In this episode
Show notes
The subconscious mind runs far more of your life than you realize, and Michael deep dives into it this week.
He starts by sharing his analogy of ‘‘the subconscious mind as a book’’. This book becomes the autopilot where we move through life unconsciously with our actions, patterns and behaviours.
In Michael’s analogy, the conscious mind can be considered the author and reader of your book. As the author, you can ‘consciously’ add (or not add) information to your book. But this conscious decision-making requires focus, mental effort and energy.
Michael finished this episode with a valuable tip: allow time to think and for information to land, so that you can ‘consciously’ decide whether you agree or disagree with that new information. The choice is yours.
The IN Movement Podcast was formerly the Going Pro Yoga Podcast — and before that, the Yoga Teacher Evolution Podcast and the Rat Race Rebellion Podcast. Same mission, evolved name.
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Hello and welcome back to the Going Pro Yoga Podcast. Super excited to be speaking with you this week, myself and no one else. So this will be a shorter episode where we're gonna talk about the conscious and subconscious mind. So before we get into that, if you're a regular listener or if this is the first time listening, I would love for you to just take a moment, Scroll down into your phone. Whether you're listening to this episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and if you're liking
these podcasts so far and give us a review. It really, really, really help us out. You know how reviews are. Most of us make decisions based off of reviews, and we want the reviews to be genuine and authentic. So if you do enjoy this podcast, please take 30 seconds, pick up your phone, Scroll down to going Pro Yoga podcast, which if you're listening to this, you're probably already there. And then just find the five star review somewhere and or the star review and we would love to get
a review from you, hopefully five stars and that'll just help us to spread this podcast, which is a free podcast. You know, we don't advertise anything besides of course our own trainings, just kind of letting people know what we're doing and we want this free resource to be accessible to as many people as possible, specifically the yogi's out there or anyone who's interested in yoga.
Hence the intro of course. So thank you. If you have taken the time to do that, really appreciate you. Otherwise, yeah, let's jump into the topic for today of conscious mind and subconscious mind. So I think this topic is very interesting because we kind of all refer to the subconscious or not all of us, but a lot of the times we'll refer to the subconscious. And if we don't, if we're not familiar with it, then I think we definitely should.
So let's kind of just go through it now. So one visual that I've seen and I've heard people talk about is looking at an iceberg that's floating in the ocean that you know if you're on top of the water you can see the top of the iceberg. And if you're deep diving in the water, you can also see the what's underneath floating on top, which is usually a larger mass of iceberg that's in the water. So the conscious mind is what this representation is, is, is something that we're a little
bit more aware of or it's at, it's at the top, It's like whenever we're present, right. And the subconscious mind is kind of underneath everything, just happening in the background, right. So that's one perspective, which I was like, OK, I can kind of see how that works.
But to me it's actually a little bit more confusing. And I have a different analogy that I think is quite helpful. But before we go jump into that, he might be thinking, well, what about unconscious mind, unconscious mind?
So to me, unconscious, unconscious means that you are asleep, right? Conscious means that you are awake. Subconscious is what's happening or what's aware, what's what's there all the time. Subconscious, it's always there. So when you're unconscious, when you're sleeping, your subconscious is still working, it's still playing, right? So your subconscious is just something that's always actively there, right?
And the perspective or the example that I like to use of the subconscious mind is that the subconscious mind is like a book, a book of programs that you possess within your brain, your brain, your mind. OK, you can consider it a storehouse of information, experiences, learned behaviors, skills, beliefs, stories, patterns, conditions, all these words that may or may not be familiar with you with regards to, you know, releasing old stories, releasing old beliefs,
you know, writing things new. So this book analogy I found to be extremely helpful to see or to imagine that we have this book that contains all the patterns, stories, beliefs, information, experiences that we have developed throughout our lifetime. And our subconscious mind is something that is developed early in life.
