questions on meditations and affirmations

[gib65]

Hello,

This is my first post on this forum. I'm here because I'm looking for some guidance on how to practice meditation and visualizations for various life improvement goals.

I'm seeing a therapist who recommended an app called Relax. It guides you through some breathing exercises and an 8 minute or 13 minute meditation in which you focus on various parts of the body. At one point in the meditation, it asks you to tell yourself an affirmation like "I will have more energy today," or "I will focus on the good in people, not the bad." The idea is that while in the meditative state, your unconscious is especially susceptible to these affirmations, and will more readily move you towards realizing your affirmations.

I have many questions about this, but I'd like to start with this: how does this work? I guess it seems a little like magic to me at this point. How does the unconscious carry out the realization of affirmations? What is it about the meditative state that makes the unconscious more susceptible to affirmations?

Also, what are the limits of affirmations? I could probably go to ridiculous extremes, like saying "I will gain supernatural powers," but I'm sure even the unconscious isn't that powerful. But what CAN be done with affirmations?

Thanks for any feedback.

[FredFred]

Hello gib and welcome to the forums

Of course this will work! I believe it's called positive reinforcement in psychology. Here's a wikipedia article on it : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement

I'm no expert on the subject, but this technique makes sense to me. Let's say you're studying for a test, you write down one sentence and repeat it until it gets in your head. Your basically doing the same thing here, saying something out loud until it sticks with you.

I'm not sure about the limits of the technique, that would require further research.

[Hellspeed]

Affirmations are good from a perspective of the mind, to use the mind to escape the mind. It is an early stage in the journey of discovery.

[non_nothing]

I forgot what was the point that I've started to believe that is true. I've read decent amount of things for law of attraction and power of the subconscious mind (this is a book i guess? besides being a topic) you might aswell checkout.

[gib65]

Thanks everyone for your response.

I've done some research and I found this article:

https://gshypnosis.com/does-hypnosis-work-understanding-the-science-of-hypnotherapy-2/

It explains the effects of suggestions during hypnosis. My therapist who recommended the meditative exercises with the affirmations is trained in hypnosis and says it works the same way. The articles says that 90% of what we believe and perceive comes from "top down" processing--that is, our expectations and prior knowledge dominate how we interpret and experience incoming data (like sensory perceptions or the things people tell us)--states like hypnosis and meditation alter our consciousness in such a way as to inhibit top down processing so that "bottom up" processing (experience in its untampered form or the things people tell us) has more sway over the mind. When someone tells us: you are confident, rather than have our top down processing tell us: no I'm not, the brain simply says: I am? Well, I guess I am.

The article was pretty inspiring as it site a number of frankly amazing effects that suggestion can have under hypnosis, including the part of the brain for reading being shut off when told that certain words are just gibberish. It's very encouraging as it suggests almost anything is possible if one can get the power of suggestion (or affirmations) to work on one's self.

Currently, with the meditative exercises I'm practicing, I don't know how to tell if I'm in a sufficiently hypnotized or "altered" state for my self-affirmations to have the effect I want them to have. I don't feel very "altered"--just relaxed and a bit sleepy--in fact, it's hard not to drift off (I've fallen asleep a few times). I've seen a hypnotist convince someone he was Tim McGraw. I'm having enough of a challenge just convincing myself I'm confident.