|
Silva Method
The Silva Method, originally called Silva Mind Control, comprises a self-empowerment
system to shape beliefs and augment personal success.
The technique involves reaching and sustaining a higher state of mental
functioning, called Alpha state, where brainwave frequency is 5 to 13
Hz on the right side of the brain. The method also uses visualizations
and affirmations. Advocates attest to healing, better attainment of goals,
ESP and cure from addictions.
The method dates from the 1960s early work of José Silva, and
features some views on brain sub-division and function, and their relationships
with a higher consciousness that do not mesh with mainstream psychology,
medicine and science.
As part of the method Silva, founder of the Silva Method, developed a
program that trained people to enter certain brain states of enhanced
awareness. He developed several systematic mental processes to use while
in these states allowing a person to mentally project with a specific
intent. Once the mind is projected, a person can allegedly view distant
objects or locations and connect with higher intelligence for guidance.
The information received by the projected mind is then said to be perceived
as thoughts, images, feelings, smells, taste and sound by the mind. The
information obtained in this manner can be acted upon to solve problems.
J. B. Rhine, long-time parapsychology researcher at Duke University,
coined the term, Extra-sensory perception (ESP). He thought that the psychic
senses were an extra sense that only a few very special people had. Silva
modified the phrase "Extra-sensory Perception" to "Effective
Sensory Projection". Silva kept the same initials, ESP, but the revised
meaning suggests that it is a more dynamic activity.
In 1953, Silva believed he had trained his daughter to be psychic, and
he introduced his training methods to Rhine with his daughter as proof.
Rhine's response was that Silva's daughter was a natural psychic and he
just hadn't noticed it before. Subsequently, Silva began working with
another subject. This time, he tested his subject first to be sure he
was not functioning as a psychic. Over the next 10 years, Silva claimed
to have trained 39 more subjects to be psychics.
Another discovery claimed as successful is remote viewing. Rathering
than passively waiting for impressions to be perceived, a person projects
themselves mentally and remotely views what is going on in a process similar
to lucid dreaming.
Alleged successes with his methods convinced Silva that everyone has
such abilities and can be taught to develop them, and that it is not an
extra sense at all, but a prior sense. Everything happens first in the
mind, he reasoned, then happens in the body — a person mentally
decides to pick up a glass of water and drink it, then does it physically.
The Silva Method is one of a number of therapeutic techniques sometimes
grouped under the name Human potential movement.
Claims of psychic abilities, remote viewing and healing have not been
empirically proven.
|