Hello Wild Soul, in this episode of the Wild Soul Grove Podcast, I dive into the hidden world of the subconscious mind and how it quietly runs your life in the background. I explore the idea that around 95% of your daily thoughts, feelings and behaviours are directed by the subconscious, and what that really means for your growth, your relationships and your emotional wellbeing.

I talk about the difference between the conscious mind, the part of you that thinks it is in charge, and the subconscious, the part that is actually driving most of your responses. Using simple examples, like how a child learns what is safe and what is dangerous, I explain how your early experiences shape the patterns that still influence you today, often without you realising.

From there, I explore the power of working directly with the subconscious. I share why immersive meditation and deeper inner work can reach places that traditional talk-based approaches often cannot, and how real transformation happens when you shift the beliefs and stories that live underneath your habits and emotional reactions.

We also look at what is happening in your brain when you feel triggered or overwhelmed. I break down how areas like the amygdala and hippocampus process emotional stimuli, and how this links to modern fears such as social rejection and the pressure to belong in a very connected world.

The episode ends with a guided meditation designed to help you gently access your subconscious and begin forming a new relationship with it. You will leave this episode with a clearer understanding of how your inner world really works and a practical way to start working with your subconscious mind rather than fighting it.

Takeaways:

1. The subconscious mind governs a staggering 95% of our actions and emotional responses daily.
2. Understanding the differences between the conscious and the subconscious mind is crucial for personal development.
3. Immersive meditation is a transformative technique that works directly with the subconscious to facilitate change.
4. Accessing the subconscious occurs in specific brainwave states, particularly during deep meditation and hypnosis.
5. The subconscious can retain negative habits and beliefs, making it essential to address issues at this deeper level.
6. The process of clearing the subconscious is akin to tending to an overgrown garden, where one must first reveal the underlying truth.

Foreign.

Soul.

Welcome to the Wild Soul Grove Podcast.

My name is Joe, and it's a pleasure to have you here.

So, in today's podcast, I thought that we'd dive into what the subconscious mind is, then try and understand why it's so important to us.

And so I thought it'd be a good place to start understanding the difference between the conscious and the subconscious.

You see, the subconscious is incredibly important to everything that we do.

In fact, it controls 95% of every action, thought, or feeling that you have every single day.

Now, this means that you can carry on with life without having to think about breathing or working out how to move body parts or coming up with things that you've already got the context for.

So quick decisions on life choices, things that you know you like, things you know you don't like.

It's how children will remember to not put their hands on hot surfaces.

Once they've done it, once their brain stores it in their subconscious so that the millisecond before they head towards touching something hot, they remember what happened last time, and.

And so they don't touch it.

And so it's really important that we have our subconscious.

We don't want to.

To remove it and replace it with the conscious so that we make a decision every.

Every time that we need to.

But it also means that for the vast majority of the ways that we act, for how we emotionally react to things, for our habits that we do, and for.

For the beliefs that we have, that they also come from the subconscious.

And so, really, we need to understand what happens with the subconscious, how our brains delve into it, and what we can do to change it if.

If it's wired wrong.

So as a sort of side note to this, if you don't know what I do, I'm an immersive coach.

And that means I use immersive meditation with my clients to make a meaningful change.

And immersive meditation is founded on the principle that lasting transformations are best achieved by working in the subconscious.

So you may be familiar with talk therapy.

So we'll start with a little comparison, I suppose, there.

And this is a good example of the conscious versus the subconscious.

So in talk therapy, we're kept in the conscious.

We interact with somebody and we process things that have happened, and we heal things that have happened, hopefully.

And so it's incredibly important for understanding, processing, healing, things like that.

But you see, the problem is, is that when we are in our conscious mind, we are subject to the thoughts that are running through our head at that very moment and it's the subconscious that often shapes that.

So I'll give you an example.

You might go to your talk therapy session and you might have had to drive that morning.

You might have been a bit stressed with the kids.

You might be a little bit vulnerable, a little bit on, on edge because something's happened.

And then let's say that you get to the, to the office and there's an issue with the parking.

Perhaps you've got a limited time, perhaps the pay and display wasn't working, or perhaps you've had to park closer to someone than you'd like to.

It then plays on your mind.

You may have had a past issue with it, or you may have heard a lot about people getting tickets or scratching cars and things like that.

And so your subconscious keeps you on edge.

It keeps you in its fight or flight mode and it keeps you worried about it because it wants you to survive, it doesn't want you to, to suffer.

