The song that constantly runs through your head whenever you close your office door. The expression on your spouse's face that inexplicably makes you feel either amorous or enraged, why we feel uncomfortable without any obvious causes, what motivates us, and what satisfies us.
This is evidence of your unconscious mind. Long after Sigmund Freud introduced the world that much of what we do is determined by memories and emotional forces, the depths of the mind and the brain are being explored.
We make up our minds about things based on thinking that takes place somewhere just out of our reach. But today, scientists are finding neural correlates to those processes, parts of the brain that we never gave their due, communicating with other parts, triggering neurotransmitters, and driving our actions.
Burgeoning understanding of our unconscious has deeply personal and also fascinating medical implications. Our snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled . . . and making sense of ourselves requires that we acknowledge unconscious processing.
According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5 percent of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior
depend on the 95 percent of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness. From the beating of our hearts to pushing the grocery cart and not smashing into the kitty litter, we rely on something that is called the adaptive unconscious, which is all the ways that our brains understand the world that the mind and the body must negotiate. Every single thought we have, consciously or unconsciously, has an impact on our body.
So you ask, if our thoughts are unconscious, how can we manage them and our health? The key here is to be aware. By becoming a spy on our thoughts, we can hear the negative thoughts that keep us sick, the words that a particular disease runs in the family. Science has shown that �it just ain�t so�, but thinking makes it so.
It the intermingling of the conscious and the unconscious,
the 5 percent and the 95 percent, that the pioneers exploring this vast and intricate universe of our minds will continue to probe. But there will most likely never be a complete understanding. After all, the enigmas of the mind, and the mechanics of the brain, will forever define the ultimate mystery of simply being human.
18th September 2010
The Secret of Your Health
