Why Manifestation Works—The Neuroscience Behind the “Magic” and How to Harness it to Heal Trauma
“Our ability to thrive is governed by the physical condition of our (emotional and logical) brain and the quality of thoughts that we allow to arise from it. ” -Dr. Tara Swart
Do you ever find yourself wanting more out of life?
Which of these feels closest to your experience?
I am actively working towards a life that feels aligned with me and often feels nourishing, even if imperfect
I often feel overwhelmed with my life and I feel stuck in a cycle of dissatisfaction
Maybe it’s Sunday night and you feel the familiar dread of the coming work week, along with a quiet dissatisfaction about how the weekend slipped by.
Of course this may be different for each of us on any given day, but most of us have a sense for whether or not we feel connected to our sense of agency to choose a style of life we feel aligned with. A huge caveat here: tragedy and social injustice.
This isn’t about ignoring tragedy and social injustice but about making space to grieve (or feel rage) at our limitations, losses, and disappointments and then embracing kindness towards ourselves and living with open and compassionate eyes to our reality. From this place we can ask honestly, “What are the things in my life I can control and how can I connect with my sense of agency and courage to live a life that feels satisfying for me?”
The Brain’s Negativity Bias
On autopilot, our brains are wired to avoid pain rather than to seek fulfillment—often at the expense of our higher order needs like love, belonging, self esteem and self actualization.
Dr. Tara Swart, MD, psychiatrist, and neuroscientist explains how our brain is wired to pay attention to negative experiences 2.5x more than positive experiences.
Research also suggests negative experiences often register more strongly, are remembered longer, and influence behavior more intensely.
The implications here are massive!
| Even if the positive factors in our lives outweigh the negative, when we don’t intentionally focus on pursuing fulfillment and noticing the good that already exists through gratitude and celebration—we will feel overcome by the negative. |
Understanding the brain’s negativity bias may help explain, in part, why some people find it hard to pursue fulfillment, purpose and connection.
An Epidemic of Meaninglessness
In an age of materialism, post-industrialization, economic and political crisis, collective trauma, and post-pandemic uncertainty—emptiness, fear, nihilism and despair often prevail.
Naturally, many of us have become accustomed to living in survival mode.
Survival mode is the body’s adaptive nervous system response to too much stress.
In survival mode, our nervous system enters into a state of fight, flight, freeze, fawn where it prioritizes safety and survival needs and reduces our ability to have awareness of what we think and feel.
When survival needs are prioritized, needs like love, connection, joy, rest, play, fulfillment, and purpose may seem out of reach. The brain may even perceive pursuing unfamiliar goals, like a new job, a new relationship, making new friends, or creating a new habit as risky or unsafe, making it harder to intentionally seek what we desire or need.
| Interrupting survival mode often begins with gently building the courage to take small, meaningful risks. |
The Brain and Trauma
In order to grow and develop, the brain needs to experience social and environmental stimulation and emotional presence, a nurturing and consistent environment of love, acceptance, and repair in conflict and mistakes, what Donald Winnicott, an English pediatrician and psychoanalyst, called “good enough parenting.
Brain development looks like creating a network of millions of roads in the brain. Each time you have an experience, think, feel, or act, your brain sends signals along these “roads,” which are made of connected brain cells called neurons.
A neural network might start out as a small cow path. The more a “road” is used, the stronger, faster and more developed the road becomes.
| Trauma often builds neural highways of fear, stress, and danger, making the brain quick to notice threats—even in situations that are actually safe. |
Getting out of Survival Mode
What does manifestation have to do with trauma, survival mode, and our crisis of meaninglessness?
For those of us who didn’t have the benefit of “good enough parenting”, neuroplasticity can begin to make a huge difference.
The brain is plastic, which means the brain can form new pathways across our lifespan. Manifestation helps us have access to our sense of agency and begin to rewire our brain.
