Superconscious

Breath can be both a subconscious and conscious activity. When we are not thinking about our breathing it just happens subconsciously. One of the many things our powerful subconscious minds are controlling. However, if something goes wrong with our breathing or if we choose to focus on it it becomes a conscious activity. 

Breath reflects our emotional states which we may or may not be aware of. When we are worried we often hold our breath and when we relax or release stress we often let out a sigh or sometimes a yawn. In times of stress people tend to breathe more shallowly and times of relaxation more deeply.  Sometimes we only become aware of what we are feeling because our breath becomes noticeable. 

We can choose to focus on our breath – to consciously relax our mind and body which is beneficial for health and decision making. (It’s much easier to think clearly when our body is not tense and ready to fight or flight). It is common practise in many self development and healing fields to use breath as a portal / doorway / bridge to relax the body and induce an altered state of consciousness. This state can be utilised to create more communication with subconscious eg in meditation, dream states or hypnosis. This can be used for extracting or implanting subconscious knowledge. Having awareness of our conscious and subconscious minds and getting them to work in alignment can be used for healing and for becoming more focused on your goals – what you are creating in life. When our two hemispheres work together we have whole brain function. 

How is your breathing right now? There is so much happening in the world at the moment. So much unprecedented change and stress. The potential dangers to our environments and lifestyles can create a lot of stress in the body. One way to respond and not react to the current climate is through working with your breath. It is not the whole journey but a powerful step.

There are so many breathing exercises and techniques that are so powerful. I am looking forward to sharing an ancient Tibetan breathing practise in the Self Mastery Retreat coming up in August. I have been waiting to share this since 2011 and have never had the right moment. So excited. I will give more details about that in the next newsletter. 

In the meantime I would like to share three breathing techniques I highly recommend – 

Firstly, 3,3,6 breathing, this technique is used to stimulate the vagus nerve. You breathe in through the nose for the count of three, hold your breath for the count of three, and exhale out your mouth for the count of 6. It is important to breathe deeply all the way down to your abdomen. It is also helpful to focus on one spot while doing this exercise it enhances the relaxation. 

Secondly, box breathing, this technique has being famously used by Navy Seals in stressful situations to help regulate their nervous systems. You breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, breathe out for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts and repeat for 4 rounds.

Thirdly, shoulder breathe release, breath in pull your shoulders up to your ears and hold then let your shoulders and breath go at the same time with a big sigh. Do this three times or as many times as you want. 

Breath is a constant in our lives from our first breath to our last. I suggest working with the bridge of breath to consciously create with your subconscious utilising whole brain function to be more healthy and empowered in your day to day life. 

Exercises to strengthen your mind, heart and will.

Wait Three Seconds

We can either respond or react to the stimuli in our lives. An obvious reaction is when we are having a ‘bad day’ get cut off in traffic and swear. It’s a ‘knee jerk’ a button gets pushed and in a spilt second we react. This example esculates when we react with anger to a loved one, especially if that loved one is a child.

Responding is when we create a pause, a space, so that we break the circuit, the conditioned programming (from childhood), where we first learnt to get angry to control or for revenge. How can you create a pause? How can you train yourself to automatically have a buffer or filter between stimulus and action?

WAIT THREE SECONDS for 21 days before you take action to any stimulus. Phone rings, wait three seconds before picking it up, someone asks you a question, wait three seconds before answering, you smash a plate, wait three seconds before cleaning it up, you get cut off wait three seconds. If you complete this process with discipline you will have created a habit of responding rather than reacting. That small space is a world of possibilities where you invite your true self (not the bundle of programming) to make a CHOICE. 

Choice is free will and an enormous gift of human life. Choice to respond, choice to apply this exercise, followed up by many decisions to support the choice to grow and steer the direction of your ship, rather than being blown about by the winds and the tides of other energies.

Watch Your Thoughts

For ten minutes a day (set a timer so you won’t be concerned with how much time has passed) sit in a quiet place where you will not be distracted and allow your thoughts to float through your mind. Set the intention for you to be a passive watcher being in a neutral state of mind. As you do this you will become aware of how you judge, criticise, analyse, rationalise, intellectualise and justify your thoughts but do it being neutral. Just be in a state equivalent to watching TV late a night and an advert comes on you have seen many times, you are aware of the advert although you are not engaging in it or associating with it in any way and at the same time aware being neutral. This is the first step to go beyond the conditioned mind and awaken your higher intelligence.

For the past 15 years I have been working in both the arts and self development spaces (and studying in both fields for 20 years). Initially, my studies and training in consciousness was only for personal curiosity and healing. As a teen, I experienced an awakening which put me on a quest to know the truth. The truth of myself, of consciousness, of reality.

