Similar to lifestyle practices like yoga and plant-based eating, manifestation is an approach that originated in ancient spiritual beliefs but has soared in popularity in recent years.
Thanks in part to influences like the 2006 book The Secret and inspirational speakers and authors such as Abraham Hicks, most modern teachings on how to manifest are based on the law of attraction. The law of attraction suggests that the best way to manifest something is to conjure the sensation of the emotional reward one imagines they’ll feel when they receive what they desire. Many law of attraction believers have shared success stories from the practice, which often involves techniques like emotional meditation.
But the metaphysical interpretation behind the law of attraction has been backed by relatively little science—until now. James Doty, MD is a Stanford University neurosurgeon and adjunct professor and the author of Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifesting and How It Changes Everything, out May 7, 2024.
In this new work, Dr. Doty defines manifesting as establishing “an intention such that it gets embedded into our subconscious, which functions below the level of consciousness.” He continues: “In practice, that means that whether or not that intention is present on a conscious level, brain mechanisms that remain focused on the goal are activated around the clock.”
The Healthy by Reader’s Digest shares the following excerpt from Dr. Doty’s Mind Magic with permissions from Avery/Penguin Random House.
Stay well—and inspired—when you subscribe to The Healthy by Reader’s Digest daily newsletter
courtesy Avery/Penguin Random HousePositive emotions activate the reward systems of our
brains, and therefore keep our inner compass set towards our intention. They also help us to free ourselves from the prison of old patterns conditioned by our environment. One of the most powerful ways to indicate the value of an intention to our subconscious is through associating it with a strong positive emotion, experienced in our body in the present. The more vividly we visualize our intention, the more emotionally heightened our inner experience will be, and the more emotionally heightened the inner experience is, the more it has a chance to capture and hold our attention and alert the brain to give attention to it in the future.
Part of how the brain decides how to classify information coming in is through a process known as “value tagging.” Value tagging is part of the salience network that involves the selective importance of information entering the awareness. The tagging may determine the importance of information in relation to our immediate survival and physiological functioning, and it can also be
emotional, concerning our sense of belonging, the strength of our bonds and connections with others, and life meaning. A strong positive emotion signals to our subconscious that the intention is highly meaningful and deserves to be cultivated through our behavior. For this reason, when we practice visualization, it is essential that in addition to imagining the physical circumstances of achieving our goal or intention in detail, we tune into our heart and experience the joy, celebration, contentment, and connection in our bodies in the here and now.
This change in the emotional “pH” of your consciousness, so to speak, is what sends messages to the brain to transform your hardware to prioritize future experiences that give rise to similar positive feelings. Where the emotions come from doesn’t really matter, as long as you can produce them, recognize their importance, and take the time to savor them. You are teaching your brain to feel and become familiar with feelings of deep authentic well-being, and having these feelings is what indicates to the brain to form a new neural circuit. Positive emotions increase the salience around an experience and teach the brain that experiences like these are important and worth pursuing. They then become the compass or “north star” for where to direct your intention.
Accessing the power of the imagination is one of the crucial benefits of increasing the tone of the PNS (parasympathetic nervous system). When the PNS is engaged, one’s executive control areas of the brain are empowered to make choices that are not automatic, but an integration of all of our experiences into a holistic picture within consciousness. And this is how you become
creative: By having access to the rich raw material of your remembered past, present experience, and imagined possibilities, your mind is free to recombine the material to synthesize a new image or sequence or pattern for you to follow.
With its fixation on past and potential dangers, the SNS (sympathetic nervous system) effectively shuts down our positive imagination, and we lose sight of what could be or what is possible, especially in terms of improving our lives and experiencing greater connection, fulfillment, and well-being. Without the power of our imagination, and without a curious, flexible, and open mind to consider its visions, we are deprived of the very engine that can get us out of the vicious cycle of negative experience and negative identity.
In order to free ourselves from being locked in old patterns by our environment, we must be able to provide ourselves with an inner experience that is vivid, emotionally heightened, and timeless enough to overthrow the emotional addiction that has kept us there. We must no longer be limited by what others tell us we can and cannot do. It is the power and even enchantment of positive emotions, evoked by intensely imagined
positive experiences rooted in the compass of our hearts, that will lead us out. Then we can begin to take actions to create those experiences in reality.
As we practice visualizing our desired result over and over again, our intention to experience the fulfillment of our desires is giving our attention (and therefore our subconscious) some velocity to influence the outcome. This is a tried-and-true practice used for years by countless elite athletes, who rehearse successfully executing a skill in their mind’s eye before the big game or competition. Research has even shown that just thinking about an action such as building muscles can result in a measurable increase in muscle mass, and thinking about rehearsing the piano can measurably improve a musician’s performance, whether they have touched a keyboard or not.
The paradox is that, through mental rehearsal and visualization, we are “reminding” ourselves of how the positive outcome will feel when we experience it in a moment to come. Our minds are literally going back to the future.
Adapted with permission from MIND MAGIC by James R. Doty, MD, published by Avery, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of PenguinRandom House, LLC. Copyright © 2024 by James R. Doty, MD.
