Silva Method (India) Kolkata

By: Avadhut Das

In 1904, Ivan Pavlov discovered that the stimulus produced by the sight of food as well as its aroma, traveled along different neuronal (neural) pathways in the brain.

Together they stimulate the neuronal path that makes the salivary glands secrete mucus to help pre-digest food.

He concluded that the same final pathway could also be activated by other neuronal pathways that are not directly connected to the original trigger pathways.

He called it a "conditioned reflex."

By ringing a bell when the dog's mind was experiencing the smell and sight of the food it was going to eat, the auditory neuronal pathway carrying (cognizing) the sound of the bell also got imprinted along with the concerned visual and olfactory neuronal pathways.

Pavlov observed that the saliva flow persisted even when the bell alone was sounded, even though the food was not offered.

The neuronal pathway had been established.

Even today, this is regarded by psychologists and physiologists as the fundamental reason for both voluntary and involuntary behaviors.

You can re-condition your non-beneficial involuntary reflexes like:

• Getting stressed the moment a particular category of topic begins as a matter of discussion with your spouse
      - You experience an increase in your blood pressure
      - You experience a piercing pain physically within your heart
      - You feel breathless
      - Your ear starts paining
• Fear of poor performance in exam results before the exams
      - Palpitations
      - Indigestion
      - Sleeplessness or over-sleepiness
      - Lack of concentration
  (You get the idea, so I will skip getting into further negative details in the remaining examples)
• Stress caused by strong notions of pink-slip might coming your way
• Losing mental harmony by recalling the past hurtful scenarios of an otherwise pleasant relationship
• Fear of an impending business loss
• Fear of getting into the water at a beach
• Fear of flying
• Experiencing "ghostly" haunting
• In event of loss of a most loved person (parent/sibling/friend)
• Loss in social status/standing
• Negativity due to reprimand while performing sports/stage show/studies or any other skill
• Anger or irritability when the driver behind you keeps honking simply because he has a horn to blow! (I noticed this insatiable desperation for honking in Kolkata and for that matter, in almost every other city other than our good-old amchi-Mumbai. There, they just spit!) :)
• etc.

Technique to reprogram an involuntary response

Let us take an example of a person who simply turns dumb when speaking to a person of an opposite sex.

This is an involuntary response just like the above mentioned ones or any other. We don't want it, but it happens to us.

So how do we recondition our reflex in this situation?

The involuntary response is happening because some event in the past (maybe we have even chosen not to remember that, thus we don't have recollection of what that event was), due to embarrassment, failure or pain had set the negative expectation whenever a similar event is to happen.

The fear sits waiting along the neuronal pathways of the brain. When a like event comes along, the pathways fire off and one of the three faces of fear comes about—anxiety, fear, or panic.

Conditioned Intervention

To eliminate the fear it simply requires another force to travel along the common neuronal pathway that had been established by the fear. Let us create a simple method for accomplishing this.

As fear (conscious or sub-conscious) is a state of the imagination, the secret is to use conditioned imagination to intervene to solve the problem.

This technique is best done in the mental laboratory in presence of your mental counsellors (double layered inner-conscious reinforcement mechanisms) at an inner conscious deeper level of mind at the 10.5 CPS brain wave frequency using your right-brain hemisphere. If you haven't undergone the Silva training yet, then do the following at a relaxed mental level and expect results depending on how deeply you did it.

1. Imagine you are surrounded in a bright white cloud and you are feeling safe and very comfortable. (Silva grads: Get into your psychic energy shield.) Imagine the positive image - imagine yourself speaking comfortably and confidently. Do a mental rehearsal of the relaxed confident positive image.

2. Activate a triggering mechanism - bring into contact your heels with each other - feel that touch on your heels. Doing so while wearing shoes is ok. You don't have to keep the contact on, you may simply touch and go, however best is, if you can maintain the contact. (Silva grads: Do the 3-finger technique, it is more powerful)

3. To reinforce the above triggering mechanism, if you wish, you may optionally also add to it a support trigger like taking and exhaling a deep breath or mentally humming your favorite song or a cinema actor's dialogue in his voice and style.

If you did all that while you were thinking about yourself being very comfortable then the tap of the heels, the 3-finger technique, the deep breath, the song or dialogue, and the mental image of your comfort are on the same neuronal pathway.

This pathway is now recorded and is now ready to fire off whenever you require a similar state of comfort.

The secret is: you cannot be fearful and comfortable at the same time, you are either one or the other.

Now think of the thing that causes you to feel discomfort.

If it is stage freight, create an image in your mind of being on a stage in front of a large audience. Mentally hear the sounds, feel the lights, feel your emotions.

When the fear image is established, contact your both heels to each other, while taking & exhaling a deep breath. (or the 3-finger technique with/or any other trigger)

That will trigger the thought of comfort which will override the fear or discomfort or anger or stress.

Result: You no longer are uncomfortable with yourself when speaking to that person or when on the stage or at "ghostly" haunting or in any other situation etc.

Wishing you -- better and better! :)
Do let us know your experience.

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