Paradigms represent “idea-blueprints,” the core beliefs upon which society is fashioned. Changes in “core” beliefs result in a restructuring of human civilization. The recent results of the Human Genome Project have shattered one of science’s fundamental core beliefs, the concept of genetic determinism. The significance of this change in awareness is vast. It will rewrite the nature of human civilization.
The current ‘dogma’ of science is that the character of our life is defined by our heredity. Genes rule! This ‘dogma’ concerning the role of genes represents a core belief, or fundamental paradigm, that shapes our civilization. The scientifically accepted view of life is that it represents the result of random evolution of genetic mechanisms competing for survival in an eternal struggle for existence –Darwin’s survival of the fittest. As ‘victims’ of heredity, we easily attribute our limitations to less than ‘satisfactory’ genes and their consequent effects upon the body’s physical and behavioral mechanisms. Kind of a gloomy perspective isn’t it.
Well, now for the good news! There is an emerging understanding that answers the question, ‘Do genes control our biology?’ The answer is an unambiguous “NO!” The new understanding says that he expression of life represents an adaptation to our perceptions, it is not defined by our genes. It is perception that controls the expression of our genes, not any inherent quality of the genes themselves. In other words, genes don’t turn themselves “on” or “off” causing cancer, arthritis, heart disease, or any number of other so called, “genetically inherited” maladies, without something signaling them to do so. It turns out the instructions to activate a gene or to suppress it comes from outside the gene, not from the inside. In the final analysis, it is our perception that controls our biology, directs our behaviors, and profoundly influences our health.
What if we could learn to change the undfoldment of our lives on purpose, by changing our perceptions?
It would lead to a different way of thinking about our lives and our place in the world. By definition, it would change a fundamental paradigmatic belief that we are victims of our genes, and that would result in a restructuring or upheaval of civilization.
For example, consider the consequences of world changes that were brought about by civilization’s last paradigm upheaval. That occurred around 1925, when physics left behind the dated concepts of a Newtonian material-based universe and recognized the energy-based reality revealed in Quantum Physics. This change of perception shook the world on its axis, literally, through the creation of the atom-bomb. It wasn’t all bad, for with the new science, we went from typewriters to computers, from crank phones to cell phones and, medically speaking, from stethoscopes to CAT scans. All from a change in ‘belief.’
Well, brace yourselves, for we are in for a wild ride. Frontier research in cell biology has finally acknowledged the mechanisms by which perception controls behavior, selects genes and can even lead to a rewriting of the genome. Rather than being the victims of our genes, we have been the victims of our perceptions! The impact of this new awareness will alter our experience of life as much as the recognition of quantum mechanics altered and advanced the world of technology. We are on the verge of a most radical, and most wonderful upheaval of human civilization.
It is our perceptions that determine the limits of what we can achieve, not our genes. Our abilities and limitations reflect our perceptions of life, the cumulative awareness of who we are and the required strategies to survive in the world. These life-shaping perceptions were acquired through our developmental experiences. Experiences generate learned ‘stimulus-response’ patterns that are stored in our subconscious memory.
Nature designed the development of the nervous system to facilitate the information-laden process of enculturation, the acquisition of language and interpersonal skills required to participate in society. Evolutionary adaptations wired the brain for accommodating an intensive burst of behavioral programming. During the first six years of life a child unconsciously acquires the behavioral repertoire needed to become a functional member of society. This amounts to our basic operational software. Our parents are not only models for structuring social behaviors, they also serve as the ‘mirror’ we use in characterizing a perception of our own personal individuality.
Remarks that parents made about us in regard to personal traits are often ‘downloaded’ as facts. These ‘facts’ become our perceptual filters (software) for reality. They define us as worthy or worthless, powerful or powerless, belonging or outcast, self-reliant or dependent, masters of our own destiny or victims of our circumstances. While the conscious mind may hold one’s self in high regard, the more powerful subconscious mind may simultaneously engage in self-destructive behavior, as a direct result of early negative childhood programming. If you got more ‘you can’t’ messages as a child, you are probably having more ‘you can’t’ experiences as an adult.
