How Does Subliminal Meditation Work?

It takes time for meditation to change the brain, but that change is generally for the better and is permanent. But how does subliminal meditation work? 

While a regular session can rewire the brain, subliminal meditations are meant to change your brain so you start believing in certain things, and are often used as a way to accomplish something. 

From a spiritual perspective, many think that if someone enters meditation for the purpose of obtaining something, they’d be defeating the purpose of meditation, and that’s exactly what’s being done with subliminal meditation. 

Often, it consists of some form of audio where the instructor is guiding the practitioner to change their belief systems. 

For instance, chanting affirmations such as “I am wealthy” or “I am rich”, which many times, can be a positive thing since money meditations can increase your belief in yourself. 

On the other hand, while I believe it’s okay to have a material goal, it’s also important to balance that with the core principles of meditation of letting go, and just being. It’s often when you stop pursuing and obsess less that you get the thing you want. 

The faster you are able to conquer your mind, and by extension, yourself, the easier it is to remain indifferent despite what gets in the way of you achieving something. 

However, let’s explore some ways subliminal meditations can help you, and other ways they might not help you so much and even work against your best interest. 

Subliminal Meditation Can Help You Quit Bad Habits

Everyone wants to quit bad habits. But it takes a bit more than just discipline. At times, it takes changing yourself on a subconscious level, since you could go through a certain period without doing a bad habit and then return to it. I say it because it’s happened to me. 

Now, going without doing a bad habit for a long time, such as smoking, might make it easier for you to endure the urge to pick up a cigar. But not impossible. The more you understand yourself and your subconscious, the more you are able to change it. 

Many times, it’s our environment that influences our subconscious but what if you make yourself your environment? In the sense that you cultivate focus and mental fortitude within. 

Sometimes, it might take longer with a meditation where you’re just focusing on your breath, but with subliminal meditations, you are meditating for a reason. 

The drawback is that said reason has to be strong enough for you to continue meditation and for your subconscious not to overpower your actual will, and all the progress you’ve made up until this point falls apart. 

That’s why I recommend an additional, deeper reason other than a material goal when you are meditating, and a good place to start is to let go of expectations, not to be hard on yourself, and understand that relapses are likely to happen. 

No one is perfect, but don’t let that relapse determine your faith in your journey and end goal. You will find yourself missing a day or two of meditation. 

Don’t let that turn into three, and more, until you wind up stopping the practice completely. For that purpose, subliminal meditations might make you more committed to staying to a goal, since you’re seeing a purpose with meditation. 

And along that path, you might be fortunate enough to find other reasons to continue the practice as a whole.

Subliminals Can Backfire

If you are doing a subliminal meditation, and the subliminal you are hearing doesn’t sound believable or achievable to you by any stretch of the imagination, there’s a risk for you to convince yourself that you are not capable of achieving a thing the subliminal is trying to convince you that you can do. No matter how much you are doing subliminal meditation. 

You might need to make a few tweaks or change the wording of the subliminal so it can somehow reach the subconscious mind. 

Subliminals can also backfire if you set high expectations for yourself and if you just are focused on the end result, which would defeat the purpose of meditation, to begin with. 

Many people swear by subliminal meditations, but it has to be somewhat believable to you, not a subliminal that is supposed to “change your eye colors.” 

If you notice any sort of resistance to the subliminal, it’s a good idea to re-evaluate that subliminal, or perhaps give it more time, since, if it’s somewhat reasonable, you might start believing that subliminal, but don’t make the mistake of expecting a certain result within a specific timeframe. 

Subliminals Are Not Proven

There’s no hard scientific backing for subliminal meditations. The claimed results of Subliminals have often been skewed or fabricated, but that’s not to say that it can’t work for some. 

Some have even attributed many of their successes to Subliminals, but it’s always worth taking it with a grain of salt since these successes don’t come from subliminal meditations alone but often when these were used in conjunction with the main daily habits that got them there. 

For instance, subliminal meditation is very unlikely to make you grow muscle but can definitely aid you in keeping you motivated and instigating discipline for you to work out and grow said muscle. 

Should You Do Subliminal Meditations?

I generally recommend doing a meditation that you find works for you. But I’ve seen that many find success in just sitting quietly and focusing on their breath and detaching their expectations from any outcome with meditation. It’s often what creates the longest and most successful meditations. 

Since if you’re just meditating subliminally, you are limiting your scope and meditation is so much more than what you can achieve from it. 

Many times, it’s all about giving yourself the rest you need or growing personally, and not all meditation experiences are considered positive by practitioners. Eventually, you’ll want to abstain from attaching any labels to the meditation you are doing, be it positive or negative, and instead, just be. 

Changing the mind in your favor will often take more than just subliminal meditations, which, generally takes no work and it’s all about sucking in the chants and mantras or affirmations, without doing any internal work. So it’s hard to see any form of growth from subliminal meditations, and neither are they very fulfilling, in my experience. 

There are a lot of quitters in subliminal meditations, and I was one of them. But that’s not to say that you can’t meditate in conjunction with repeating affirmations. As a matter of fact, it may provide the ideal focus point when focusing on your breath is difficult.

Concentration is key, and if you find that subliminal meditations help you concentrate, you should by all means continue those meditations. 

On the other hand, for the average practitioner, I don’t recommend subliminal meditations since the meditation is done solely with the focus of attaining something. You never want to be detached from the present moment, if you are, you wouldn’t be in a meditative state, to begin with. 

Subliminal meditations are never a substitute for putting in the work, and it often attracts many lazy people that want quick fixes. Meditation in itself can be easy to do but the consistency aspects make it harder. So if you’re not used to doing anything hard, meditation can train you in that sense.