People
use the term “muscle memory” a lot in the context of sports and athletic
participation. But what is it all about, exactly? Wikipedia.com describes this
phenomenon as a product of motor or procedural learning in which specific
muscles or muscle groups learn and remember how to do a particular movement
after repeating that motion many times over a period of time. It is even
possible to improve how you execute this motion as it becomes more automatic in
your behavioral repertoire of sports or other movements, such as dancing or
playing the guitar.
While
I do not discount the existence of muscle memory, I would contend that it is
born not just in a specific part of the body that you use for the desired behavior
(e.g., body, arms or legs). Rather, I would argue that muscle memory starts where
every other memory begins: in the mind—specifically, in the subconscious mind. The
SCM triggers every action we make by sending an electrical impulse through the
nervous system to activate the muscle(s) we need to carry out the intended or
even unintended or undesired behavior. According to Hypnosis Motivation
Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D.’s Theory of Mind, our only natural or innate
responses are the reaction to a fear of falling and the reaction to a fear of
loud noises. As the subconscious mind takes in more and more new information, we
learn new behaviors and develop personal beliefs. Eventually, we don’t even don’t
even think about what we need to do to achieve a desired result, we just do it. Most of us have not thought about
what our body must do in order to just walk since we took our first steps as a
toddler. Who hasn’t heard the expression, “Once you ride a bike, you never
forget how”?
In
fact, I use the idea and theory behind muscle memory in almost all of the
hypnotic suggestions I craft for my clients. I create suggestions to reinforce
the person’s motivations to change the undesired habit or adopt a desired behavior;
then, I reinforce this motivation with guided imagery in which the individual is
achieving the desired goal. The subconscious mind does not know the difference
between you swinging a golf club on the links versus imagining or pretending that
you just made the perfect swing an achieved a hole-in-one while you are in
hypnosis. Furthermore, the more times you repeat these desired behaviors in
hypnosis or in a guided-imagery exercise, the more opportunities you have to
lock those actions into your subconscious mind and in your muscle memory. It
just takes repetition of the desired behavior—so I guide my clients through
these exercises over and over to reinforce the behavior change during the
hypnotherapy session and send them home with a track from the session to
further reinforce this work. Hypnosis and guided-imagery techniques enable you
to replace unwanted behaviors and adopt the ones you want using a process of
repetition and memory similar to the way the muscles in your body learned and
remember how to walk.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a
certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with
honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more
information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2014