And so it keeps that in your head.

And so you go into the office and you start to do your, your conscious mind awareness and.

To the.

As you have to almost fight to avoid that thought creeping in.

Perhaps you were at a stage in the therapy or in the talking where you were going to make some headway.

You were, you were got past some problems.

So now it was time to, to move into the positive.

But this week the, the stress of the parking and perhaps what's happened before as, as just, just altered the balance within your chemical hormones and so perhaps there's a bit more stress going.

Positive outlook is now not as positive as it could have been.

So our conscious mind is, is very subject to things that, that go on around us.

And you can, I suppose in a way you could blame the subconscious for that because it's.

The subconscious's mind is to get you ready for those situations.

Again, if only 5% is done by our conscious, we can't be wasting time trying to work out whether, you know, we've, we've parked right or whether we've reacted right with the children.

We just have to use our little bit of context.

So just briefly what happens in these situations.

So a stimulus would come in and I'll give an example in a moment.

But a stimulus would come in, it would enter the thalamus and from the thalamus it would send it to the amygdala and the amygdala decodes emotions and it sends it to the hypothalamus, which then sends it to the sympathetic nervous system or the parasympathetic nervous system and gets you to do something.

It's one of these two steps.

They're called the autonomic nervous system.

And so, so the sympathetic nervous system is our fight or flight.

So it's those moments where our heart rate increases, blood flow is taken away from vital organs, except what's essential.

And it goes into the extremities, it goes into your hands and it goes into your feet, because you're either going to be clenching your fists, ready to fight, or you're going to be needing your legs ready to run.

The parasympathetic nervous system in that sense is the complete opposite.

Blood moves away from the extremities, except what's essential and goes to the vital organs.

And so this is known as the rest and digest.

Because essentially what we do is we go back to digesting food.

We go back to digesting food, which allows nutrients to get into the body, which allows the body to perform what it's got to perform.

And so it's one of these two steps and it's the, the thalamus bringing in the stimulus, sends it to the amygdala, which then picks which way it's going to go.

Now, the brain has a context part, so the other path, which comes in slightly after.

And so the amygdala makes quick decisions on things.

So the example that I was going to bring up, a lion.

So if you saw a lion, your amygdala doesn't wait to find out what the lion's doing or where you are or if you're safe or if you're capable.

It's.

It'll send the warning to the amygdala to get into fight or flight.

It'll shift you straight to that.

That's a best example of that.

Now, that other part of the, of the process, it sends it to the sensory cortex, which sends it to the hippocampus.

And it's in the hippocampus that we store the context of things.

And this essentially is where we get a lot of the, the subconscious thoughts, as.

So it's in there that we set up situations to allow us to control the reality around us.

So in the instance of the lion, our sympathetic nervous system is set off and our context brain reminds us that a lion is dangerous, that there's these different options that we can do for it.

But it'll still back up what the amygdala has done.

It'll still go to the sympathetic nervous system.

But now we might get some help to try and work out what to do next fast forward.

So that, let's say very, very unlikely you're going to come into contact with a lion unless my podcast has gone further than I expected.

For most of us we would come into contact with a lion, we'd come across a lion and we would set off the dangerous animal with on us.

This happens and this is milliseconds and fractionally after it.

The hippocampus then reminds the brain that we actually just paired to enter a zoo.

And so the hippocampus tells us that the line is meant to be there.

It is in fact behind bars and you don't need to worry.

And so the brain then switches from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system.

If we become sympathetic nervous system dominated, which is easy because there's a, there's a thing such as a feedback loop which if we keep compounding the issue and increasing the stress will stay in the sympathetic nervous system for a large amount of time.

If we're sympathetic nervous system dominated, then we're probably going to have a bit of a, an on edge response to everything that happens.

And it's quite difficult to unpick that unless you have the skills to do it or if you've consciously, intentionally made the effort to change that.

And so a lion is a good example to show you exactly how it works.

But the problem for most people and the reason why we need to get into the subconscious is because the stimulus doesn't have to be a lion, doesn't have to be something seemingly as dangerous.

And, and the brain by extension.

And those changes can be seen in something like lactose intolerance.

So because of evolution.

Have sort of progressed, our bodies have had to sort of changed.

And so I say lactose intolerance.

I mean the lactose enzyme because we drink more milk, we've had to start producing it.

And it's why you see more lactose intolerance because the evolution is incredibly slow.

And, and so only some people, and only some of us have got great enzymes for it.

