InFocus Magazine

Most of us have known someone like this at one point in our lives:  This person—they could be male or a female—no matter how hard they try, just can’t succeed. They feel as if they’re doing all the right things. In fact, they do the same things as others who succeed, yet it seems as if they just can’t get a break. What would you suggest for this person? According to Kim Barzilay, a Psych-K facilitator here in the Comox Valley, this individual needs to find the negative subconscious beliefs that are constantly causing him or her to step off the path to success.

Barzilay, 51, has been practicing Psych-K for more than seven years through her business, Quantum Healing. Psych-K is a method of mental healing that is intended to give individuals more balance, clarity and empowerment by utilizing the power of the subconscious mind. Essentially, Barzilay uses the Psych-K technique to help the client discover negative subconscious beliefs that are hindering them from achieving their goals.

According to Barzilay, Psych-K is appropriate for anybody who has an inner conflict. “Generally, if someone has a goal in mind—any topic, any realm of life—if there is a goal you want to meet and you’re doing all the right things and you never seem to get there, that’s where I come in, where Psych-K can be beneficial,” Barzilay says.

“When we’re trying to meet our goals, intuitively we know how to get there. Problems arise when there is a subconscious belief that states the goal cannot be achieved, for whatever reason.”

According to Barzilay, belief statements such as ‘I’m not worthy of success… or health… or a loving relationship’ are the sort of subconscious beliefs that can have a self-sabotaging effect on us.

When asked how Psych-K works, Barzilay explains that to properly understand Psych-K it’s necessary to discuss the levels or our consciousness. “Essentially, there are three levels of our mind—the conscious, the subconscious, and the higher conscious,” she says. “The conscious is where your thoughts live most of the time. Since we are aware of our conscious thought, it’s easy to believe that the conscious rules our lives, but that’s not really the case. In fact, the conscious mind is only a small part of our brain.”

A good way to illustrate the difference between our conscious and subconscious minds is the iceberg analogy.  The conscious mind is the part of our brain that is responsible for our awareness in the waking state. Solving problems based on logical thought, wondering about cause and effect, making choices based on fact, and deliberate physical movement are all characteristics of conscious thought. Since we are fully aware of what goes on in our conscious mind, it’s like the visible iceberg.

The subconscious mind, however, is much more powerful than the conscious mind. Continuing with the iceberg analogy, our subconscious is like the huge mass beneath the visible iceberg. Specifically, scientists have deduced that the difference between the two states all comes down to processing speed. It is thought that we process anywhere from two to 11 million bits of information each and every second. The conscious mind can only handle around 100 bits of information per second, so that leaves the subconscious mind to pick up the slack. And it does. Though there is no formal agreement as to just how fast the subconscious mind processes information, it is agreed that the subconscious mind is much faster than the conscious mind—approximately 500,000 times faster.

Quite simply, the subconscious brain is working so quickly that the conscious mind just can’t keep up.

Why is the subconscious mind so powerful? The subconscious mind is responsible for all of the involuntary physiological functions of the body, such as heart rate, breathing, organ function, etc. Even movements we view as deliberate, such as walking, aren’t entirely conscious, as we couldn’t possibly control all of the precise muscle movements necessary to make us walk. The subconscious mind is also in charge of our emotions and our habits. And it never rests—it keeps working even when we sleep. In fact, the majority of our daily lives is regulated by the subconscious mind.

In a nutshell, the subconscious steers our conscious lives, not the other way around.

According to Barzilay, the subconscious mind is also where our core beliefs are stored. As such, the subconscious mind has a profound effect on our lives, though we are largely unaware of this power.

“Many things can work toward creating subconscious beliefs—both negative and positive,” explains Barzilay. “Childhood experiences, trauma, physical appearance, our friends and family, books we read, movies we watch. We all have a lifetime of stuff we’ve accumulated that we didn’t necessary choose to include in our belief system.”

