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.
