Imagine you are vacationing in a wilderness area, and somehow you are separated from your group. All alone, at night, you are unsure of what is just beyond your vision, but you hear many unfamiliar noises. You see shadows moving nearby. You pick up every movement in the trees above, and as each little breeze makes rustling sounds as it stirs the leaves, you shudder.
“I feel so alive,” you think. Your senses are so alert. You are amazed at how aware you are of everything going on around you. You are scared, yet exhilarated. Later, when your group finds you and you all get back home, the only part of the trip you remember much about is that brief time when you were separated. It’s as though time almost stood still and you could recall everything around you in vivid detail, but the rest of the trip was a blur.
You have just experienced the impact of dopamine. At times of pleasure, and at times of threat or excitement, dopamine is released, giving you a “high” that causes special reactions in the brain. Memory, sense perception, and emotions are heightened. Dopamine is released at times of pleasure, causing you to desire more of that pleasurable activity. Abnormally low dopamine results in lethargy and depression. It is not surprising that people often seek dopamine release by engaging in exciting, and sometimes dangerous, activity, because it is the “feel good” neurotransmitter of the brain. In today’s world, most of the natural threats we would otherwise be subject to don’t affect us. Sometimes we seek the thrill and we turn to action movies, video games, alcohol, or even drugs.
Perception and Memory
Dopamine belongs to the “catecholamine” family, as does adrenaline and noradrenaline. Unlike the others, dopamine is particularly involved with sense perception, learning, and memory formation: we notice more around us, we process, consciously and unconsciously, what our senses tell us, and we remember more of those details. This was demonstrated in a study published in Neuron, conducted jointly by Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard. Participants were shown almost invisible images of people in various poses while simultaneously being distracted by unrelated, complex tasks while dopamine release was stimulated. These barely perceptible images were not consciously remembered. Yet, the participants unconsciously knew details of the images such as which way they were facing. They knew details (because of the dopamine release) that they didn’t even realize that they were recording.,
We are constantly receiving information, but most of it is filtered out so that our brains are not overloaded with information. Most of the time, you are not aware of minor changes in temperature, slight odors in the air, or unimportant noises, yet you are getting that information. The human brain can process the equivalent of 11 million bits of information every second, but our conscious minds can only take in 50 bits per second. You are being affected mostly by what you are noticing subconsciously. Your mood might be sour today and you don’t know why. You might have some intuitive feel that this will be a good day, which you can’t explain. Think of this as a background in a picture: the background is the majority of the picture, yet you focus on the smaller main object. Without the background, the picture would be very different, yet you don’t really notice the background.
According to New Scientist Magazine, about 95% of brain activity is unconscious, and up to 40% of behavior is habitual. When exciting or dramatic things are happening, you are able to process more than usual, and much of that is recorded subconsciously. When the catecholamine neurotransmitters are released, you are ready for “fight or flight”, but afterwards you remember many more of the details, both consciously and subconsciously. Also during trauma, the amygdala of the brain, which is the emotional memory center, is triggered, while the neocortex, which is the thinking, rational portion, is less active. The result of all this is that many details of these events are memorized, mostly subconsciously, along with the associated emotions.
Memory development — the “formative years”
During the early years of life, we are learning everything at a rapid rate. In the first few years we have to go from knowing nothing but instinctive behavior to understanding language and walking. Physically, a child’s brain has reached 80% of its adult size by age 3, and 90% by age 5. Since most of our brain activity is subconscious, we know that much of our unconscious feelings and thought patterns are set in the first few years of life. Later years build on this foundation, and significant learning obviously occurs in later childhood and early adult years, but the stage is set early in life.
We all have “tapes”, or recordings, some that go all the way back to in utero. They impact us at later stages of life. Even though we consciously deny some thoughts, fears, and desires as foolish or improper, they lurk in our subconscious. And those with the greatest impact were recorded at times of high excitement or stress.