In fact, it is believed that your subconscious mind remembers everything that ever happened to you, every experience, relationship, every word spoken. Even sights, smells, and tastes are stored in your subconscious mind. All these stored beliefs can have an unintended effect on our lives. For example, if your subconscious mind has a different belief system than what you’re wishing for, the belief will win every time. That’s because our subconscious beliefs are much stronger than desires or wishes.
So the subconscious mind plays an important part in the outcome of our lives, yet we don’t communicate with this very powerful part of our brain. That’s where Psych-K comes in.

When someone comes in to Barzilay’s practice they will encounter an office that is warm, comfortable and inviting. “Most of my clients have an appointment that lasts from an hour to 90 minutes, depending on how much explanation is necessary,” says Barzilay. “And Psych-K is also different in that it’s an interactive process. Strictly speaking, I’m a facilitator, not a practitioner. Essentially, the client steers the meeting. For example, I will ask what the person wants to change in their life. Once we define that, we will narrow it down to finding a belief statement that the client is carrying that is also holding them back.”

To find those self-sabotaging beliefs that are standing in our way, Barzilay will use a technique called muscle testing. Essentially, Barzilay will have the client recite statements. When a statement is untrue, Barzilay will be able to observe this based on the body’s muscle-strength response.

“To get an energy response I will ask three basic questions—one for the conscious, one for the subconscious, and one for the higher conscious,” Barzilay says. “It’s similar to a lie detector test, which also measures a bodily response. However, I measure an energy response. In that respect, when I ask a question, a truth will have a higher vibration than an untruth, which will have a lower vibration. You can’t consciously control the energy that your subconscious and your higher conscious carries. That’s the premise of the lie detector test—that your body will always give the truthful answer.”

Quantum Healing stems from a branch of medical thought that has its roots in quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics, established by famous physicists such as Max Planck, Neil Bohr, and Albert Einstein, studies the behaviour of quanta, or subatomic particles. According to quantum mechanics, everything is composed of energy. This energy is created by the particles and subatomic particles that are constantly moving about. This constant movement creates a distinct vibration. And since everything is composed of atoms, everything vibrates at one frequency or another.

So do we.  Many believe that even thoughts and feelings have a distinct vibration, and these vibrations affect us on many levels.

“Vibrational energy is very powerful,” Barzilay says. “For example, over 90 per cent of our communication is non-verbal. You’ve probably heard the term ‘you could cut the tension with a knife.’ That’s when the vibrations of a space are so negative it’s felt as soon as a person enters the room. That’s non verbal communication. And this vibrational form of communication has a profound effect on our lives and on our health.”

According to Barzilay, the highest vibration is love, and the lowest vibration is hate or fear. “If you enter a room that contains a lot of negative energy, you can choose to vibrate at the same level of those around you—and that is what is easiest—or you can choose not to,” she says. “Think of tuning forks. For two forks to be in tune they have to match—they have to vibrate at the same frequency. If you hold a belief system where your normal is hate or fear, that belief is holding a low energy vibration. Therefore, you are comfortable in that energy field.  Those tuning forks match.”

Essentially, Psych-K uses the premise of vibrational energy to help a client source out the negative beliefs that need to be changed. “Once those beliefs are revealed we then rewrite that negative belief statement into a positive self affirming statement,” explains Barzilay. “It’s then re-filed as a positive belief, and once the belief is changed, it’s changed forever.”

Barzilay believes that working to make positive changes on a subconscious level affects more than just our personal lives. “By changing our core beliefs, we don’t just change ourselves, we change those around us too,” states Barzilay. “It’s like the ripple effect. When we change our energy it can only have a positive effect on others.

“If we choose to vibrate on a positive level—for example, feel love and other positive emotions—so will those around us. Remember the tuning forks? If we choose to vibrate on a higher level by practicing feelings of love, joy, and compassion, then those higher vibrations will ripple outwards touching everyone in its path. Psych-K is such an amazing concept. I still get tingles just thinking about it.”

For more information visit: www.quantumhealingkbarzilay.com