The insidious part of the autopilot mechanism is that subconscious behaviors are programmed to engage without the control of, nor the observation by, the conscious self. Since most of our behaviors are under the control of the subconscious mind, we rarely observe them or much less know that they are even engaged. Contemporary studies in neurophysiology show that our reactions to various stimuli are decided before we become consciously aware of them.
In fact, according to Emmanuel Donchin, director of the Laboratory for Cognitive Psychophysiology at the University of Illinois, “As much as 99 percent of cognitive activity may be nonconscious. The fact is, as adults, we spend most of our time subconsciously responding to life rather than consciously creating it.
So the question is: Can faulty or outdated parental and societal software be changed?
The answer is an unambiguous, “YES!” The world of biology is changing as a result of new understandings. The same is true of the world of psychology.
By acknowledging the importance of the subconscious mind, and learning how to communicate with it, long held perceptions and beliefs can be changed, usually in a matter of minutes. Yes, in minutes – not weeks, months, or years, as is usually the case with traditional psychotherapeutic approaches. With more effective approaches to change, such as PSYCH-K™, there is a revolution going on in understanding the mind as well as the body.
Ancient cultures recognized and utilized the power of the subconscious mind through rituals. PSYCH-K utilizes contemporary ‘rituals’ called ‘Balances’, to influence the subconscious. While these ‘rituals’ are linked to the neurophysiology of the body and mind, in accordance with the understanding of modern science, they serve a similar purpose.
PSYCH-K emerged in 1988 as a result of frustration with the insight-based, talk therapy approach often taught in graduate school programs for counseling and psychology. The basic premise of talk therapy is that by getting clear about ‘why’ a client is behaving the way they are, the shear impact of the awareness will create change. In other words, people have only to understand why they behave the way they do, and then make a conscious effort to change. For those of you reading this article who have done a fair amount of talk therapy, you have probably learned that knowing the cause of your problem seldom does anything to change it. Insights can be useful and satisfying to the conscious mind, but often have little or no affect on the subconscious mind – the real control center for change. New research leads us to the inescapable conclusion that psychologists have been looking in the wrong place for the key to change. The following story illustrates the point:
Late at night, just outside a bar, a passerby notices a man crawling around on his hands and knees. He stops and asks the guy, "What are you doing?” The man replies (slurring his speech), "I am looking for my car keys.” The passerby asks, "Where did you lose them?” The drunk replies, "Over there in the alley." Surprised, the passerby asks, "Why are you looking under the street lamp if you lost your keys in the alley?" The drunk replies, "Because the light’s better over here!"
The keys to meeting the challenges of the human mind aren't usually found where the light shines the brightest (at the conscious level of insight). Although insight may shed light on the origins of a problem and provide some constructive strategies for redirecting your life, it seldom changes the dysfunctional behaviors. In the dim alley of the subconscious mind is where the real keys to lasting change can be found.
So, what are the differences between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind? For those of you who are not sure if you really have a subconscious mind, ask yourself this question, ‘Have you ever tried to change your mind, only to find out that your mind has a mind of its own?’ Most of us have had the experience of being at odds with ourselves. It’s a fact of life that even when we know the right thing to do, we don’t always do the right thing! This is a common experience when your subconscious programming doesn’t match your conscious goals and desires. To better understand why this conflict can occur, here is a brief description of some of the differences between the two minds.
As you can see, the two parts of your mind are quite different. Both are necessary for you to be fully functional. However, both are specialized in their capabilities, as well as the way in which they process life’s experiences. As is apparent from its processing capacity alone, the subconscious mind plays an important part in your life and represents a major opportunity for accessing and changing old habits of thinking and behaving.
Notice the processing capacities of the conscious mind at 2,000 bits of information per second and compare it to the 4 billion bits per second of the subconscious. If the conscious mind desires a goal the subconscious mind disagrees with, guess which mind usually wins the contest! That’s why habits are so difficult to change using conscious methods like, will power, affirmations, or positive thinking. The odds are clearly stacked against your conscious mind achieving its goal without the cooperation of the subconscious.
The Subconscious Mind – Your Best Friend or Your Worst Enemy?