A lot of people have a differing amount of enzyme and issue for that.

And so that's just an example of how slowly the body is evolving.

But, but what's evolved, what's not evol.

The brain's Independent, unbiased way of keeping you alive.

If it sees a potential threat and it's.

And it identifies a potential threat by how it changes the homeostasis of the body, how it sets off different chemicals.

So if it perceives a threat, then it will react and it will use context to keep you safe.

The question is, is it keeping you safe using the right methods?

Now, safety doesn't necessarily mean positive.

Often it can mean holding status quo.

So the irony is, is that if you start doing a bad habit or a negative belief, eventually the body gets used to surviving in that mode and so doesn't really want to change it.

It enjoys the chemical release of stress.

It enjoys the inflammation risen by the junk food.

And so I say it enjoys, it thrives because that's what it's used to.

That's how it's going over time.

It's going to suffer, but that's not what.

It doesn't have a future look like that it just understands how it is.

So what we've had over over a time.

So I said going back to the 40,000 years.

So what that means is that our brains haven't evolved, but our surroundings and our society has.

So that forces us to look at what exactly has changed.

So we had a predator there with a lion.

We had pathogens, we had wars, we had shelters, and we had being kicked out of your tribe.

And those are generally sort of, broadly speaking, sort of the categories now for most people, a lot of those, all of those aren't a danger anymore.

We don't come across them that much.

Lions, predators, not so much pathogens, we do, but a lot of people have ways of dealing with it.

And so it's not a constant concern.

It's not really something that comes up that much.

War is for most of us, thankfully, it's not always a likely event.

And shelter, we've got shelter, you know, but what we still suffer from, and you'll realize this when I, when I unfold this, is being kicked out of the tribe.

Social ostracization.

And that fear is still there.

And in fact it's been amplified by the increase in technology.

You now have a phone with you all the time.

You've got several social media platforms, you've got WhatsApp groups.

You're essentially always in your tribe.

Now, we used to be in a tribe of 15 people or 20 people or more, 50 people.

And you would read body language, you would understand each other.

And so as human beings, we'd learn to coexist.

If your tribe came across Another tribe, you'd have differences in that.

That's the.

That's the worry.

But your tribe.

And you'd have the fear of being kicked out your tribe.

And so you'd stay within the parameters of what was agreed.

You wouldn't do things that the tribe would disagree on because it would get you kicked out.

But now your tribe could be all of the people commenting on a specific Facebook post.

And that post might have nothing to do with you, and those people might have nothing to do with you, but suddenly there's factions within here where people can tell you that you're wrong and you're out and we don't agree with you anymore.

And so that stimulus now is everywhere, but that the brain still treats it the same.

So the stimulus is, you walk into a room full of people, and the brain says, oh, I've got to fit in.

And so the brain sets off the sympathetic nervous system.

Then the context brain comes through and says, you were invited to this party.

These people are your friends.

And so then you change how you're gonna.

How you're going to react.

But it comes down to what that context is, because your body's gonna pick one of those nervous systems.

And so we know that our beliefs and our habits and our emotional reactions are in the subconscious.

Yes, we can consciously work some.

But here's a.

Here's a fascinating statistic for you or fact for you.

Every second, your mind processes 11 million bits of information, but your conscious brain is only aware of 40 of them.

4, 0.

So that means that the vast majority of the things that you want to think about, you can't think about.

Your subconscious is already giving you the context of how to react.

And so if we sit there and try and talk about it in the conscious mind, there's very little we can do to change the habit.

There's very little we can do to change the belief.

There's very little we can do to change the emotional reaction.

We can understand them, we can process them, and we can hopefully heal from them.

But it doesn't mean that we've changed our subconscious.

We may have got comfortable with the idea of what happened, but then we might just try and learn a way to avoid it happening again.

Remove the trigger.

But the subconscious context stares, which means that if it ever comes up or something similar or the brain decides to use that context to help you understand this moment, it is still there.

And so it's crucial that we get into the subconscious mind to make the change.

So you might be thinking, well, if 95 of it comes to the subconscious 11 million bits of information, only 40 are in the conscious.

How, how on in the heck do we get into the subconscious then?

Do we ever get into the subconscious?

When does it happen?

Well, the brilliant thing is that we know exactly when we're in the subconscious.

So there are five brainwave states.

You have Gamma, which is the highest.

And this is like high cognitive functions.

They liken it to extreme problem solving.

You're not in it very often.