Depending on who you talk to, you know, from zero to three years old, zero to seven, zero to 8 years old. In the early years, our book is basically empty or very little information is in there. And we fill it up. And we fill it up from the experiences that we get from our parents, the things that we get to do or see when we're in our childhood or young years. And then we start to fill up this book, which is the foundation of where a lot of our beliefs, stories, conditions and patterns actually come from.
And then when we talk about the conscious mind, if we were to use that same book analogy, you could see that the conscious mind is more the author and reader of your book. The conscious mind is the author and reader of your book, meaning that as the author, consciously you can add to your book, right?
Like children are very conscious because everything they do is new. So whenever we're doing something new, we have to be quite conscious, very conscious, because we need to be able to be present, alert and paying attention to what we're doing, right?
This conscious presence, if you will. So you can consider the active thinking part of your mind, which takes information and puts it in your book, and which also pulls information out of your book. The interesting thing about the conscious mind is you become conscious when you're focused, right?
When you're learning something new. But when you're learning something new and you're conscious, you're actually using a lot more energy to stay focused or to stay conscious. Which is why anytime you're learning something new for the first time, like maybe teaching yoga or learning new asanas or learning how to move your body in ways that are not as familiar to you, it requires a lot of energy. So I assume most of the listeners here have done a yoga teacher training, or they've
done something where there was a training that it was intense, learned a lot of information, right? And you're usually tired or exhausted somewhere, typically in the second week, definitely towards the end, okay. And a lot of the reason why that fatigue happens is because your conscious mind is so active during this learning period that you're burning a lot of fuel. You're using a lot of energy to stay as focused as you can, which is makes sense if you
think about it. Anytime you're writing in your book, you need energy to write into your book. If you're just reading the book, the book is just basically, I want to say, reading the book. But if information is coming out of the book like you're subconscious, then it's just kind of happening this pattern, these routines, right?
So if you think about the patterns, routines, habits that you have now, some things are so automatic for you that you don't even have to really think at all. And when I say think, I mean use your conscious mind. For example, riding a bike, it's as easy as riding a bike, right?
This expression comes from the fact that you've learned how to ride a bike at one point and when you learned how to do it, your conscious mind was so present that it wasn't super easy at that time. You might use the energy and you, you know how to go through the process.
And then eventually once you learned it, it went into your book and now all of a sudden you knew how to do it and you don't have to think or I assume if you know how to ride a bike that you don't have to think when you ride a bike, you just do it.
You know, it's kind of like if you learned how to drive stick shift before then usually the first time, it's there's a lot going on. You know, you got the stick there, you got the wheel there, you got 2 pedal, 3 pedals, really, the brake, the clutch and the gas, right?
You really have to pay attention. You're using a lot of fuel, a lot of energy. And it's like if someone asks you to do something while you're learning how to drive stick, it's like, please don't talk to me like I'm, you know, you're focused, you're concentrating, you know, And then a few weeks, months later, all of a sudden, not that I condone this behavior, but, you know, you're talking on the phone, Bluetooth, hopefully you're drinking, you're drinking from your water bottle and you're driving stick.
And you know someone's in the car and you're listening to me, I don't know, whatever. You could be doing a bunch of things and you're still able to keep moving in the car in a safe way. And that's just because eventually we again similarly write that information into our book when we're learning that skill of driving a stick shift or a manual car manual vehicle. But eventually it becomes so ingrained in us or it's always written into our book that it
just becomes easier and we don't have to use that energy anymore, or the same amount of energy to be able to read from that book. So this is where it gets even more interesting. Okay. It would be inefficient for your mind to always be conscious, right?
We talk about being present and being conscious all the time, especially in yoga, right? Be present, be present, be present, be conscious. I wanna be conscious. Higher level of consciousness, That's all great and definitely something to strive for. We wanna be as conscious as possible so that we can make decisions that aren't based off of routine habit, so we can actually think for ourselves instead of just pulling information from our book.