Because of the extraordinary power of the subconscious, it’s easy to think of it as your enemy when it seems to be sabotaging your goals in life. In actuality it is more like a well-meaning but misguided friend who is just trying to do what he or she thinks is best for you.
Another way to think of the subconscious is as a computer hard drive with some outdated programs. It’s not that the subconscious is actively trying to keep you from being happy or successful, as an enemy might do. It is simply running old programs that produce that effect. It is doing so out of ignorance rather than spite or revenge. Depending upon how you approach the problem, you can try to make the subconscious conform to your wishes using willpower, treating it as your worst enemy, or you can learn to communicate with the subconscious in a user-friendly way it understands (the path of least resistance) and make it your best friend.
PSYCH-K is an effect and safe way to communicate directly with the subconscious mind. It’s a user-friendly way to rewrite the software of your mind in order to change the print out of your life.
Much of the effectiveness of PSYCH-K can be attributed to Split-Brain research, also known as Brain Dominance Theory. It a nut shell, it is the notion that we have two hemispheres of the brain that perform different functions, as different in some ways as the conscious and subconscious minds. Research shows that when the hemispheres are ‘synchronized’, behavior is maximized. Although our birthright is the natural ability to operate simultaneously out of both sides of the brain, life experiences often trigger a dominance of one side over the other when responding to specific situations. The more emotionally charged the experience is (usually traumatic), the more likely it is that the conclusion we draw from it will be stored for future reference, and the more likely it is that we will automatically overidentify with only one hemisphere of the brain when faced with similar life experiences in the future.
The goal is to increase ‘cross talk’ between the two brain hemispheres, thereby achieving a more whole-brained state. In addition, when right and left hemispheres are in simultaneous communication, the qualities and characteristics of both hemispheres are available to maximize your full response potential to life’s challenges. PSYCH-K utilizes whole-brain integration techniques to achieve this unique state of mind. Not only does this integrated brain state maximize performance, it also dramatically reduces the resistance to changing outdated subconscious programs! That’s why it’s possible to change long-held, self-sabotaging beliefs in minutes, instead of weeks, months, or even years.
How Have People Benefited From Using PSYCH-K?
Real People…Real Results:
A woman in her late 60s came to my office suffering from over 50 years of agoraphobia [fear of open spaces]. She had such a severe case that she had rarely gone more than a few miles from her home for the last 50 years. Only once was she able to use sheer willpower and some medications. Other forms of psychotherapies and counseling had been used to no avail. This woman came to me not long after I had taken the Advanced Course in PSYCH-K. Given her long history, I had very little belief that this would be able to help her, but at least I knew it would do no harm. My lack of belief was exceeded only by her conviction that this would be of little value and she could not understand how something so remote from dealing with the direct biochemical cause of this disorder could be helpful. We changed a number of belief systems to deal with self-esteem, dealing with some old thought patterns that she had, and then began to work on being comfortable, relaxed, and calm while riding in a car. Shortly thereafter, she was able to go for ten miles away from her home, which in itself was a record. About a week later, she took a trip out in the eastern plains of Colorado, which in general was a trigger for severe panic and agoraphobia symptoms, given all the open space. There was an underlying trauma that seemed to have precipitated this disorder in that when she was a child traveling across country with her mother, due to some misbehavior on her part, her mother made her get out of the car and threatened to drive away. The mother did in fact drive a short distance away, to the terror of the child. This trauma seems also to have been overcome through the PSYCH-K process. This result certainly underscores not only the effectiveness of PSYCH-K when the recipient is disbelieving, but also even when the practitioner has little reason to believe that it would work!
Ron B. Minson, M.D.
Psychiatrist
Denver, Colorado
It has been almost two months since the PSYCH-K workshop, but this is the first time I have had some quiet time to write you. The main reason I wanted to write you is to thank you for what happened to me during the conference, especially during the Core Belief Balance. I had not thought I would ever fully recover from the brain aneurisms, but since that weekend, my life has been in full recovery. I think better, I remember better; I take in greater sequential information. I don’t worry, in spite of losses of money, and devastations to this country. I feel whole and fully functional, happy, cheerful and free of negative thought for the first time in 20 years.
