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The Silva method (formerly known as "Silva Mind Control") is a type of meditation, proposed by José Silva. It involves reaching and sustaining the alpha-state while actively controlling one's thoughts.

Silva claimed to be able to achieve many skills. Some were mundane abilities associated with meditation - deep relaxation, cure for insomnia.

Some were more extraordinary:

Pain control--Silva practitioners are able to not mind intermediate pain, and can get cavities filled or receive colonoscopies without any anaesthetics

Others were extreme:

  • Remote viewing
  • Empathic Telepathy

I read Silva's book for curiosity, and while it is obviously consists a lot of non-scientific garbage, some of these earlier claims seems to be scientifically possible.

I hear and read many stories from independent people (including ones I personally know) that confirms the method to some extent. I, however, could not find any independent scientific studies that examined this.

Picking on one claim in particular: can practitioners of the Silva method learn to ignore minor and intermediate levels of pain?

Oddthinking
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Neinstein
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  • Did you Google it using Google Scholar? That will give you the basic answer you're asking for (yes/no). Please note that meditation and physiological changes have been well documented. Meditation and paranormal activities is a different question. – anongoodnurse Jun 15 '16 at 00:34
  • There is nothing paranormal about self-training mental exercises... – sashkello Jun 15 '16 at 01:59
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    I made a fair large edit. (1) "Mind control" normally refers to controlling *other* people's minds, so I played down that aspect and called it meditation instead. – Oddthinking Jun 15 '16 at 04:43
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    Silva makes a lot of claims. The question was too broad. So, I focussed on a claim that was somewhere in the middle of plausability. That meditation can help you relax seems uncontroversial (except whether any technique of sitting still and not focussing on your worries is equivalent). That meditation cannot enable remote viewing doesn't seem to be in dispute by the OP. So, I focused on the pain transcendence. – Oddthinking Jun 15 '16 at 04:45
  • @Oddthinking Thank you for your work! I was originally searching for a general examination of the whole method, but you are right that it is far too broad to fit in one single disputation. Pain controlling is indeed a significant enough part of the method to focus on it. – Neinstein Jun 15 '16 at 23:00

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