I met my first mentor, Michelle, when I was 18 and saw her for a spiritual healing appointment. At the end of the session she invited me to her Wednesday night women’s circle which involved one and half hours of meditation followed by training in a metaphysical skill eg reading and healing auras, psychic intuition development, chakra work, and more.

Following this I got involved in Anthroposophy and I taught film for a Year at Glenaeon Rudolf Steiner School. When I was 24, I met two more mentors, a married couple who were from Taoist and Tibetan linages. I studied with them for 9 years which included energy healing, bioenergetics, hypnosis, shadow work, breath work, tarot, meditation, dream programming, conscious reality creation and more. During this time I also studied the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) with mentors from EFT Universe. I also studied with Scott Washington for 15 years who mentored me with a focus on knowing yourself, conscious reality creation and knowing we are also here to have fun.

In 2013 I launched Superconscious with the encouragement of one mentor who told me, “Julia, it is all well and good to empower yourself and upgrade your life but what are you doing for your community?” Overcoming the classic imposter syndrome which told me, “how are you going to guide anyone when you can’t even even overcome your floordrobe?”

I am not perfect and I once I expressed my doubt to Scott about doing this kind of work with people if I am not perfect / enlightened / impeccable (which I would prefer). Scott told me a story about a man who had a company centred around enlightenment. He was interviewed and asked if he was enlightened. He said, “No, but it doesn’t mean I can’t help people on their journeys.” 

There are many levels of existence and we are both perfect and imperfect, enlightened and ignorant, and neither. We are already what we are seeking we are all just remembering who we already are. 

And so I hosted my first meditation class and grew from there to do one on one work, workshops and now retreats. Sharing the tools I have been practising and integrating is hugely rewarding and aligned with my soul’s purposes to empower through teaching/healing and exhilarate through art. 

I began my arts training at university with a BABed and went on to do my honours in contemporary performance. During this time I was very inspired by my honours mentor, Clare Grant and her work with the Sydney Front. It was like nothing I had ever seen and I felt truly excited to be alive and I wanted to share that feeling. I undertook further training in performance at NIDA and got a scholarship with PACT theatre which informed my relationship with my body, breath, consciousness and creation more deeply, giving me skills that cross pollinate in my healing and mentoring work. Especially around embodiment and working with others. I began my professional arts practice with live experiences by creating installations, performance and immersive theatre, individually and in groups, and have been fortunate enough to have worked at some of Sydney’s most incredible arts spaces including the Opera House, MCA and AGNSW as well as festivals and theatres in NSW. 

In 2016 my inner guidance was encouraging me to dream bigger and communicate more widely so I applied to study at AFTRS (Australian Film Television and Radio School) and under their expert guidance have developed into a filmmaker. Film is a very exciting medium for communication on conscious and subconscious levels. I recently was 2nd Assistant director on the film Ruby’s Choice starring Jane Seymour and am currently producing two short form documentaries.

My working premise in life includes that all humans are worthwhile. That we are here to have fun. To create. And that free will is one of our greatest assets.

Often in “spiritual” circles (whatever that means to you) we hear ‘you create your reality’ but I know from personal experience when we are too depressed to move or too paralysed from anxiety to choose, that creating reality can feel impossible. Knowing this, I often find there are two arms to work with depending on the person and where they are at. One arm is releasing trauma from the body to create more freedom and ability to generate and focus energy. The second arm is creating which involves a knowledge of the subconscious mind such as how belief and imagination work. Being able to create coherence with your conscious and subconscious mind in incredible powerful in knowing and getting what you want. There is nothing that I can give you that you don’t already have but I can guide and remind you of who you are and to know yourself more deeply. 

Often times we set out to make changes but lose focus or ‘fall off the wagon’ of our good intent. We may think we do not have enough time, money or knowledge. But is that really true?

I would like to remind you we have both a conscious mind and a subconscious mind and when they work together we can create more powerfully, achieving and enjoying our goals. 

Our conscious mind relates to the directive and active parts of our mind. It is able to direct our thoughts and make choices. It is a valuable tool for delivering information about the outside world and for doing things. Our subconscious mind relates to the receptive part of us and relates more to feelings, dreams, deeply held beliefs, and holds the record of everything we have experienced with our five senses. It is a valuable tool for accessing deeper knowledge about ourselves and for being present. 

These two minds communicate differently and can conflict. If that happens the subconscious mind has more power so it will win.

Say, you decided consciously, no more coffee in 2020. You are at the cafe waiting in line thinking I am going to order a green smoothie. Yep green smoothie for me. Year of health. Yep, yep, yeppers, green smoothie. Then to your surprise you ask the waiter for one coffee please.

