Communication from Your Involuntary System

Soldiers lose limbs in war. The arm is gone. The pain is still there. Phantom limb syndrome. The body is communicating from a part that no longer physically exists. Antano uses this to make one point: the involuntary system communicates independently of your conscious intentions. Most people never develop the ability to read it or change it.

Willpower works on voluntary systems. Smoking, certain habits, patterns of behaviour that people genuinely want to stop and try repeatedly and cannot, these are running from the involuntary level. The intervention must match the level. Working consciously to change an involuntary pattern is like telling someone with phantom limb pain to just stop feeling it.