While we can’t get rid of old pathways, with intentional practices, supportive relationships, and experiences that feel safe, you can gradually build new “roads” in your brain to replace the old—ones that help regulate stress, foster connection, have access to your intuition, and support a greater sense of safety and well-being.
| Through neuroplasticity, manifestation can help rewire the brain to move from fear (a lack mentality), and into a state of courage (an abundance mentality). |
In Dr. Tara Swart’s The Source, she explains that the “magic” behind manifestation is powered by utilizing the power of the mind through focused attention and aligning intention with action much like the old adage “where the mind goes, the man follows”.
It is by pairing thought with action that new neural networks are developed to create or “manifest” real change.
While there is no quick fix, implementing a few intentional practices can begin to breathe new life into the way we experience our lives.
Change is possible.
The Magic of Manifestation and The Process of Change
Manifestation seems to be having a major comeback—and for good reason.
Thanks to the work of Dr. Tara Swart in The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain, we now have accessible scientific understanding for why manifestation is relevant to us today.
Although humans have studied the brain as far back as ancient Egypt and ancient Greece and through the 20th and 21st centuries, the field of neuroscience is a relatively new field in the sciences starting in the 1960’s that has had major cultural implications as well as scientific relevance.
| Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system and its relationship to brain function and the way we behave and perceive the world. |
Neuroplasticity—the theory that our brains can change with new experiences—did not become widely accepted until the late 1970-1990’s.
Before the late 1900’s, it was believed that once the brain reached maturity in adulthood, it could not grow or change anymore—it was set for the rest of a person’s life.
What we now know:
| The brain can indeed change, grow, and heal across our life span which means we can continue to change and reinvent ourselves at any age. |
This is a huge life-changing discovery!
The age old question, “Can a person change?” can be understood and answered with one word—neuroplasticity.
How to Rewire the Brain for Lasting Change
In her book The Source, Dr. Swart reframes manifestation from passive wishful thinking to active intention + new behavior.
The process looks like this:
Setting an Intention → Increases Attention → Implement New Behavior → Creates New Neural Pathway → Continue New Behavior (Action)→ Strengthens New Neural Pathway → Creates Sustainable Change
| By pairing new thought + new action, we strengthen neural networks that that over time, with repetition, can create lasting change. |
This is accessing two processes in the brain:
Selective Attention: the process where the brain focuses on what it feels is important and filters out stimuli it deems as unnecessary.
In survival mode…This could look like focusing on maintaining minimum operations running (eg. just showing up to work to not get fired even if you want to quit) rather than spending energy on opportunities for growth, change, joy, connection, and well-being.
In manifestation…This can look like the brain noticing opportunities to live in alignment with your values and meeting your needs for connection, fulfillment, and meaning—a life focused on joy and well-being.
Value Tagging: This is the way your brain processes experiences with a “value”, whether or not an experience is important, worth repeating, or something to avoid. When the experience feels good, the brain wants more. When it feels bad, the brain wants to avoid doing it again.
In survival mode…This can look like avoiding social gatherings in order to preserve a sense of safety even when you feel lonely, isolated, and in need of a support system. Avoiding social gatherings may feel more rewarding due to the brain’s prioritizing of a felt sense of safety. The brain will reinforce this habit, even if isolation is ultimately not good for you.
In manifestation…This can look like having a clear intention for what you want out of life and taking new behaviors to support this intention. The brain works to operate in alignment with our self concept. Living with a clear intention creates a high value tag: “This aligns with who I’m becoming” = high value tag. The result is that the brain will strengthen these new habits, creating lasting change.
The brain assigns value not just to comfort, but to actions connected to purpose, identity, and intention.
