Would you like to be able to hypnotise yourself?
There are several methods for achieving this perfectly natural state. What I talk about here is one such method, often called Eye Fixation. The process detailed here will not affect any change in itself, i.e. you will not suddenly lose weight/quit smoking/be a confident speaker just because you have self hypnotised, but it is a skill that you can learn and then use in conjunction with other things to help you achieve those and many other goals.
James Braid developed this process. He was one of the original Hypnotists – in fact he coined the term hypnosis – and he specialised in eye treatment so it’s no surprise that his initial methods of inducing hypnosis would involve the eyes and fixing their attention.
Quite simply what you do is sit comfortably in a chair with your head facing forward. Without moving your head, look upwards to the ceiling and find a point that you can fix your eyes on. It should be a bit of a strain, but not too uncomfortable. Then imagine that your eyelids are getting very heavy and that you NEED to close your eyes. This might sound a bit silly, but your imagination really is the engine that drives hypnosis, so imagine the eyes getting really tired and think about how nice it will feel when you close them. You might want to imagine a light shining in the eyes, or maybe a dry breeze blowing across them and again it just makes you think about how nice it would be to close them.
All the time that you are thinking about this, keep your eyes fixed in that same position without wavering or moving or allowing your eyes to relax. Keep your head and eye position in the way that ensures the eyes become tired.
Then, once they are ready to close (usually after about 30 seconds or so), you let them close and that is the initiation of your hypnosis.
To make yourself feel even more relaxed it’s good to imagine a time when you felt completely at ease – maybe it’s when you’re curled up in bed in the morning, or when you’re dozing off in front of the TV. You might even want to imitate this by making all the muscles in your face and neck go loose and limp.
One of the ways I make myself even more relaxed is to imagine that I’m standing on top of a set of stairs going down to a secret garden. There are 10 stairs in all, and as I go down each one I feel myself getting more and more relaxed….twice as relaxed with each step…. until I finally get to the bottom and go into the beautiful garden.
As I said before, this self hypnosis method will not change anything on it’s own – that’s where the therapy part of hypnotherapy comes in – but it will give your mind time and space to slow down, and that is valuable in and of itself. In some ways it is like a self guided meditation and carries a lot of the same benefits – calmer mind, inner peace, better sleep etc
I hope you give this method a try.
I’d love to know how you get on, what your relaxing place is and how you find it…
Happiness, Health and Hypnosis 