During the first few years, children are attempting to make sense out of what their environment, identifying, categorizing, and associating what their senses tell them. These associations are largely emotional, as their “right brains”, the emotional, intuitive side, is developing rapidly but the “left brain” lags behind. Around age 7 the critical thinking left brain develops, but until then, they are sponging up everything around them subconsciously, generally without judging or filtering. During the first 7 years or so, the subconscious platform for the rest of their lives is developed.
The subconscious is like a recorder: it takes in and stores information. It doesn’t differentiate what it records: emotions, odors, thoughts, noises all get wrapped up in the memory. It even records associations from dreams and imagination, and young children may even confuse dreams with reality.
Now let’s imagine another scene. A six month old baby girl is alone, but nearby shouting is occurring during a major argument. She hears loud noises and yelling, not understanding most of it. This goes on for hours, and fear grips her. Her senses are on full alert, and her brain is recording everything (even though she can’t understand much of it) in enhanced, exquisite detail. Maybe such scenes are repeated many times in her early life. When she is older, she does not remember these scenes as she does not remember much of anything from those years. Yet these events, and the feelings associated with them, have been recorded into her. As an adult, she finds she does not handle arguments very well and tends to have a fearful stress reaction when they break out. Friends say she needs to stand up for herself better, but she finds that very difficult to do, though she can’t explain why. Instead she backs down from confrontation and is often passive when people demand things from her.
The adult experience
Like it or not, much of what you feel, much of how you think, and your reaction to life is influenced by what you recorded from your past. Some take this too far, and develop a “victim mentality”, assuming themselves to be slaves to their past and unable to overcome temptations or to change for the better. The brain is remarkably adaptable, even in old age, and we can be “overcomers”. But recordings go deep, and since most are subconscious, dealing with them can be a very overwhelming but critically important task.
We were created to overcome all things in Him.
Dr. Nemec’s Comments:
Subconscious stress programs run up to 95% of your physiology. What does this mean? It means that all the cells in your body are either running from a stress program or resting in a peace program. Stress programs cause inflammation and actions that are necessary under stress. If a lion is running after you, your senses perceive danger which is processed through your perceptions and beliefs projecting either fear or just danger. Both stimulate adrenaline and other stress hormones to flood the body in order for your muscles to move, your heart to speed up, your blood pressure to go up, your digestion to stop (you do not need digestion when you are running from a lion), and your immune system to switch from repair and maintenance (which prevents cancer) mode to full blown acute immune response to bacteria in case you get injured. This whole system works perfectly for up to an hour, but if the body maintains this level of stress subconsciously or consciously the stress hormones and autonomic nervous system responses will cause eventual damage to the body in the form of tumor formation, heart problems, lung problems, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, digestive disorders, immune dysfunction, and cognitive impairment — just to name a few. How can this be addressed? This is the foundation of Total Health Institute. We do a very advanced and unique method to find these imbalances, both subconsciously and consciously, correct them and retest to make sure they have been corrected. This consists of our 3D brain imaging, brain mapping, heart brain entrainment therapy, body inflammation testing and retesting, cellular fluid balance testing and retesting and our cellular electrical testing and retesting. This is foundational in our body, mind and emotions approach to health and healing. One of our patients who was on our program for 4 weeks came in so light, so peaceful, so free — I asked him how he was doing and his response was: “I do not know why I feel like this but it is like something has lifted off me that I was carrying my whole life, yet I did not know what it was. My wife even commented that in all our years together she had never seen me this light.” As he continued with our programs, he shared that he had been going to the University of Chicago for the past three years for his stage IV liver cancer and had been continually treated with chemotherapy and immunotherapy, yet each time they did his follow up scans the results showed tumor progression, meaning what they were doing was not helping the healing process. But since beginning the treatment and teaching program at REV his scans done 6 months apart showed continual tumor shrinkage. It was the first time his body was actually healing in the last three years. What was the game changer in his healing? Our unique heart brain entrainment therapy that incorporates release of subconscious stress programs, conscious stress programs with brain imaging and mapping. Once you heal the mind and brain you open the door for the body to heal. Without healing the mind and brain everything else you do is just temporary because you are treating either an effect or a secondary cause.
Here are the ways we can help you in your health journey:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Total Health Institute but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Total Health Institute along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.