Some people will never get a chance to be in it.

But, but it's there and down from there, which is the vast majority of us, the overwhelming majority of us.

And it's, it's essentially your everyday.

Even the people that hit Gamma will sit in the Beta, which is the, which is this next brainwave.

And that's your everyday thinking.

It's your analysis.

When you go to that talk therapy, you're in your beta brain.

And your beta brain allows you to go through the day, analyzes situations and allows you to, to stay alive, thrive as much as you can using what the tools and the context that you've got.

Next, down from there, we've got Alpha.

And Alpha is so in a meditation context, it's like light meditation.

So you might have your, you might be very, very calm, you might have your eyes closed, you might be daydreaming.

You might have your eyes open and daydreaming.

You know, when you sort of zone out, but in a, in a, in a nice pleasant way.

That's, that's Alpha.

We've, we've kind of allowed to let our worries a little bit and we can, we can just be, be, be, be, just be there in the moment.

It's the gateway to subconscious.

But it's not the subconscious.

No, the subconscious comes next.

And that's Theta.

So Theta is our REM sleep.

It's our light sleep.

It's also our like deep meditation space as well.

This is how we get into it.

Deep meditation, trance work, hypnosis.

When we get into those places, that's when we're in theater and that is when we're in the subconscious.

Below that we have Delta.

And Delta is the, is the dreamless state.

Okay.

Delta is the repair mode.

When we're into Delta, that's when we do good recovery.

It's interesting if you look at sleep cycles, to understand what's most important, we must dip into Delta when we sleep.

We must, that's how our body recovers.

So the more times we can get into Delta in our sleep, so we go through patterns you don't drop into Delta, stare there all night, and then come back out.

You go up and you come down, you go up, you come down, you go up, you come down.

So we generally know there's a certain amount of time you need to sleep for, because you'll need to get into Delta a certain amount of times.

There's the right sort of times to go sleep.

I'll probably talk about that on another podcast.

I'm not the time now, but do some research.

Fascinating.

Fascinating topic.

But coming back to Theta.

So Theta is the subconscious.

This is where we dream.

This is where we're in rem.

This is.

This is light sleep, if you will, but we can access it without being in sleep.

So.

So what they found is it's key to try to get to Theta but not allow yourself to head to Delta.

That's that.

That means that we can sit in, in a.

In a space almost like going into specific classroom for a specific lesson.

So we've got to get into this classroom and we can access it, as I said, through deep meditation.

So that's, that's extreme relaxation, not just a bit of meditation.

I'm talking touch points, finding your way down, relaxing.

Most people might meditate four or five or ten minutes.

And for.

For deep relaxation, you'd spend that amount of time just getting to the point where you can start meditating.

So.

So deep meditation, trance work.

So trance work, we know from sound therapy and from.

From the belief system of Shama that we can access the trance state, which takes us into a different brainwave and allows us to dream.

In shamanism is the belief that it allows us to.

To go through to other realities.

There's more to.

To this world, to this life than we can see.

But we can get there and see it when we're in theater doesn't open up the whole thing at once, but it allows us to see in front of our face every time we observe something new and different.

So you can access it with the drum, you can access it with sound, you can access it with voice chants.

Getting into trance is a good way to get theta and then hypnosis.

So hypnosis is designed to get you to theta and then hold you in theater so that it can make you changes.

Now, immersive meditation is a form of getting you into theater.

It is theater work.

And it's a mixture of the deep meditation and the hypnosis.

Okay, so it's not hypnosis itself.

It's slightly different principle because when we're rewiring the Subconscious hypnosis is, is great for overcoming some bad habits.

People know a lot about hypnosis for weight loss, for giving up smoking.

And the principle really there is that the hypnotist is going to have a plan of what it is that they're trying to stop.

And so it's kind of like them planting the seed for you.

Immersive meditation doesn't work like that because it doesn't plant the seed for you.

We do the visualizations, we do some prompts, but there is no advice in there.

There is nothing in there that is your outcome.

What happens when you get into the subconscious and you're asked a question by the, by the immersive meditator, by the facilitator, your subconscious, your truth comes out.

And so that's the point of immersive meditation.

We get into the subconscious and we let you plan your own seed more often.

Actually, it's not planting the seed, it's, it's uncovering what was there.

I, I always liken going through immersive meditation courses, as it were, with, with my clients as a guidance.

So at first it's a garden you've not looked on because it's absolutely covered in weeds, overgrown, some stuff you didn't even plant.

