They are an antidote to the negative self-talk we give ourselves a lot of the time. It is important that the affirmation be specific. The affirmations are not facile, there to jolly a person along or put on a happy face. They require effort by the client, who notes and works with their negative responses to the affirmation. The affirmation can be likened to a flower seed in a garden, which needs tending to make sure it survives, and the negative responses are weeds in the garden which need to be uprooted.
Affirmations help heal suppressed material, and promote integration.
They are a positive application of creative thought. Rebirthing was developed by Leonard Orr in San Francisco in the early 1970s. Breathing in bathtubs and hot-tubs, he discovered the principle of the connected breath and explored conscious birth memories. In collaboration with other experimenters he discovered that breathing just lying down 'in the dry' could also be effective. In the early days of Rebirthing, processing birth trauma was seen as particularly important.