Dr. Swart recommends aiming for 1% change daily, having a practice where you show up no matter how small an effort you make. Micro efforts repeated over time creates sustainable change.
| In survival mode, your brain values what helps you cope. In manifestation mode, your brain values what helps you grow. |
My Personal Journey
For years, I believed I wasn’t capable of handling life’s challenges. My upbringing prepared me to fear the world, obey authority, and meet other people’s expectations but left me unprepared to navigate life independently and authentically. I felt stuck, incapable, and terrified of pursuing opportunities that would require me to leave home and depend on myself.
Over time, my frustration and unhappiness became so huge that I made the decision to change. This started my journey where I began taking thousands of small, deliberate steps—what I call micro-fears— to overcome the things that were keeping me stuck.
This led me to be able to get my drivers license, move to a new city and go to college, study abroad, get a great job in my field, pursue grad school and change careers, start a business, and build a life aligned with my values. Each step required a decision, intention, and courage.
Through this process, I learned that change is step-by-step, fear by fear. By pairing thought with new experiences, I gradually rewired my brain to perceive unfamiliar challenges not as threats but as opportunities for growth.
What once seemed impossible for me became achievable.
| Manifestation is about focusing on what you can do rather than what you can’t, and taking intentional actions that gradually lead to biological and behavioral change. |
6 Principles for Rewiring your Brain
In her book The Source, Dr. Swart identifies the following 6 categories to create change:
Abundance vs Lack Mentality
Manifestation
Magnetic Desire
Patience
Harmony
Universal Connection
1. Abundance vs Lack Mentality
When we are in a state of lack, feeling that we don’t have enough and that we will never be able to have enough, it triggers our nervous system into fight, flight, freeze/fawn.
This puts our organism in a state of chronic stress where danger becomes our primary focus and cortisol is released to respond to perceived danger. As a result, our bodies begin to collect fat around our bellies preparing for a famine and we become restricted in our movements, unable to learn new things, live flexibly, or be connected to joy.
Prolonged stress begins to degrade the body over time, and in Gabor Mate’s When the Body Says No, it is believed to be the root of many diseases such as autoimmune disease, cancer, heart disease, and chronic inflammatory conditions.
| So how do we move into a state of abundance? Replace old ways of thinking with new thoughts. |
Dr. Tara Swart explains in her book that you can’t get rid of a neural pathway, you have to create a new pathway and the more you use it, the stronger it gets until it is stronger than the old one.
2. Manifestation
Dr. Swart reframes manifestation as active intention + behavior, not passive wishing.
It depends on focused attention and value‑tagging, assigning emotional significance to what matters most.
This makes your brain prioritize relevant cues and responses toward your goals.
It’s a neurocognitive process, not magic
3. Magnetic Desire
This principle highlights the role of strong positive desire with emotional intensity.
Desire coupled with emotion gives direction and energy to intention which helps prime the brain for action.
Emotion makes neural pathways stronger and motivates action. In other words, “neurons that fire together wire together”.
An intention (Thoughts) + Emotion + Action = stronger neural pathways
When you really feel a goal, you’re more likely to pursue behaviors that help achieve it.
4. Patience
Trust the process and allow time for change and growth.
New habits and neural connections take time to form.
Impatience and negative thoughts create stress on the body and can undermine persistence and derail results.
Believing helps you achieve.
5. Harmony
Harmony means awareness of the body/mind connection and living with balance between mind and body:
Harmony means listening to both emotional cues and physical states.
Integrating intuition (gut brain) with logical and emotional thinking—living with balance of head, body, and heart
Maintaining a practice of emotional regulation and bodily awareness supports holistic wellbeing
Mindfulness and learning to be present in your body are an important part of rewiring the brain and living our best lives
This balance enhances your whole‑brain engagement toward goals.
6. Universal Connection
This principle reflects the idea of interconnectedness — with others and the world:
As humans, we are social beings. This means that we have an innate connection to other beings and to our environment. Our bodies are constantly taking in the world around us and this impacts who we are and who we are becoming.
As social beings, having social bonds and living with compassion impact our own health and well-being.
Living with a sense of purpose and belonging influences motivation and emotional states.
