Peole are taught that the rational mind is the final arbiter of good decision makingFor many people, the answer is yes. Why? Because many of these people feel a sense of safety dealing with life from the rational perspective. Life becomes a list of tasks that can be checked off the list. Sadly, living life from the rational allows only a sliver of life's beautiful rainbow to be known. Research verifies that the real secret to living your best life is the interplay between using the conscious AND subconscious intuitions we receive.
But when your existence of life solely comprises of rational thoughts you have cut your head off from the rest of your senses. You can experience touch, taste, sight, smell and sound but much of life escapes us. This is akin to only working out one part of your body at the gym. Your body becomes so out of balance that the health and vitality that you want, becomes unavailable. When we exist in this rational state science has shown that our brains are radiating from the beta stage.
Yet to live a life in complete harmony with ourselves we need to be able to access the deeper, slower cycles of our brain functioning. These states, known as alpha and theta, are states that we can cultivate by learning to center ourselves. What is centering? Centering is allowing the rational mind to release the logistical concerns that are filling it while accessing are deeper and more comprehensive states of existence. This "mind chatter" of the rational mind keeps many people in a state of perpetual stress. It's obvious how this perpetual stress can negatively impact their health on all levels; physical, emotional, and spiritual. For your benefit, and for a more fulfilling quality of life you can learn to cultivate the states of alpha and theta.
Now, a lot of "experts" are going to tell you that their way is the "only" way or the "best" way. This is nonsense. There are many ways to cultivate the state that allows your subconscious mind to access these highly intuitive parts of itself during the day. There are many techniques that involve meditation, visualization, hypnosis, active exercise, reflection, trance, touch, hearing, visualizations, and many more. Every individual responds differently to these individual modalities or combination of these modalities you have to experiment and find what works for you.
Over the years, one of the key processes that often is overlooked is clearing old emotional baggage and stress from our system. Can you imagine how much more effective each method above would be as you become more fully present in the moment? From both my experience and the science, I can say that doing this powerfully amplifies the effects that each of these has on your life.
Let's discuss for moment what happens if you don't find a method of accessing these "flow" states. When you exist solely from the rational mind you cut off your intuition and processes occurring internally that can help you to perform better in life. Over the last 20 years it has become commonplace in sports for teams to practice visualization techniques to help players and coaches perform better and to access these parts of ourselves that allow for the flow state to exist.
This state of relaxation has been discussed throughout history. Recently, science has been able to image our brains while we achieve this state. This shift to the alpha and theta states allows greater benefits to our health, flow-state, and intuitions and healing on all 3 levels (physical, spiritual, and emotional).
The benefits of learning how to shift yourself into this state are clear. Today, take a moment to begin the process of educating yourself and exposing yourself to the possibility that more exists for you than your rational mind can see in this moment. There is a matrix of energy which interconnects all of us that cannot be tapped into by the rational mind. It only can be accessed through your intuition and inner knowing and these can be made much more accessible by learning to self-meditate rather than self-medicating.
Don Nenninger is author, consultant, coach, and co-creator with his wife Nicole of various multi-media programs on relationships, family, parenting, and blended families. He has received an advanced degree in psychology (Psy. M) and has spent years researching and applying practical and simple techniques to help others improve the quality of their profession and personal lives