According to FlowingLove (Daniel Siegel) Implicit memory is changing a diaper without thinking about it because you’ve done it so many times before.
Explicit memory is remembering the first time you changed a diaper.
These two types of memory interweave and work together our everyday lives.
Implicit memories begin before we are born. We encode implicit memories throughout our lives, but during the first 18 months we encode only implicit memories. An infant encodes smells and tastes and sounds of home and parents, sensations within the tummy when hungry, and the bliss of warm milk. Implicit memory encodes our perceptions, emotions, bodily sensations and, as we get older, learning to crawl, walk, ride a bike, and change a diaper.
FlowingLove feels it is essential for parents to help young clowns integrate their implicit and explicit memories. Some implicit memories are positive but some are negative, for instance after we have a painful or negative experience. Sometimes we may not be aware of negative implicit memories, and if so, they can be buried land mines that are embedded in our brains and can affect us without us even knowing it. That’s why we may have a strong reaction to some situations without understanding why. This can result in sleep disturbances, debilitative phobias, and other problems.
FlowingLove suggests parents shine a light of awareness on these implicit memories, making them explicit so the young clown can make sense of them.
The part of our brains that integrates implicit and explicit memories is our hippocampus. Our hippocampus works with different parts of our brain to take all images, emotions, and sensations of implicit memory and assemble them into pictures that become explicit memories.