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We can notice our subconscious guiding us in small, everyday ways: drawing our attention to a favorite book when we need inspiration, to our pet when we are becoming annoyed or impatient, or to sunscreen before a day outside.
Even if you believe in the subconscious, you may miss this kind of guidance or dismiss it as coincidence. But once you notice how self-suggestion works—how your attention lands on exactly what you need—it becomes clear that these moments are not random. They are examples of the subconscious speaking through the body and the senses.
My patients’ subconscious often explain that they communicate through the body when their conscious selves need guidance, using everything from gut feelings to significant symptoms. If one signal fails to get our attention, the subconscious may try another or become more insistent.
Its messages can begin as quiet nudges like a sticky note on the refrigerator moving toward a feeling, action, or resource, then escalate into unmistakable warnings like using big flags or giant billboards that urge us to make wiser choices, care for ourselves, or confront unresolved problems.
It is at the flag and billboard stages—when symptoms become too big to ignore—that many people seek help. I’ve learned that guiding patients to healing requires listening carefully to both their conscious and subconscious expression. In my experience, this dual-listening eases pain and fosters breakthroughs. It’s a skill patients can also learn to practice on their own.
And yet, in the world of Western medicine, the possibility of subconscious-based symptoms is largely ignored. Most doctors and clinicians also are unaware of the healing potential of subconscious wisdom. They treat the body separate from the soul that expresses itself through the subconscious. To understand this massive blind spot in treatment protocols, we need to understand one of the foundations of modern medicine: the mind/body divide.
The Great Divide Between Body and Soul
In the early 1600s, French mathematician, and natural philosopher René Descartes made a psychological distinction that would help shape medical practice for centuries. He proposed that a person is comprised of two separate components: body and soul.
This divide would become the foundation of Descartes’ best-known book, Treatise of Man (Descartes, 1972). It would also help him garner a great deal of latitude from church officials so he could pursue his fascination with the mechanics of the body. If the body is a machine and the soul a separate entity, he proposed, then a curious scientist could be allowed to dissect and study the machine in exacting detail.
Descartes’ dichotomy of body/soul set the stage for centuries of physicians to focus on the needs, habits, and cures of the body—while almost entirely disregarding the role of soul and the subconscious.
Today, conventionally trained doctors focus on diagnosing and treating physical disease within Descartes’ framework. In medical school I studied the body in exhaustive detail, from bones and muscles to medications and organ function, and trained above all to diagnose problems and to solve them.
There are times when this is exactly what good medicine requires. We observe, use diagnostic tools, identify the problem, and treat it. Consider a straightforward example: someone trips while running and breaks an arm. Bruising and pain suggest the injury, an X-ray confirms the fracture, and surgery or a cast helps the bone heal properly.
An orthopedic surgeon or other specialist dealing primarily with the mechanics of the body might work for decades with a high level of comfort with this dynamic. But for myself, someone trained to specialize in pediatrics and pulmonary care which encompasses childhood and adolescent health issues as well as all kinds of breathing and lung-related concerns and diseases, it is more difficult to separate body and mind.
One of the first things I learned as a young physician is that if a patient is stressed or panicked, easing issues like cough or shortness of breath is exponentially more difficult than when that person is relaxed and confident.
The same holds true for the influence of anxiety or fear on the experience of pain. For example, a person suffering severe abdominal cramps because they are distressed about a bad relationship breakup is less likely to improve with medical intervention.
Unconscious Essential Reads
Even if a doctor can offer reassurance or medication to temporarily ease the symptom, it may re-occur until the patient’s emotional pain begins to ease.
Many health problems can be aggravated by the mind, and some may even be caused by it. Once I began helping patients connect with and interview their subconscious minds, I saw that symptoms do not all serve the same purpose.
Some symptoms are calls for attention or intervention, while others are temporary solutions created by the subconscious. In this way, the body can communicate across a wide range—from a headache that tells you to rest to nausea that keeps you from going somewhere unsafe.
In practice, clinicians who are stymied to find causes for symptoms often skip further investigation and go to the fixing stage—addressing symptoms without understanding their root cause.
Many of us will do this at home as well. For example, if you have chronic headaches, you may not spend much (or any) time considering their origin. You may go straight to over-the-counter or prescription pain pills to resolve them.
I prefer to find the root cause. Soon after I first evaluate my patients for medical causes of their symptoms, I engage their subconscious to help us. This process has saved time, discomfort, frustration, and a great deal energy and expense lost to unnecessary medical testing and treatments.
This only works when we trust that the elements Descartes sought to divide are inextricably intertwined. The soul and subconscious are as central to your physical wellbeing as your heart or lungs. In many ways, the subconscious is the conductor of most of the body’s functions; so when the subconscious is unsettled, the body may be unsettled as well.
Takeaway
Clinicians and patients should recognize and address the effects of the subconscious on physical health when a patient is first evaluated, rather than as a last resort when patients do not improve with conventional medicine.