I had been previously diagnosed with severe post traumatic stress syndrome, and all effects of that disorder disappeared during that amazing core belief work. No one but God has known or understood the level of “sheer survival” I had existed on the edge of, for most of my life. I know that Heavenly Father led me to this work in order for this wonderful change to take place, according to the Law of Restoration as mentioned in scripture.
Most Sincerely,
Judith Long
Salt Lake City, UT
For more examples visit www.psych-k.com.
We live in exciting and challenging times. If we are to change the world for the better, we must start with ourselves. In a world filled with fear and violence, we need to do more than pray for peace. We need to become the peace we seek. PSYCH-K is more than just a psychological technique to ease the pain and apprehension of our modern world. It is a genuine tool for global transformation. The new scientific understanding arising from quantum physics tells us that we live in a seamless field of energy called consciousness. Each part of that field, affects every other part. Our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, extend beyond our own bodies and are shared–for better or for worse–with everything and everyone in the field. An important controlling factor in human interactions seems to be the whole-brain (hemispherically synchronized) state. A study reported in 1988 in the International Journal of Neuroscience, by researchers at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, suggest that synchronized brain states significantly influence nonverbal communication. The study was done with thirteen paired subjects. The subjects were tested in a darkened and soundproof Faraday cage (a lead-lined screened chamber that filters out all outside electromagnetic activity). Each pair of subjects was instructed to close their eyes and try to “communicate” by becoming aware of the other’s presence and to signal the experimenter when they felt it had occurred. The brainwave states of the subjects were monitored during this process. Experimenters reported that during the sessions an increase in similarity of EEG (brainwave) patterns between the pairs of communicators developed. Furthermore, the experimenters noticed, “The subject with the highest concordance [hemispheric integration] was the one who most influenced the session.“ In other words, the EEG patterns of the individual with less synchrony between the brain hemispheres would come to resemble the EEG pattern of the person whose two sides more closely resembled each other.
These conclusions support the allegation that our thoughts, even nonverbally expressed, can influence others. In fact, the more whole-brained we become, the more we influence others toward that state of being as well. By taking care of our own psyches and our own lives, we are contributing to the whole of humanity.
The greatest gift you can give to others is a better you. That is why I wrote the book entitled, PSYCH-K…The Missing Peace In Your Life! It challenges the current paradigm of change and offers a new and more optimistic model for personal growth and change, both personally and globally. Moving from being victims of our circumstances to the creators of our own destinies is now a more possible than ever. It’s not just a cliché that we create our own reality, it is a scientific and spiritual fact.
Here are some responses from workshop participants:
“Terrific seminar–you opened my eyes and spirit to new ways of looking at how people can heal.”–Marilyn Snow Jones, DC (Chiropractor, Woodland Hills, CA)
“I believe that this is the other aspect of energy medicine that is the wave of the future.”–Yvonne Tyson, M.D. (Long Beach, CA)
“At last, an effective, scientifically proven way to reprogram my subconscious with beliefs that resonate with me and support my dreams and goals in a healthy fashion.”–Jeanne Golly. (Business owner/executive, New York, NY)
The change processes taught in the PSYCH-K workshops are easy to learn, and can be used in clinical settings as well as with friends and family. PSYCH-K is best learned in a group setting, because it is interactive and experiential.
Workshops are offered by Certified PSYCH-K™ Instructors. A list of Instructors and workshop schedules can be found on the web site at www.psych-k.com. The web site also contains information about the video entitled, The Biology of Perception…The Psychology of Change, co-hosted by Bruce Lipton and Rob Williams, as well as Rob’s book, PSYCH-K…The Missing Peace In Your Life!. For information about lectures, presentations, and videos with Dr. Lipton, visit www.brucelipton.com.
About the authors:
Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. is a cell biologist, author and lecturer. Former Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine, and Research Fellow at the Stanford School of Medicine. Bruce is a recognized authority in bridging science and spirit.
Robert M. Williams, M.A. is the originator of PSYCH-K™, a safe and effective way to change self-limiting subconscious beliefs. He is author of PSYCH-K…The Missing Peace In Your Life!, as well as being a popular lecturer and seminar leader.