Because, you know, pulling information from the book is helpful because in some situations you don't want to have to think all the time. You want you know, things to move and just happen for you. But at the same time, we want to be able to make choices by using thought and being able to discern, which means evaluating between two sides of something so that we can make better decisions, right.
When we make conscious choices, conscious decisions, present choices, present decisions. Usually we make better ones. And when I say better, I mean the one that's most appropriate for you in that moment. So these routines, these habits, these things that are familiar to you, are what's in your book.
Okay things that are familiar to you is what's in your book. And this brings me to anytime we're doing something that is new, Yes, Something that is unknown. Sure. Something that is unfamiliar. Or more specifically, something that is uncomfortable.
OK, things that are uncomfortable are things that are not in your book. You haven't written it in the book yet. Your subconscious is unfamiliar with this piece of information. So your mind, collectively conscious, subconscious mind, your nervous system, which this is all part of the nervous system, but we're not going to dive into that too much. But your nervous system, your mind is going to try to focus on survival and efficiency, right?
That's what its job is, to keep you alive for survival. And the mind will avoid things that are unfamiliar because it uses more energy to become familiar with that thing. Right? When we're younger, everything is new. So you don't avoid anything.
You just do whatever is put in front of you. And those formative years, zero to whatever year. Eight years, let's just say seven years, right? But as we become older, our routines, our habits, you know, we get quote, UN quote stuck in our ways.
Stuck in our ways is like, it's in the book. If it's not in the book, then I'm not going to do it a different way, right? And this is where our patterns or conditions will limit us or limiting beliefs. Limiting stories can stop us from making change in life.
And making change in life is difficult sometimes, a lot of times for some people, and sometimes we just don't even do it right. So making change is difficult because the mind is always going to push you towards what you are comfortable to do. Things that are familiar to you, things that you already know. Because of the energy efficiency, it doesn't require an additional extra bout of energy. If we're sticking to the book and we're just following what's in the book, I think this is
fascinating. Hopefully this is fascinating for you as well. So this means that unless we consciously choose to move into things that are unfamiliar, uncomfortable, your mind will always avoid it for you to conserve energy. So This is why it's difficult to change. This is why it's difficult to learn new things. This is why it's difficult to break patterns, beliefs, and stories that exist within our mind, in our subconscious mind. Especially if you think about
any stories, beliefs that are, you know, limiting you, as we say, limiting beliefs when you know, ideally as yogis, we are trying to not just practice yoga, the physical awesomeness, which, you know, I think we've done enough episodes in this podcast for us to know that yoga's not about stretching.
Yeah. So the whole point of yoga is to expand, expand our minds, expand our body, expand our consciousness, grow our consciousness, whatever you want to whatever language resonates with you. But ultimately improve ourselves, grow, change.
Right. But I just talked about how your mind, your subconscious mind, your, your primitive body is going to move against that. It doesn't want to change, right? And consciously, a lot of people, not consciously, excuse me?
A lot of people are aware that they don't like change. We don't want to change, right? Because change is unfamiliar. And the the brain is going to back that up because of the energy that's required in order to make those changes.
So just think about that one, right? Anytime you're going through your routines or something that you're actually having a difficult time with, you're trying to make a decision between one thing and the other. And it's very, it's pulling you towards one way.
Your brain is saying, no, I should just do this because it makes me feel more comfortable. And I guess the one thing I should say here is like there's the emotional component, right? The feeling of comfort versus discomfort or the feeling of worry or I guess you would say it all kind of falls under fear.
The fear of the unknown, The fear of what's unfamiliar, the fear of what's uncomfortable. And there's layers to that. You know, The fear of the unknown. You know what if there's something there that's not safe? What if there's something there that will judge me?
What if there's something there that's going to hurt me? Or something to this effect, right? This is all part of your brain just trying to protect you, right? In addition to the energy conservation, because of the familiarity, so collecting new information is what your subconscious mind is doing all the time. Everything that you listen to like this episode, anything that you watch, anything that someone tells you is added to your subconscious mind.
