The Theta brainwave state
When we’re little kids — seven years old and under — we’re predominantly in a brainwave state known as the Theta state. In the Theta brainwave state, we are very absorbent to the environment around us.
Impressionable would be the word. Receptive to suggestion.
This is because in the Theta brainwave state (and the delta state – the sleep state) we’re processing with the limbic brain (the emotional brain), using the language of the subsconscious ; which is imagery, sensation, symbolism and feeling. This domain is pre-thought. It’s purely experiential.
This is the vibrational state upon which thoughforms are actually built.
In this state, you process data in pictures, scenes/scenarios, soundbites — via the senses. The limbic brain registers all data (visible and invisible) in a situation down to the smells in the room and the colour of the clock. Not all of it will be declared necessary for the conscious mind to recall, however, but the subconscious mind records everything.
We naturally fall in and out of the Theta state multiple times per day through our natural ultradian rhythms.. Ever daydreamed about a place of a person while gazing out the window? This is you in the Theta brainwave state. Imagination is the realm of theta, as are day dreams and creative flow. What’s important to note about the Theta state that it is not linear or logical. This is an entirely different processing centre of the brain.
When we’re little kids, we’re processing most of our experiences whilst in the Theta range. We haven’t fully developed the full scope of our executive functioning so our ability to discern and filter doesn’t exist.
As a result,we absorb the environment like a sponge, taking in streams of data — visible and invisible. Invisible meaning taking in the vibrational nuances of situations; like the way the room feels, the energy being presented by others in that room, the quality of the attention being directed at you (or not), the power dynamics at play and the presupposition of roles too.
Imagine a small child trying to navigate the broad spectrum of energies (visible and invisible)(read: spoken or unspoken) of the human condition.
As made clear by Gabor Mate, our nervous system is wired to read our environment one way or another, good or bad or neutral. The body is always ‘reading energy ’ presenting in the field.
“When the brain is reading the environment, the unconscious messages about what’s going on go to the gut, and the gut magnifies those messages and send it up to the brain — and those are your gut feelings. The gut is an important sensory organ. It’s not just an organ of digestion. It is very much an emotional organ.” Source
The Limbic Brain
As mentioned, the emotional brain (the limbic brain) doesn’t run in linear sequence. Linked to memory recall it’s more everything, everywhere, all at once. It links abstract scenarios and speaks through your senses. Instead of a straight line, it’s a multi-dimensional spiral.
Imagine how many data points you’re receiving as a kid, where everything is new. The subconscious is imprinted with this stimuli. The higher the ‘charge’ of the experience, the stronger the imprint. Like the camera captures the moment on the negative of a film, your body captures the nuances of the moment care of your limbic brain.
Having had that initial sensitising experience, the nervous system now has at least one data point as a reference. Any energy with similar qualities will touch the edge of this initial experience — teasing at the edges — triggering a response — usually an automatic reaction — which is how the body shows you there’s something stored.
Naturally, the Neo-cortex (the logical, reasoning, linear mind) has played with it, picked it apart and organised it into some logic or sequencing — but it’s not the direct somatic experience, which remains remembered by the body. This, one might call ‘holding energy’.
In order to tend to these captured waves, it makes sense to use the part of the brain that was first affected — the limbic brain. We need to speak in its language.
Repeating experiences in the external world are usually trying to point to a specific energy pattern/dynamic which has been stored and is being re-enacted now, ready to be processed and released.
By speaking the language of the subconscious; allowing imagery, sensation (sensory information) and feeling to occur, that acknowledgement that was missing back then, and what is been sought out now, can occur and the wave can be released.
By returning to the Theta state, there's no need to make literal sense of anything. Likely the initial sensitising event didn’t make sense, so it might be much to ask our rational mind to take on the responsibility to healing the inner discord for us.
It goes deeper than that. It’s pre-verbal, remember.
This is why hypnosis can be a useful tool to develop the inner infrastructure to explore these unprocessed waves — because we return to the theta state.
When you interocept (the ability to sense, interpret, and regulate signals from within the body), you give your subconscious the stage to show you what’s important for you right now; consciously creating space for the processing to occur, witnessing what appears and feeling through the sensations. Without much force the subconscious will show you exactly what you need to know in that moment and you won’t have to think your way through it at all. It’s experiential, after all.
Energy is always in motion. What is perceived as stuck or solid is simply moving in very small, contained quarters, and likely if there are repeating patterns in your life pointing you back to a particular point in time or part of the body or area of life, likely there’s a wave in there trying to get your attention. Trying to get acknowledged and released.
Try this
Close your eyes and exhale. Notice your heartbeart. Then inhale a little more — feel your body expand in space. Hold your breath for 3 – 5 seconds and build a piezoelectric charge. Then release. Notice how your energy pulses. Feel it resonate out of your body and into the field. This is how you work with the wave.
“What you are thinking, feeling and believing is changing the genetic expression and chemical composition of your body on a moment-by-moment basis.” — Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk
These hypnosis recordings are all intended to connect you with the awareness of the body, allowing you to practice interoception.
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