Serenity Cafe AcademyDirecting Your Movie Mind
In the previous lesson on Mental Filters we learned how important the processing of sensory data is. What we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste must be taken into the mind, organized in a meaningful way, and then re-presented to us in a way we can understand. What we know as our imagination is that mechanism of re-presentation. It is a very sophisticated and POWERFUL theater of experience especially since the brain searches for examples of our mental filters and core beliefs. I think of limiting core beleifs and mental filters as "Rational-Lies" because they look true, sound true, and feel true - but they are lies! They are the last things we want to focus on! Below is the "why" of that statement:
Think of your mental re-presentations as products of your "Movie Mind" that has a visual track, an auditory track, a kinesthetic (Touch/Feel) track, a smell track, and a taste track.Here is one example of just how powerful: In one study athletes were placed in a meditation room and helped to achieve a moderately relaxed state. With monitors attached to their brain and body, they were asked to imagine, as vividly as possible, doing their event as if they were actually doing the event. All of the centers of the mind and body that were involved in doing the event, lit up as if they were actually doing their event!
Real-izing Rational-Lies
So the brain and nervous system does not know the difference between real and imagined! It simply knows what you show it in the movie theater of your mind - your mind's eye! (Medial Prefrontal Cortex, to be precise) When you entertain something in your mind's eye as if it is real, your brain and nervous system reacts as if it is real, so it might as well be real! Let me say that again... When we focus our awareness on a thought, belief, or idea as if it is real, we "real-ize" that thought, belief, or idea, whether positive or negative we make it real because our brain and nervous system reacts AS IF it is real and so it might as well be real!
Learning to direct, edit, and produce your own mind movies is a powerful way of using the imagination for goal achievement, enhancing performance, and healing emotional wounds from the past! The video above is a primer on how to do that... the rest you will learn as we go along because these are central to our primary tools of change - such as mindfulness, meditation, self-hypnosis, guided imagery, brainwave entrainment, and all of the approaches that make up our model of Integrative psychotherapy and coaching.
Below is a Submodalities worksheet you can use to practice making edits and adjustments to various perspectives (Be sure to watch the video above to learn how to use this worksheet.) You may also download it from the button at the top right of this page. Remember everyone is different and there is no correct way to use these skills. Play with them to see what is most effective for you. Use submodalities to make pleasurable experiences stronger and to minimize uncomfortable experiences