Connection supports resilience, fulfillment, physical health, and longevity.
Summary
Neuroplasticity works to rewire the brain to move towards taking action that the nervous system would have otherwise avoided for the sake of homeostasis.
By setting your intentions and by harnessing the power of the imagination and implementing small actions, new neural pathways can form to create new habits and therefore new outcomes to our lives.
Our lives are predominantly made up of our habits and therefore, living the life you want to live requires being intentional to create habits that are aligned with the outcome we envision for our lives.
Could your limiting believes (lack mentality) be keeping you from the life you want to live?
What does happiness look like for you and are your habits helping you work towards that image of happiness?
Practices to Experiment With
Visualization
Our imagination is a powerful tool for change. Our brain differentiates little from reality versus imagination in terms of brain activation.
Practicing visualization of our desired outcome can prime the brain for action and begin to create new neural pathways, reducing the brain’s fear response to new things and increase confidence and performance. Athletes are known to practice visualization to aid in performance.
Get in touch with your desire, not what you “should” do or “should” want.
Take a few minutes to tap into your imagination and connect with what you want for your life. What does it feel like? Taste like? Smell like? What do you see or hear? Using the 5 senses will increase the efficacy of the practice.
Micro-actions
What are 3 new habits you want to start and what is the 1% action you can take daily to begin creating a new neural pathway?
Gratitude
You could start practicing gratitude first thing in the morning for just a few minutes before you move on in your day
This is a simple exercise with a HUGE impact. It moves your nervous system from activation (anxiety, stress, fear) into a state of safety, rest and digest. Try it out!
Take one minute to reflect on what you are grateful for. Try and feel into it with your body. Positioning your palms on your heart can activate this feeling naturally.
Journalling
Journalling is a powerful little practice that activates what is called bilateral stimulation. This is the left brain and right brain working together to help process information and regulate the body.
Take 5 minutes to journal stream of consciousness about anything that is coming up for you.
You could try journaling with a focus on what is good in your life, what IS working? What do you want more of?
If you’re able, it can help to answer the following questions on a regular basis: What are you angry about? Sad about? Anxious about?
I like to round this practice off with what am I glad about and what I am grateful for.
Mindfulness
Practice bringing awareness to your way of being. What are the thoughts you have on a regular basis? How does your body feel in different situations?
You could focus on your strengths and what you are doing right rather than all the things you get wrong.
Affirmations
Make a list of old negative self talk or of negative things that were said about you (eg. “you’re not a creative person.”).
Notice when the negative self talk is speaking to you, without judgment.
Create an affirmation with the opposite truth to replace old negative self talk. (eg. replace “I can’t do this.” with “I can learn to do this with practice and patience.”).
Speak the affirmation out loud to yourself for use it as a mantra as needed. It might feel uncomfortable at first, but with repetition, the new neural pathways will replace the old ways of thinking.
Remember: you can’t get rid of an old pattern, you replace old patterns by creating new ones.
Make a deliberate decision about something you want
Take action according to your decision. Start small.
Admit you’re scared and try it anyways.
Choose a mantra to renew your mind about this decision.
Focus on the good and be patient.
For me, learning to sooth my nervous system and making a decision on what it is I wanted to believe about myself opened the door for change in my life.
Below I’ve attached my favorite podcast episode where Dr. Swart goes into some of these ideas and so much more, happy podcasting!
Final Thoughts
In Summary:
The brain can indeed change, grow, and heal across our life span which means we can continue to grow and reinvent ourselves at any age.
In The Source, Swart reframes the Law of Attraction through brain science:
It’s about mindset and neural wiring,
Focused intention + emotional engagement, and
Action aligned with beliefs and values — not mystical forces.
Reading Recommendations
The Source by Dr. Tara Swart
When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate MD
Complex PTSD by Pete Walker
The Wisdom of Your Body by Hillary McBride
Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal
