The Silva Method

In this page, I will present you briefly the Silva Method and my experience with it. First of all, I would like to clarify that any information that you can find here is just introductory. If you want to learn and use the Silva method, then you should read a relevant book. Also, what is written here is based on a book entitled “The Silva Mind Control Method” by Jose Silva and Philip Miele.

 

There are many seminars in the Silva Mind Control Method. They are attended by many people, in many countries. At these meetings, people learn the Silva Method, guided by experts. Attending a seminar may help you learn the Silva method more quickly than trying to do it alone. Although you learn the Silva method rapidly, it also cost you money.

 

I haven’t attended any Silva method seminar, and I don’t know if it is worth it. But I have read in some forums that people who have attended such seminars are satisfied. I recommend you initially try the Silva method alone and then, if you like it and want it, search for a relevant group to join.

 

The Silva Method was the first Mind-Expanding Technique I tried. When I read the book, I felt excited and wanted to try it as soon as possible.

Later, as my search for the human mind went on, I realized that the Silva method is a mixture of Self-Hypnosis and Meditation including some elements from NLP. In other words, it’s a complete set of tools you need to control your mind.

 

Firstly, you need to bring your mind to a relaxed state. This state is the alpha brain state where your right hemisphere is active. You are in this state every day for several times. One standard time that your mind finds itself at this state is every morning when you wake up. In the first minutes, after you wake up, your mind passes from the theta brain state to the alpha and then to the beta.

 

So, you can use this time window to train yourself in the Silva method. The book assumes that you are a beginner in the Silva method, so it states that the way of inducing you into trance is different from the one that they use in seminars, but is effective even if you haven’t tried it before.

 

You have to exercise every morning, for about fifty days, just to understand the alpha state boundaries. It is crucial to learn how to enter and leave this brain state. If you can follow the below-mentioned exercise program, then you will become an expert in reaching the alpha state anytime.

 

o For ten days count backward from 100 to 1 at a 2 seconds pace.

o For the next ten days count backward from 50 to 1 at the same pace.

o For the following ten days count backward from 25 to 1.

o For the next ten days count from 10 to 1.

o For the last ten days count from 5 to 1.

 

While you count backward you have to look, behind your closed eyelids, slightly above. It is known that the brain produces alpha brainwaves when having your eyes at this position. You will need no more than 15 minutes every morning for each exercise.

 

Following a program like this, will train your brain to enter the alpha state very fast, almost instantly.

 

So what happens next?

 

You have to develop your visualization skill. Check some Visualization Exercises here. You will create an imagery tool like a mental monitor where you will project your visualizations.

In the beginning, you try to imagine in great detail, ordinary things, like fruits or something that you are very familiar with. The purpose of this exercise is to develop your visualization skill and your creativity as well. Later on, you will be able to imagine things, not so familiar to you, also in detail.

 

All your visions will be projected to your mental monitor. You can imagine this as a cinema screen. This tool helps you reduce the distractive thoughts. You can remove any irrelevant thought by projecting it in the mental monitor and then fading it out slowly or moving it towards one side, revealing your initial consideration.

 

Clearing the distractions is the first mind control experience. You try to control your distractions and keep focused on just one thought. Doing this exercise, you will realize that day by day, less irrelevant thoughts will interrupt you. Congratulations, you just started to control your mind!

 

You must also train your brain on leaving the alpha state and return to the normal beta where you are fully alert. Whenever you meditate, you must always close your session confirming that you will go back to the beta state, feeling fully awake and refreshed. You do this counting from 1 to 5, rehearsing mentally statements like “I will now slowly leave the alpha state and when, I reach number 5 I will be fully refreshed and awake”.

 

In case you meditate before sleeping, you just confirm that you are going to have a restorative sleep.

 

As you start practicing the Silva method, you may be unable to understand whether you are in alpha or not. This is natural. You don’t know yet what the brain state boundaries are. As you consciously enter and exit the alpha state, on a daily basis, you will realize the different brain states.

 

It is evenly important to know how to exit the meditative state as well as how to enter it. As your Mind Control skills progress, your brain will stay in the desired state until you close your session.

 

Initially, your brain may be induced into trance, but it may not be able to remain there for too long. This fluctuation will be minimized with training.

 

When I tried to enter the alpha brain state for the first time, I followed the instructions exactly. I didn’t feel something different. I remember that I was waiting for something to happen. This was keeping me anxious and didn’t let me relax. So I failed the first time. The next attempts were also unsuccessful.

 

I started feeling disappointed and discouraged. As my enthusiasm started fading away, I was getting closer to my intention, but I didn’t know it then. The key was to relax, and I was doing the opposite. So, in another attempt, I finally realized the alpha state. It was a strange feeling, and I observed it as fully as I could.

 

I started to feel very relaxed; almost paralyzed. I didn’t try to move though because I didn’t want to go accidentally out of this state. After a while, I felt numbness in my face. And the strangest effect was that I felt a disturbance in the gravity of my body. It was like the right side of my body was weightless. You can feel that when you lie down on your left side. It was a very nice feeling, though. From that moment on I knew whether I was in an alpha state or not.

 

At this point, you have learned how to reach a meditative level. You prepared the ground to move forward and use this level to your benefit.

The Benefits of the Silva Method

 

Using the Silva method you can achieve the following:

 

o Improve Memory

o Speed Learning

o Creative Sleep & Dream Programming

o Use the Power of the Words

o Use the Power of Imagination

o Improve and Maintain Health

o ESP (Extrasensory Perception)

 

We will talk about the benefits you can have using the Silva method. Some of them require a lot of experience, like the ESP, but I think the first two are easy to achieve. All the techniques that are used in the Silva method require to be at the alpha state of mind.

 

Improve Memory

While you are at the proper mind state, you can create mind tools that can help you with several mental tasks. In this section, we will discuss how you can improve your memory by creating a tool and using it in your everyday life.

 

There are two ways you can improve your memory using the Silva method. The slow one and the fast one. To use the fast technique, you have to create a special mind tool and practice with it. We will see it in a while.

 

The slow method is used when you are in the alpha state. Then, you recreate and project a past experience that you need to remember on your mental monitor.

 

For example, let’s suppose that you lost something important yesterday. Then you can go to your meditative level and replay yesterday’s activities on your mental monitor.

 

Remember that your mind can process much more information than you are conscious of. So, by going to the alpha brain state, you use consciously the resources of your subconscious mind. It is quite possible to locate the exact point where you lost your precious thing.

 

The slow method requires relaxing and needs about 15-20 minutes of meditation. The second method is very fast and can be activated after developing a mental mechanism.

 

It is the alpha brain state that is very resourceful and improves your memory. So entering this state instantly whenever you want would be just perfect. This can happen using the following technique.

 

When you are at the meditative level say mentally or loudly “When I will join my fingers”- join now the indicator, the admedian and the thumb of each hand – “I will get instantly into this brain state and I will remember everything I need”. You have to do this for at least one week.

 

Finally, your brain will switch automatically to the alpha state when you join your fingers. Then you can imagine your mental monitor and recreate fast the experience you need to remember. Nice tool, eh?

 

In NLP, this is called anchoring and it is the combination of a specific brain state, reminiscence or mood with a particular stimulus. This can be an image, a thought, a sound or anything. A classic example of anchoring is every time that you listen to a specific song on the radio and it instantly reminds you of a past experience.

 

The mind tool that you created in order to improve your memory does exactly the same. It connects your alpha brain state with the union of your fingers.

 

Speed Learning

 

There are also two ways of speed learning in the Silva method. The first one is by using the technique of the three fingers you learned earlier. The second one requires recording your own voice.

 

When you study something, you use the three fingers tool to induce your brain into trance. As you study in this level, more of the information you get is stored into the long term memory. At a later point, you may join your three fingers again to remember what you have read. This technique requires that you have mastered the usage of the three fingers mechanism.

 

The other method is more complex. As I said, it requires recording your voice. You will need a voice recording device, and you will use it when you read something you want to memorize. After the recording you will enter the alpha state and hear what you have recorded.

 

This method exploits both the brain states alpha and beta. So using it, you are supposed to better memorize what you read than just read in the beta state. I have not tried this method, to be honest, so I don’t know if it does what it is supposed to do.

 

I tried the three finger method when I was a student. Ok, I wasn’t an expert at this method but as I remember my performance at the exams was good when I used it. I can’t say that the success was definitely by using this method but I can say for sure that I didn’t fail any exams when I used it.

 

Creative Sleep & Dream Programming

 

Most of us have experienced creative sleep some time in our lives. You may remember a time when you dreamed about a real problem you had in your life and the next morning knew how to deal with it. The next morning you had the solution ready to be applied and solve your problem. This is creative sleep, and the Silva method can help you engage it on demand.

 

Creative sleep happens to most of us randomly. But if you train yourself enough you can program yourself to have a dream when falling asleep that will provide you with the answers you seek.

This requires that you have reached an advanced meditative level and that your brain easily alters its brainwave state at will.

 

The basic concept of dream programming is simple. Before you sleep you meditate, and you visualize the problem you have. Then you must state mentally that you need some advice or solution to your problem and that you will dream of this solution.

 

When you wake up the first thing you do is write down what you remember of your dreams. If your memories seem to be irrelevant to your query, perhaps the solution is hidden and needs to be deciphered.

 

It is important to write your memories down immediately after you wake up because at this moment you remember most of the dream. As minutes go by you gradually forget it.

 

If you, do not succeed the first time, don’t get disappointed; try again. Dream programming is possible, and you can do it. You may find the following guidelines useful:

 

o You seek the solution to a problem which requires advice or information.

o You must be sure that you want to solve this problem

o Successful dream programming needs patience. It’s not going to happen immediately as you start.

o Don’t forget to write down whatever you remember from your dream when you wake up.

 

Using Dream Programming, you can draw valuable information for your life. Almost every time we dream there are messages in the dreams coming from our subconscious. Using dream programming, we also enter a process of searching for meanings in our dreams. Thus, we will becoming better day by day in understanding the hidden messages that our subconscious sends us through dreaming.

 

The Power of the Words

You know that every word has a meaning or multiple meanings. Every phrase has a meaning and it is defined as positive if the words are positive or as a negative if the words are negative. Phrases like “I am not well today”, “I don’t do it right”, “I’m bored” are negative ones. Such phrases must be deleted from your dictionary and be replaced by positive ones. This is a ground rule in Silva method.

 

The power of the words is multiplied when you are in the alpha state. The gravity of the meanings of every phrase is stronger. Using this power of the words when you meditate can have miraculous effects on your mood and on the way you feel.

 

The Silva Method may help you learn to use the power of positive thinking. You meditate, and you say to yourself positive phrases like “Every day I am getting better and better”. These statements have great effects on your subconscious mind as you are in alpha or theta brain state.

 

Negative phrases have also powerful effects on your subconscious mind, so you need to remove these from there and replace them with positive. I do this every day; maybe this is the reason why I seldom feel sorrow.

 

The Power of Imagination

 

They say “a picture is as good as a thousand words”. This is quite true and this is the reason why you can use mental images to your benefit. You are going to use your imagination and at this stage you must have developed your visualization skill.

 

You are now taking a step further using the Silva Method. At this point you must meet the following requirements:

 

o You have learned entering and leaving the alpha state in a matter of seconds.

o You have trained your visualization skill up to a point that you can imagine complex things in great detail.

o You have learned to be patient.

o You meditate every day at least twice.

 

In order to use the power of the imagination, you are going to use the mind tools that you have already created. These are your mental monitor and the three finger technique.

 

In the Silva method book that I have read, the technique of using the power of imagination was illustrated with two examples. These were “losing weight” and “quitting smoking”. As none of them were my concerns, I applied the technique to my problem and this was to stay motivated going to the gym.

 

I applied the technique every time that I felt too bored to work out. When this happened, I used to meditate for about 20 minutes and after this I was refreshed and ready for the gym.

 

The Silva method comes in handy in such cases. You can control yourself and overcome the bad habits that slow you down and leave you unmotivated.

 

First of all, you must prepare yourself before meditation and know what you are going to imagine. You have to know all the benefits that you will get by changing a bad habit. List them and prepare yourself to begin.

 

You start your meditation session as usual. When you are in the alpha state then you start visualizing on your mental monitor yourself as you are now, still having the trait you want to change. After that you move slowly this old picture of yourself to the right of the screen, and you bring in a new image of yourself from the left. This new image is you again but changed.

 

Afterward, you start visualizing your new life in the absence of the bad habit. At this point you must try to imagine as many details as you can. You have to imagine details that engage all of your senses like sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste.

 

In my case I imagined details of my body that engaged sight and touch. I couldn’t think of something that would engage my other senses, though. So, I visualized that I was fit, exactly as I wanted to be, and then observed the results in the mirror. Then I touched my new body and felt its texture.

 

After that I imagined how I felt with my new body. I observed my self-confidence and my mood. These were all nice feelings. I also imagined occasions in my life having all the benefits of a fit body. I imagined having great strength, being healthier, looking nicer and many more details.

 

So let’s summarize all the above steps of this Silva method example:

 

1. Think of your problem and list the benefits you get by resolving it. This will help you imagine yourself in a positive manner.

2. Begin your meditation and reach the alpha state.

3. Bring your mental monitor in front of you and project an image of yourself before and after the solution of the problem.

4. Visualize as many details as you can engaging all of your senses if possible.

5. Visualize as many feelings as you can.

6. Integrate all the benefits you listed earlier to yourself and imagine how your life is changing.

7. Close your meditation session

 

A last important note is that when you are at the visualization process you must not imagine anything negative or anything that is against your desire. Keep this in mind.

 

You have to do this twice a day in order to have a result. Silva method is going to give you a boost in your motivation to quit something bad that you want to change. When you are at a place where you cannot meditate you can use the three finger technique and remember your purpose if needed.

 

Improve and Maintain Health

You can use the Silva Method to improve your health or maintain it at a good level. When you are ill, using the power of your imagination can speed up the recovery process.

 

Apart from this, it has been observed that some patients have been cured from cancer in an inexplicable way. All these people had a common trait. This was Positive thinking. Having this knowledge, you can understand how important it is to think positively.

 

Using your mental monitor you imagine for a while yourself ill having the symptoms that pester you. Don’t hold this image in your mind for too long, as you want to focus on the opposite. Then you say mentally to yourself that you deeply desire to be cured and to be healthy again.

 

You have to be in the alpha state and before you start visualizing you have to make some affirmations. These affirmations are to induce your mind to thinking positively. You are going to use the power of positive think to accelerate healing. You have to state mentally that you desire to be a positive person.

 

Let’s return to the technique now. You have set your desire to be healthy again and be cured completely; start imagining it. You imagine how well you feel, you are not in pain anymore. Feel the freedom and the happiness that perfect health offers. Maintain this image in your mind for several minutes and enjoy it. You help yourself to recover rapidly. That’s all. Keep on meditating as much as you can and you will be healthy again sooner than you thought you would be. This is the power of the Silva method!

 

Now, my experience using the Silva method hasn’t gone that far. I mean I haven’t tested it many times on myself because I don’t get sick often. But anyway I use my imagination when I feel sick. The strange thing is that for the last ten years every time I get ill it never lasts longer than a day.

 

The last time that I got sick was during a night shift at work. My temperature had risen to 40 C and I didn’t feel right, but in the middle of the night, I could do nothing but be patient and wait till the morning. This lasted for 4 hours and then it disappeared. I felt as if this had never happened. I used, in a way, what the Silva Method says but I am not sure that this is what caused my rapid recovery. I don’t know how to explain it.

 

In any case, I believe that the Silva Method has positive effects on your health levels as it has with the mood and with the bad habits. I may not have tested it much to improve my health but thinking of the effects it has in the other areas I can’t think why it shouldn’t work with health as well.

 

ESP (Extrasensory Perception)

First of all, I haven’t trained to improve my “sixth sense” because I wasn’t interested in doing that. But many people would like to know how to develop the ESP. In this section, I will describe the training process.

 

ESP requires intense visualization training. You must be good at visualizing nearly anything in great detail. The first exercise in the mind control seminars is the following:

 

When you are at a deep meditative level, maybe in the theta state, you project yourself in front of your home on your mental monitor. It is night, and all the lights are on so you begin to imagine the scenery in great detail. All your senses are active.

 

Then you go through the front door and you are at the living room watching the wall. Then you touch the wall and you enter it. You know of course that this is not possible but this is a reaction of your left hemisphere which understands that this is unreal. At the same time your right hemisphere starts working and slowly you start accepting the unreal.

 

So, when you are in the wall, you start examining the environment using all your five senses. After this, you exit the wall and you look at it again. You change the color of the wall, trying many colors and then revert it back to the original. Afterwards, you pick up a chair and you compare it to the wall, changing again the colors.

 

This visualization process activates the right hemisphere, while silencing the left which reminds you that all these are nonsense.

 

In the next exercise you do the same thing but in other environments. These may be metallic cubes or cylinders. You do the same actions you did with your house. You change the colors, you change the material of the walls, and you observe the environment with all your senses and all these at a rapid rate so as not to anticipate thinking logically.

 

While doing these exercises you change the forms of matter, where you project yourself, from simple to complex. Then you start projecting yourself on living organisms. You try this with a tree. After a while you proceed to a cat and so on.The last target, in the Silva method seminars, is the human body.

 

As you enter a living organism with all your senses active, you observe the environment again. Now you have to do with biological organs like the heart or the brain. You observe the bones and the spine of the animal; you get a view of how all these organs work together.

 

Finally, you do that with human bodies as well. You create a mental laboratory where you have all the tools to examine people. You also have two assistants, who will help you with examining.

 

You also imagine the tools that will help you do your work. These tools do not necessarily look like professional medical tools. You create them and you give them any form you wish. You know what they can be used for.

 

This exercise requires two persons so you have to attend a Silva method seminar and that’s the reason I didn’t try these exercises.

 

The first person imagines the other one and tries to observe their body from the inside as well as from the outside, in the same way this was done in the previous exercises. The mental laboratory and the assistants are used again. The goal is to find past illnesses or disorders of the person that is being examined.

 

I stated in the first paragraph that I have never trained myself in ESP but I tried it once. I remember I had a problem in my back. The medical examination showed that a vertebra was too narrow, and it pressed the bone marrow. Every morning I had terrible pains in my back that were going off during the daytime.

 

One night, I meditated and imagined my body from the inside. I found the bone that had the problem and visualized that this bone became bigger in order not to cause pains in my back. Ok, no kidding now, the following morning I had the pain in the back but it was greatly reduced compared to what it was the previous days. The difference amazed me.

 

So, you can train your ESP using the above exercises, but you can’t get feedback if you try it alone. But your ESP is trained every time you visualize things, so if you meditate you also improve your ESP. Don’t get anxious about this. It is your choice whether you train it or not. In either case this ability gets stronger as you meditate.

 

This is a summary of the Silva Method. I insist that you buy at least a book so as to have a clearer view of the Silva method. I have tried some of its techniques and they seem to have results so I believe that the Silva method is a worthy mind expanding technique.

References

 

The Silva Mind Control Method

 

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