And it's gotten to the point where you're just embarrassed, so you shut the curtains, you turn away, you certainly don't go into it.

And so what you have to do is get out there and find out what the garden was and what the garden is beneath that, because you know that you have this guide and you know you have this subconscious and this truth.

And you also know that you can plant your own thing in there.

But the first thing you've got to do is clear away all the stuff and see what it is, is so you clear away all the weeds, you get the right tools, you work your way down until you've got your garden.

And more often than not, the garden, the space is all you need.

Yes, you can, you can put some plants in it that might help you with, with achieving your goal.

Yes, you can put some features in that make it pleasant a bit more, a bit more pleasant to sit in.

But essentially the garden is the garden that you will use.

And so we get to that truth.

And so that's what it's like.

We drop into that space, we get rid of the noise.

These weeds are essentially conscious level thoughts.

And so we need to get below it to take a.

Once we're into that space, once you're into theater, you can make A change at that point, your philosophy, change comes with repetition and doing a habit.

So as you can see, it's the subconscious where we make these lasting changes.

Yes, we can understand things, yes, we can process things.

We can sit and chat to therapists, counselors, friends, family about stuff.

And over time, you can make sense of it.

It.

And so you get past where you were blocked, but the next time it happens, the block comes back.

And yes, you might have some coping mechanisms, you might go through the same process.

But here's the thing.

If you go to the subconscious where the root cause of the issue is, you can change it, you can overcome it, so that when the next time the trigger arises, the mind doesn't go there.

It doesn't go there.

And over time, you realize the subtle changes in your life that you didn't react like you did last time, that you didn't believe a certain way last time, that you didn't drop into a horrible habit.

You've had a bad day at work.

You used to come home and want to have a drink or some junk food.

You came home and you just started cooking and chilling out.

You still had the bad day.

You can't control other people, but you can control what you do.

And so you get through changes.

Okay, I think that's enough on the subconscious mind for the day.

Hopefully the brain wave talk was simple enough for you and the brain functions were simple enough for you.

It's absolutely fascinating when you get into it and really does highlight the importance of what the subconscious is doing for us.

But what we can do in the subconscious, we'll.

We'll head over now to a short meditation.

So if, if you want to now get yourself comfortable and we'll start to do a little meditation.

I want you to find a quiet space now.

I want you to settle.

Gently close your eyes.

Take a deep breath in through the nose.

And slowly let it out through the mouth.

Another breath in.

And out.

Then I want you to notice the edges of your eyes and allow them to soften.

I want you to relax the jaw, letting it open slightly.

And then I want you to drop your shoulders.

Just become aware of your bottom ribs as they float out to the side on the in breath.

And come back in on the out breath.

Just notice again the edges of your eyes.

Your jaw.

And your shoulders.

Letting them all relax.

Now.

Imagine a soft light at the top of your head.

It flows down through your body.

Calming the nervous system.

With each exhale, feel the surface noise of the mind.

Quieten.

Visualize yourself standing before a door marked the subconscious.

As you breathe, the door slowly opens.

Revealing a vast inner landscape.

A place of memory.

Emotion.

And potential.

You don't need to do anything.

Just be here.

Receptive.

Open.

At peace.

Take a moment to feel the calm intelligence of this deeper self.

And then.

Begin to focus a little more on your inhalations.

Taking some deep breaths.

Offering gratitude for connecting within.

Starting with your awareness at your feet and working your way up.

Begin to move the body bit by bit.

Working up through the torso, out into the arms and hands.

Up into the chest again and into the throat.

And up into the head.

And then when it feels right, gently open your eyes.

Foreign.

Okay.

After meditation, I always like to suggest that people journal or, or doodle or write down what's come up.

So I invite you to do that in a moment.

I'll sign off now to leave you in your own, your own company and see what changes you can make.

All I'll say is that if you go into the show notes, you'll find my website www.wildsolgrove.co.uk on there you'll find content, but you'll also find a link to my app.

My app has more meditations, it has more content, more stories, more information about what I discussed today.

It also gives you some links links to get in touch with me if anything that I said resonates with you.

If you, if you want to try immersive coaching out for yourself, I offer a completely free 15 minute like little consultation that checks in to see if it's something that we can, we can work on together.

So if you'd like to do that, you'll find all the ways of contacting me through my website.

Please like subscribe, follow whatever way you're listening to this.

I appreciate it helps.

It helps more people find me.

And until I see you again, you'll find me in the grove.