The cerebellum plays a role in proprioception (awareness of how our
bodies are positioned in space). So in this induction, as you rest your
awareness on different parts of your body in space and the space around
your body in space, you’re using your cerebellum to perform this function.
And since the cerebellum is the seat of the subconscious mind, as you place
your consciousness on where your body is oriented in space, you access
your sub-conscious mind and bypass your thinking brain.
Moreover, induction shuts down the analytical mind by forcing you into a
sensing/feeling mode. Feelings are the language of the body, which in turn
is the subconscious mind, so induction allows you to use the body’s natural
language to interpret and change the language of the operating system. In
other words, if you’re sensing or putting your awareness on different
aspects of your body, you would be thinking less, shifting your analytical
thoughts from past to future less, and broadening your focus more to
encompass a very different scope—not narrowly obsessive, but rather,
creative and open—and you would move from Beta to Alpha.
All of this happens as you move from that narrow-minded range of
attention to an expanded focus on the body and the space around it.
Buddhists refer to this as an open focus, occurring when brain waves
naturally become orderly and synchronized.^1 Open focus produces a new,
powerfully coherent signal that allows parts of the brain that were not
communicating with other parts to now do so. That enables you to produce
an extremely coherent signal. While you can measure that on a brain scan,
more important is that you can feel the difference in the clarity and focus of
your thoughts, intentions, and feelings.
Body-Part Induction:
The How-to*
Specifically, you will focus on the location or orientation of your body in
space. For example, think about the location of your head, starting at its top
and gradually moving down. As the induction progresses from body part to
body part, sense and become aware of the space that each occupies. Also
sense the density, the weight (or heaviness), or the volume of space that it