Silva Method and the Ultimate Mind

Is it true that we use only ten percent of our brains? How can we truly calculate brain usage? Is it possible that it is a myth? How can someone prove whether it’s 10, 20 or 50 percent that we use?

Recently, I started receiving emails from people I consider very intelligent and some are even Silva Method instructors. They chose to forward these emails because they liked what they read and wanted to share them. Nothing wrong with that! The premise for sharing these chain emails is to benefit other readers and give them ideas on a particular subject. Sharing then becomes a smart idea and it is laudable. The result though is that they unknowingly alter the thoughts of their readers by promulgating falsities. And that how our Country is now divided in half, but that’s another subject.

How can we know if that forwarded email contains the truth or has any validity? Humans are fundamentally lazy and it’s reflected in our thinking and our brains. They prefer to retain easy things to remember rather than hard concepts. That’s one of the reasons we want to use more the Silva Method techniques: that makes us smarter.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. A week ago, I received this email about Bill Gates’ list of rules that kids won’t learn in school. Now, as you know, Bill Gates is somebody well respected for his superior mind and vision. So anything that he allegedly would have written should be consider like Gospel and worth spreading around. Besides when you read what these rules are about, it’s difficult to disagree with their content. They make great sense.

It turns out that this famous list which has been trekked on the Internet for a decade through various types of email junk is not from Bill Gates at all but from another author. It looks a lot better though if we say this list comes from Bill Gates. More people will read it and spread the rumors and falsities. Like the phrase of the week is “I’m for Stupidly!”

Then this morning, another email came my way from someone I consider also very highly, another Silva Method instructor. Today, it’s about Obama’s healthcare plan to tell patients that they have alternatives to healthcare: kill themselves to save the system from the millions of dollars that it would cost to keep them alive with their lousy life. At least this email junk is recent, just July 2009, and it’s spreading fast through the conservative ranks. Add to that a celebrity like Senator Fred Thompson, and you have a great tool to convince people that public healthcare is bad for the country except for the military.

At least, I know that the readers of my blog are smarter and can sort easily through the email trash they received daily. It’s not difficult with the tools we have on the Internet to figure out what is right or wrong. Or is it?

So, back to the ten percent of our brains, we know that this is a myth and we have the explanation here on the Snopes.com website. The authors are dedicated to finding the truth about all these urban legends that circulate through the internet and corrupt minds of the unsuspected.

A last word: please don’t forward me an email from a chain that you did not check first for validity.

Read more about the Ten Percent of our Brains story

Jay Feuillet
Silva Method Instructor and Coach

Send us your links! Email: webmaster@onegoodmind.com

ScienceDaily (July 21, 2009) — Ducking a punch or a thrown spear calls for the power of the human brain to process 3-D motion, and to perceive an object (whether it’s offensive or not) moving in three dimensions is critical to survival. It also leads to a lot of fun at 3-D movies.

Neuroscientists have now pinpointed where and how the brain processes 3-D motion using specially developed computer displays and an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) machine to scan the brain.
They found, surprisingly, that 3-D motion processing occurs in an area in the brain—located just behind the left and right ears—long thought to only be responsible for processing two-dimensional motion (up, down, left and right).

This area, known simply as MT+, and its underlying neuron circuitry are so well studied that most scientists had concluded that 3-D motion must be processed elsewhere. Until now.

Read all about it here

(Via Science Daily News.)

ScienceDaily (July 12, 2009) — People who seed their life with frequent moments of positive emotions increase their resilience against challenges, according to a new study by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill psychologist and colleagues.

“This study shows that if happiness is something you want out of life, then focusing daily on the small moments and cultivating positive emotions is the way to go,” said Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences and the principal investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory. “Those small moments let positive emotions blossom, and that helps us become more open. That openness then helps us build resources that can help us rebound better from adversity and stress, ward off depression and continue to grow.”

In the month long study, 86 participants were asked to submit daily “emotion reports,” rather than answering general questions like, “Over the last few months, how much joy did you feel?”

“Getting those daily reports helped us gather more accurate recollections of feelings and allowed us to capture emotional ups and downs,” said Fredrickson, a leading expert in the field of positive psychology.

Read the entire article here.

(Via Science Daily.)

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The market for brain-training software continues to grow, but evidence of the programs’ ability to boost memory or intelligence in a broadly applicable way (rather than simply making people better at the task they are practicing) remains scarce. New studies offer a tantalizing suggestion that certain programs may work—but the bulk of the research is murky.

Neuroscientist Peter Snyder of Brown University reviewed nearly 20 software studies and concluded that, as a group, they were underwhelming. They are marred by flaws that induce confounding factors, such as a lack of control groups and follow-up, Snyder warns. More than a third of those he reviewed were too shoddy even to include in the analysis he printed early this year in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia. “You’d be surprised at what gets published,” he says. Although some products claimed to treat dementia, Snyder did not find any evidence to back such claims.

Read more here

(Via Scientific American.)

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