. In NLP, we call that bridge-building process ‘pacing’.

Pacing means listening with the purpose of understanding. Through studying NLP, I learned that my nonconscious mind is benevolent with positive intentions. I just don’t always understand the purpose behind the intentions. I learned that my nonconscious mind sends me signals, and contradictory to what most of us learned in society, those signals are not my enemy.

I learned my nonconscious mind balances the conscious. When my nonconscious mind notices something is out of balance, it sends signals to my conscious mind. Pain is one type of signal. Remember that the pain has a positive intention behind it. It’s not the enemy. Pain has the intention to notify my conscious mind that something is out of balance and needs to be corrected.

Pacing and leading with awesome results

When I experienced pain, my past self had four options. Most of us may be familiar with those options. Either take a pill, ignore (try to endure) the pain, go to the doctor, or pray that the pain will go away. But then I found a fifth option… I found “pacing” and “leading” as a means of working with my body. Instead of opposing pain and seeing it as an enemy, I build a bridge to understand how to work with it, but also to stay in the leading position.

So, I learned that many of my headaches were stress-related: either emotional, mental, positional, or nutritional stress. And I learned that popping a Panado only dampens the signal until the headache starts again. I noticed that if I fix the cause of the stress issue as soon as possible, I never need pills. By today, I don’t even have any pain pills at home. My confidence level around headaches was climbing sky-high.

Still are!

Empowerment through an unusual partnership

Then, one day, I sprained my ankle before going on a Cape Canopy Zipline adventure. Now, that was pain on another level. In the past, I would have yielded to the situation, dug out the crutches and pain pills, and just stayed home playing the victim for the next week or two.

No!!! What do I do now?!!!

My first thought was, ‘No!!!’ And next, ‘What do I do now?’. I started negotiating with my ankle (which, by the way, was swelling as if it was the next fashion hype): First, I told my ankle that if it can let me walk normally, without limping, I will take care not to twist it during movement.

Second, I showed my ankle with the help of self-hypnotherapy exactly how we are going to take on the hiking part of the route to the zipline platform and that there would be no opportunity of hurting it more if I take care not to twist it.

I asked it if it could, in turn, stop sending pain signals. We took a little exercise by going to the shops while I kept reminding my ankle we could walk without limping and at a normal pace.

A throbbing ankle and a very clear pain signal

That evening, my ankle was throbbing, but I kept reminding it to keep its part of the deal. My husband urged me to stay at home the next day, but I was adamant that we go on with the adventure. I knew I could do this.

The next morning, my ankle was triple the size, but we kept the deal. Walk at a normal pace, with no twisting on my part, and no limping allowed. By the time we got to the hiking area, I noticed there was no pain. And so, in partnership with my nonconscious mind, the whole zipline adventure was just one great, awesome experience. On top of that, for the remainder of the time it took for the injury to heal, there was no pain. And on my part of the deal, I didn’t twist it during the time.

No limping, no pain, and normal healing. I call that a striking deal in this situation.