So scrolling on reels, scrolling on stories, you know, flipping through Facebook or whatever social media platform that you enjoy kind of, you know, burning time if you will, that is all that information your subconscious is, is bringing in.
Meaning it's, it's, it's going into your book, right. And your brain has to take that information and eventually decide okay, do we keep this or not keep this? Does it go in the book? Does it not go in the book? To be honest, most of it goes in the book.
It just, you know, we don't have the full access, the full intelligence in our brain to be able to use all the information we collect all the time. You know if you if you've seen the the movie or the TV show called Limitless, which is all about accessing the full 100% spectrum of your mind.
Meaning all the information that you've ever come across, ever seen, ever read, ever heard, exists in your mind already in your subconscious mind. And being able to access that at any point in time is the whole point of those shows and that movie. So because we're collecting information all the time, all the time, all the time, from our senses, right? Entering a new space, taking a new route to drive somewhere, anytime we're doing something new, we're collecting new information, right?
So when we're scrolling on whatever platform it might be, our brain is actually burning calories, right? In order to filter through this information, right? Depending on what we're taking in, and I'm sure it's not super new to you to know that when we're scrolling on Instagram or we're, you know, going through social media or doing anything really. Even watching shows that especially in shows that are new or movies that are new, your brain is going to be using a lot of calories, a lot of energy in
order to process that new information which actually doesn't recharge you. So just thinking about that, think about things when you're, you know, whenever you're tired, you have a long day and you, you need to rest or you go on vacation and you wanna rest And then just think about the things that you do do, right? Are you spending time on social media? Is that actually going to fuel you and recharge you? Or is that just stuff that's gonna burn calories and burn energy and not actually do you
any good, maybe entertain you a little bit? Sure. Right. So just something to think about. This is what I think about, right? So your subconscious mind is always taking in the information from your environment and then this is where it gets even more interesting. And this is kind of comes into what we really talk about a lot or at least Byron talks about a lot because of the new training that has been going on recently which is called empowerment. Empowerment.
So maybe we can talk about what empowerment means just very quickly, right? Empowerment means probably different things to different people. So just think for a second what empowerment means to you, and then I'll tell you what I think empowerment means, or what empowerment means to me. To be empowered, to be empowered. So for me to be empowered is to be aware of choice, to know that you can choose, to realize at any point in time you can make a decision between one thing and
another thing. To me that is empowering to me that makes me feel like, okay, I have choice, I'm empowered. And then if you think about excuse me, the opposite of that, to feel powerless, powerless in my perspective is you have no choice. I'm powerless.
There's nothing I can do. There is no choice for me. So this is my perspective and empowerment. So with the conscious mind, in the subconscious mind conversation, there's a realization of choice here. If we understand that our conscious mind is our present mind and our subconscious mind is our mind that is has all these patterns, this book of information that we've collected over the years from the people around us, the environments, and so on, we can use our conscious mind to accept or reject
anything, accept or reject anything, make a choice between two things, or make a choice between something rejection or acceptance anytime with a conscious mind. Only if we're in autopilot and we're only allowing the information in our book to make decisions for us, then whatever is in the book is going to be the decision.
And if we don't? Necessarily allow ourselves an opportunity to become conscious, to come present, to make a decision or take time to make a decision and actually think about it. Then whatever's in the book is going to happen, right? It's the same thing that's going to happen, the same thing that's going to happen, right?
Hopefully this resonates a little bit with a few things that have come up for you in your life, right? So this kind of makes me think of a couple things. But anytime something happens and we react to that thing, right, if we react quickly, the time in which that thing happens, So let's just say a stimulus, something happened.
And the time that you react to that, if it's really short, chances are you just pulled from your subconscious mind, your subconscious book, right? It's just your automatic response. Your automatic subconscious is just going to respond in whatever way.
But if we take time to digest a little bit what's said, allow things to land even like me talking now, just the things that I'm saying, you can hear it and think for yourself. Do I agree with what Michael's saying? Does this make sense to me? Does it not make sense to me?
