If you’re wondering how to hypnotize yourself, for fun and for greatly improved results in your life, then let me first tell you that you are a smart person.
Hypnotizing yourself is one of the greatest ways to improve your own life in so many ways, I can’t even begin to count.
What Are The Possible Benefits of Self Hypnosis?
Before we go into the how of self hypnosis, let me just remind those of you who are still on the fence – why learning to hypnotize yourself is a wise decision to make.
When done right, self hypnosis has virtually the same benefits as being hypnotized by someone else. You just have to allow yourself to get engaged in the process.
The benefits of self hypnosis are:
- Improved health and healing diseases,
- Anti-aging or reducing the effects of age,
- General relaxation and reducing stress,
- Replacing limiting beliefs with empowering-motivating ones,
- Changing or altogether deleting unwanted and harmful habits (including smoking cessation and removing substance abuse *)
- Healing from a broken heart or getting over prolonged grief (as justified as it may be)
- And much more…
Disclosure
(*) Neither this section, nor any of the mentioned possible benefits of hypnosis or self hypnosis may be considered a promise. Whatever you achieve through self or guided hypnosis is dependent upon you and the level of your skill and willingness to get engaged in the process and upon your skill at the time of the hypnosis (it is said that Milton H Erickson’s best hypnotic subject became that after 3 years of interaction).
The writer of this article or any of the recommended material and teachers may not be held responsible for your actions or success in said actions.
What IS Self Hypnosis?
To learn how to start practicing and engaging in self hypnosis, we have to first establish what self hypnosis really is.
Dr. Bandler and Prof. Grinder (who created NLP together back in the 1970’s) used to say that any communication is hypnosis, since all language is an unconscious process. After all, we don’t really know how we take the word CAT – be it in written form or the auditory sound of it – and upon seeing or hearing the word, somehow our mind creates a mental representation of a little furry animal.
We simply do it. It’s an intuitive process, regardless of the person’s education, skills, gender or any other characteristic – which means we are not conscious of the way we do it.
From that we can understand that any communication one has with him or her self – is in fact self hypnosis.
But I’m sure you didn’t just come here to learn to talk to yourself. You surely don’t need me for that.
So for the sake of this environment I am going to regard hypnosis as a state of trance or altered state whereby a person may create a flowy experience, or a highly absorbed and engaged attention.
And the self directed highly absorbed and engaged attention – we’ll call that “self hypnosis”.
Now let’s move into the techniques…
Self Hypnosis I - The Good Old Repetition
The first technique, or method of self hypnosis I want to show you, is the old tried repetition method for self suggestion.
I learned this technique from David Snyder, but I’m sure it is much older than that (Maybe decades or centuries old).
The basic idea is that the more times you repeat a suggestion to yourself, the stronger it becomes at creating a guideline for you, or at overcoming resistance to a new guideline.
Let’s take the following sentence as an example:
“Every day in every way I am getting healthier in body and mind.”
If you just say it once, then it virtually has no staying power. It’s a passing gust of breeze at best.
But if you repeat this sentence over and over for 20 consecutive times, over a period of 30 days – your mental and physical health will be affected.
Now, let’s take this a level deeper, shall we?
If you add to it a simple breathing technique whereby you inhale through the first part (Every day…) and exhale through the second part (which starts with “I am getting”…), then you add a significant UMPH to the process.
Combine it with one of the other trance techniques, and you have a powerful suggestion process.
Self Hypnosis II - Breathing Through The Eyes
Next is a technique I learned from Mike Mandel from MMHA and it’s a self hypnotic induction which you can use with any self suggestion you like.
Mike and Chris (Thompson – his partner and co-trainer) teach this hypnosis as part of their highly recommended Hypnosis Academy which offers a free trial.
So the process goes like this:
- Decide what it is you want your unconscious mind to do for you – what you do want to achieve in this process? If you are new to self hypnosis, start small and, as you start seeing success in your practice, go for bigger goals;
- Tell your unconscious mind how long you want to be in hypnosis – 10-30 minutes is fine, and again start small and grow as you feel more confident with the process;
- Breath in and imagine the air going in through your eyes – open them wide, and really go into this sensory-kynesthetic imagination and feel the air going in through your open eyes;
- Exhale as you close your eyes and go really deep into a nice trance, letting your body relax deeply;
- Open your eyes and inhale through them again, allowing the air to relax the eyes and make them sleepier and harder to open;
- Exhale and relax your body twice as deep and twice as relaxed as you did before, or even deeper;
- Repeat the breathing exercise 2-3 more times, each time imagine how it is harder to open the eyes during the inhalation, and with each exhalation, allow your entire body to relax twice as much as before;
- When you feel you can’t open your eyes without losing the relaxation, simply allow yourself to be in that relaxed state. Your unconscious mind will awaken you after the time you set for yourself, and after having done the task you have given it.
Practice Makes...
A few years ago I went to a TLT workshop (Time Line Therapy) with Paul and Joseph Clough (father and son trainers) and I remember to this day how Paul surprised the entire audience with his version of this cliche…
“Practice makes permanent” – and he was spot on!
Because we all know that we do not become perfect at anything, while we become virtual experts at doing something a certain way, if and when we do it continuously and repeatedly.
In NLP we say “Repetition is the mother of all skills”.
So, practice your skills and make them as permanent as riding a bike.
Self Hypnosis III - Be The Hypnotist, Be The Client
Another beautiful method that I learned from Mike Mandel to self hypnosis requires that you have a couple of things prepared in advance:
- You need to have learned a method or technique for hypnotizing someone else first;
- You need 2 chairs, preferably similar ones;
- You must have a vivid imagination (or be prepared to fake having one) for this to work.
Now, the technique is very simple, and it goes like this:
- Put the chairs across from one another,
- Sit in one chair, looking at the other,
- IMAGINE yourself sitting in the chair across from you,
- And hypnotize yourself – that other self sitting in front of you, using whatever induction or method that you like.
- When you see your other self going into hypnosis – get up and move to the other chair, and assume the same body posture as the other you.
- The finally, go into hypnosis and enjoy the ride.
You can see Mike going through the full instructions in his MMHA online course – I highly recommend it (and it has a free trial).
Summary
You now have 3 ways to hypnotize yourself, for you to experiment with.
Actually, the 3rd one is many different inductions – depending on the one you choose to use on your other self.
And now, just go do it.
Have fun and actually improve your own life.
A small caveat
When you start working on actual issues within yourself,
don’t start with a raving 10 out of 10 trauma – you don’t have the experience to deal with it, and you will only experience disappointment.
Go for the 2-3 out of 10, first.
Once you’ve mastered a couple of those, go for the 6’s and 7’s (at most) for a while.
Only then – when you’ve had some successes and have seen that you can do this – then go for the big ones.
Read More On The Subject
If you want to read more about going forward with hypnosis, here are 2 articles I think you will like:
How to Hypnotize Someone Effectively – You Need 2 Things!
If you want to learn how to hypnotize someone – be it just for fun, or to help them improve something in their life –
How To Hypnotize – Various Methods
The question how to hypnotize is the first to come to mind for many people when they think about hypnosis for the first time. It