So what’s going on with that?

Perhaps you hold a belief from childhood I am a failure or I can’t do anything right yet you have forgotten that you believed that or you think it doesn’t have any power over you until you sabotage yourself. It could also be that even though you consciously want health subconsciously you have a payoff to keeping yourself unhealthy.

In EFT we call this secondary gain. 

One simple way to start to integrate the conscious and subconscious is to think about what you want, formally choose it (by saying it aloud or writing it down) and then imagining it (which activates your subconscious). Make your imagination as vivid as possible engaging at least 3 senses (eg touch, smell & taste). Keep an eye out for my next email when I will take you through the lemon experience which is an exercise to see the power of your imagination and subconscious.  You can signup to my newsletters at the bottom of the page.

2019 draws to a close. Are you taking time to reflect on what you want to let go of and what you want to create? What is your current reality? What is your vision?

There are many rituals, processes and ceremonies one can do to let go of what no longer serves. I will share one with you.

But before I do, what does ‘what no longer serves’ mean? 

We are here to be creators and to have fun. 

We have some basic tools and materials for creating our reality: thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, decisions, choices (materials) and imagination, will and desire/expectation (tools).

These tools and materials are in service to our creations.

How sharp are your tools? How developed are your materials?

A blunt will or imagination will not serve building the life you want to live. 

Unhelpful beliefs like ‘money doesn’t go on trees’ or ‘I’m just not creative’ also don’t serve a vision of creative fulfilment and prosperity. Many beliefs are unconscious and turn up as self sabotaging behaviours. You can learn to identify them and you can over come them through acting out of choice rather than habit.

Let’s look at beliefs… 

I have just spent a few days with a dear friend of 20 years who lives on the other side of Australia and has been on an intense truth seeking path for as many years as me, since we were teenagers. He was in a lot of pain and suffering. He had lost touch with his will. He had the openness and vulnerability to share with me his truth that no matter what he did there was a pit of despair waiting for him. He had a compulsion of self destruction and a belief he was worthless deep down.

Knowing him well and all the work he has done I felt responsible to challenge him that his pain and suffering was a choice. That somewhere along the line he had made a choice to believe he had no worth, no value. The idea for him that he created his reality of pain through choice was mind blowing. His spiritual practise had been about surrendering to the pain. Focusing on the silence and stillness and feeling it. While his practises have been valuable for him he had lost a sense of his own power to create. 

I asked him in all his work if he had experienced himself as true love and oneness. Surely after 15 years of meditation there had been a moment he could have experienced himself in this way because this is the truth – we are all worthwhile, every baby, every human is worthwhile it is our birthright. He had experienced it. So it was a choice from then on to believe that he was worthless or to believe that he was worthy. He realised worthiness was scary and he had to let go of the payoff of worthlessness which was for him not been responsible for his life and wallowing. Believing in his worth means knowing what he wants and going about creating it.

It is common to have conscious or unconscious beliefs – I am not good enough, I do not have enough or I do not know enough. When we choose to wake up to our own power it is time to start challenging the truth of these beliefs and be prepared to make new choices. Byron Katie has four questions she uses:

• Is it true?
• Is it really true / can I know that it is absolutely true?
• How do you react when you believe it is true?
• Who would you be if you did not believe it was true? 

I invite you to look at your beliefs before the end of the year and challenge if they true. You can add a level of imagination by erasing the beliefs and writing new beliefs.

Sometimes we do things automatically often because we saw our parents doing it. In one family at Christmas a woman always cut the end of the ham before she cooked it. When her partner asked why, she said that’s what my Mum does. When she asked her Mum, she said that’s what my Mum did. When she asked her Grandma she said, oh I did that because I only had one pan and the pan was too small. It can be so valuable to make the unconscious conscious and choose to do something differently. 

We live in a palace of possibility but we often keep to one room because someone has either told us to or we have assumed we don’t belong in the rest of the palace. The limiting beliefs are like writing on the walls of that room. I invite you to read the writing on the walls of the room you stay in. Imagine rubbing it out and writing new beliefs that allow you to explore the whole palace of possibility. 

I asked my friend what it is you want? He said he hasn’t asked himself that for a very long time, that it is almost unfathomable. I asked him, do you want to know what you want? He said yes. I said well, start there with that choice – I want to know what I want and the belief I am worthy.  

Happy New Year Superconscious Peeps! 2020 is a palace of possibility and I will be writing with some suggestions in the next week on creating lasting change / conscious reality creation. In 2020 I will be running a live 7-week program in Sydney to deep dive with a group into self mastery. Send me an email to register your interested or stay tuned for more details.