Does this agree with the things that I've heard before? That's already in my book, right? You can start to make choice and decide for you consciously whether or not you agree with me. Don't agree with me, right? But if you don't give yourself a chance, you don't allow yourself time to think consciously about you know, whatever I'm saying, or anything else, any other thing, any other stimulus, any other event.
That time in between is going to allow you an opportunity to use some of your conscious mind to be able to possibly make a change. Maybe you always do it this way instead. Now, because you've thought about it, you gave yourself some time to think.
You're going to do it a different way. So your subconscious mind only knows how to accept things. There is no choice with your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is. This sounds weird, but powerless. It's powerless because there's no choice happening, right? It's whatever's in the book.
Whatever's in the book, only patterns, conditions, and stories. So the realization of choice is such an empowering thing. When you realize you can do one thing versus another thing, it's like, sweet. I have choice. It feels good.
So one last thing I'll talk about is just a man, if you're familiar with his name, Viktor Frankel. Viktor Frankel. He was a Jewish psychiatrist who lived in the concentration camps during World War 2, and he wrote a book called A Man's Search for Meaning.
And in this book he talked about regardless of the physical or intellectual abuse that he was exposed to, nobody could cause him to think something that he did not want to think. He knew he had choice. He knew he had the ability to choose to accept or reject within his mind what he believed to be true or whatever it was, regardless of what abuse he was getting. Whatever he was told, all that stuff, he could reject that. He knew he had the choice to
reject that. Even though he probably had to endure some of the physical abuse. He didn't have to accept some of the intellectual things or some of the things that might have been planted or the propaganda or ideas or whatever it is. Beliefs and stories that might have been imprinted on, you know, what was going on in those camps, I can't imagine. But he knew that he had choice and he didn't have to accept those things.
He could reject them. So I'll just read a quote before we end this podcast episode from Viktor Frankl that says when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. So I'll leave it at that.
So conscious mind, subconscious mind. We got a book, we got an author and a reader of this book. And it all comes down to the patterns, conditions, habits and routines that we do every single day, right? Some of them are very helpful. It allows us to, you know, get from one place to the next place.
It allows us to do things and not use a lot of energy. So there's a lot of benefits to our subconscious mind. Absolutely. There's there's definitely no, I don't want this to feel like there's a problem here. It's more so when we become aware of these things, when we become aware of that, that awareness in itself is consciousness. Awareness is consciousness becoming aware of things, right? So hopefully that helps to maybe inspire you in moments to maybe do things differently or give
yourself time in between to make a different choice than what you usually do. Maybe you take a different route sometimes and you go a different way to do things. So instead of doing the same thing week after week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you decide maybe I'm going to do something different.
I'm going to shift the energy in my body and make a choice and do something else. So that's what I'll say when it comes to rewriting stories, patterns and beliefs. I mean, that's a whole thing with, you know, there's therapy and things that can help to support that.
But at its very core, this is what it is, is being able to make choices with a conscious mind and also knowing that no matter what, your mind is always going to move towards what's familiar to what's comfortable to what's known.
So you have to decide for yourself consciously. Do I want to do things differently? Do I want to do things that are not familiar? And if you don't, that's okay, too? Totally fine, right? But if you want to see change in your life, if you want things to be different, maybe there's things in your life that you don't really love or enjoy or like, and you would like there to be some change in your life, which I'm sure all of us can relate to.
The only way that you can do that is through a conscious mind. A conscious mind okay? Great. So as always, I appreciate you for taking the time to listen to this episode. Hopefully you got some juicy little Nuggets out of it.
I find this stuff fascinating and if you have any thoughts, questions or follow-ups or even just comments, feedback, we always take it. Podcast at goingproyoga.com anytime. We're happy to receive feedback. Much love to you all, I hope you have a beautiful week and we'll speak to you next week. Take care.
