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Chapter 3

Building Your Peaceful Place

It’s best to explain “Why Relaxation” and “What is Meditation” with a bit of science about the mind. Many psychologists talk about the mind having a conscious and a subconscious part. That’s OK I choose to say subconscious mind and conscious mind. It makes no difference. The circles below represent the mind. The shaded area shows the 12% which is the conscious mind and the clear circle is the remaining 88% of the subconscious mind. The following are stored in the subconscious mind:

Habits and beliefs

Memory

Personality

Self image

Between the conscious and subconscious minds is a ‘filter’ (dotted line) which is part of the Reticular Activating System (RAS). This Reticular Activating Filter either lets through or blocks out information that the subconscious mind receives. Once information gets past the Filter it’s in your subconscious mind, which is your long term memory. Science has estimated that 70 to 80 percent of what the conscious mind deals with does NOT make it into long term memory.

When you are relaxed, this filter opens and allows information into your subconscious mind, and hence memory, more easily.

The relaxed state is called ALPHA. It is one of four brainwave states that scientists have identified. The others are:

BETA (the busy state), THETA (deep meditation and sleep dream state) and DELTA (deep dreamless sleep state).

In the diagram on the left you will see that in BETA the RAS filter is tightly closed and no information can get into your memory. In ALPHA and THETA it is partly open and in DELTA it is wide open.

Although the filter is wide open in DELTA, it is the deep sleep state, and science has proved that it is not a time for learning!

If you wish to go further using these techniques, then in my book ‘Piece of Mind’ I expound on how to use the Peaceful Place method to relax in 30 seconds.