Michael

Hypnosis is a proven way to change behaviors. You can divorce yourself from limiting habits and negative belief systems. There are countless stories of people who have conquered problems plaguing them for nearly their entire lives.

When you learn how to perform self-hypnosis properly, you can get those same rewards in your life. As with so many endeavors, seeking the help of a professional is recommended. Sometimes you won’t be able to do that. There are obviously financial considerations. Maybe you don’t have a certified hypnotherapist in your area. You don’t feel like recorded courses, and audio files are what you’re looking for.

In those and other cases, self-hypnosis makes a lot of sense.

Studies have shown that after you become proficient, auto-hypnosis is just as effective as having hypnosis induced by a hypnotist. You can accomplish the same things. It’s been used as an effective tool to help people lose excess body weight and keep it off. After creating positive behavior patterns that help them reach a healthy weight, they might only engage in self-hypnosis sessions once a week to stay at that weight.

That’s how truly powerful your subconscious is.

Self-hypnosis speaks to your subconscious in a language it understands. Over time, after several sessions, positive and significant change begins to take place. Once the goal is achieved, you might just want to have a session here or there to make sure that you remind your subconscious this is important to you.

But What If It Doesn’t Work for Me?

No two people are the same, and that’s a beautiful thing. If we were all perfect copies of each other, what a boring world that would be. As far as auto-hypnosis goes, results may come early or late. The past that you’ve lived has created a once-in-a-lifetime, unique subconscious profile.

That means that accessing it correctly might be easy, and it might be difficult. You and a friend may take up self-hypnosis at the same time. They may begin to see wonderful results rather quickly. You may not. The tables could be flipped, and the opposite reality might take place.

All we can tell you is this.

If you have a conscious desire to achieve some goal, you must convince your subconscious that it’s a good idea. The way to do that isn’t too difficult. It requires repetition. You also need to use a step-by-step self-hypnosis system that’s been proven to work.

Then you follow that system until you begin to see positive results. If it doesn’t happen right away, that’s okay. Creating your desired reality could take several weeks or three or four months of repetitive auto-hypnosis sessions.

Isn’t that worth the wait? Try another approach if you give a particular program or method two or three months and haven’t moved the needle an inch. There are so many ways to reach the subconscious state of being that you need to access to make positive changes in your life.

Self-hypnosis is often touted as a way to change undesirable behavior. This is true, but with a big, huge caveat. Your conscious and subconscious minds must agree on the change you’re trying to make. Here’s what we’re talking about.

Your conscious mind is rational. It’s the part of you that has desires and wishes. It sets goals and dreams of amazing things in your future. If it was up to the conscious mind, everyone on the planet would be living their greatest life.

You know this isn’t the case. That’s because the subconscious mind drives a lot of conscious behavior.

While your conscious mind can easily look at an area of your life you’d like to change, that’s not all that’s required. Your subconscious has to get on board. You have to convince it to agree with your conscious hopes and desires.

Most people believe every aspect of your mind should agree with what’s best for you. That would be great if it was true, but it simply isn’t. Your subconscious is full of memories. It’s been fed programs of behavior and beliefs and thoughts since you were a child. Those programs have been reinforced for decades. They play out again and again on autopilot.

This is why we often repeat negative behaviors even though we are rational, smart people who don’t want to create bad results in our lives. Since our subconscious mind leads to our conscious behaviors, we repeat negative habits repeatedly. This can lead to self-resentment. We wonder why we keep making mistakes when we truly want a different reality on the conscious level.

Self-Hypnosis Can Get the Conscious and Subconscious Minds In Agreement

You’re looking for the perfect scenario to get your conscious and subconscious minds in coherence. Remember, you’ve received input and programming from your family and teachers, parents and other adults, friends, the media, and every experience you’ve been engaged in since you were a child. That’s a lot of computer code you have to rewrite.

This means that it usually takes several sessions of self-hypnosis to get your subconscious thinking in a way that agrees with your conscious desires.

Self-hypnosis directly communicates with your subconscious. You pick one aspect of your life you’d like to change. Continually and repetitively speak to your subconscious and paint a positive picture of what this new behavior will deliver.

Stick with it. Your subconscious understands repetition. It sees it as you telling it something really important. Over time it basically gets tired of hearing you say the same thing! So it begins to take what you’re telling it and make it an unconscious habit. You begin doing the things that are necessary for you to consciously realize the great end result you want to have in your life.

Look into self-hypnosis if you’ve struggled to create lasting change in your life. It’s not an overnight cure or miracle drug. Over time it can reliably help you realize the desired result.

Has this ever happened to you? You get in your car like every other morning and head to work. There are things on your mind about what you need to accomplish. You’re traveling the same route you always do, at the same time in the morning.

The alarm clock gets you out of bed at a predictable time. The cookie-cutter routine you practice from your first waking moment to clocking in at work is identical from one day to the next and takes the same amount of time.

Then one day, you find yourself sitting in your office cubicle. What were you just doing? Is this yesterday or today? How did you get here? You don’t remember waking up or following your normal routine. Did you actually drive your vehicle to work in some kind of trancelike state?

If this has ever happened to you, it can be unsettling. Don’t worry, it’s a very normal and natural experience. When your subconscious notices you are performing a conscious action repetitively, it may put that action into its habit file. Conscious actions become unconscious habits this way. You get in your car and drive to work; when you get there, you can’t even remember the trip.

We mention this to show that you hypnotize yourself all of the time. It’s not just something you do to bring about positive change. It can also be practiced in several ways.

Ask 5 Different Hypnotherapists for Their Favorite Self-Hypnosis Method

The world and its inhabitants are marvelously diverse and different. People often use their differences to approach a situation in a way that is unique. Other people don’t get the same results with the same methods.

This is true with hypnotherapists and self-hypnosis. When you hypnotize yourself effectively, you create the desired change by accessing your subconscious. There’s not only one way to do that. Any way a person can get past his external layer of consciousness and move into the subconscious can be a form of self-hypnosis.

Some auto-hypnosis CDs and MP3 files ask you to count from 1 to 10 as you’re relaxing and trying to reach your subconscious. Others will ask you to count from 10 to 1. They may have you focus on different images or no images at all. Some will tell you that lying down comfortably is fine, and others suggest that you sit up straight with your feet grounded on the floor.

Ask five hypnotherapists for their most effective self-hypnosis methods, the ones they use themselves, and you’re likely to get five different answers.

What Does This Tell Us about Self-Hypnosis?

It means that if you try one method and it doesn’t click with you, that’s okay. Keep looking. There are so many resources out there that the only way to fail to find an auto-hypnosis method that works for you is to quit looking.

Think about one big thing you’d like to change about your life. Then find a recommended self-hypnosis program or step-by-step method. Put it to use. Give it time to work. If you don’t see any results after a few weeks, don’t give up. Simply find another way to put your place in a suggestive state of consciousness and keep going until you create the reality you desire.

Did you know that anyone can be hypnotized? You might be shaking your head right now. You’re arguing that you have a very strong mental constitution and that nobody can crack the outer shell of your consciousness to reach down into your subconscious.

If that is your belief, then you are unfortunately mistaken.

Indeed, you can’t be hypnotized if you don’t want to. But the idea that some humans are created without a subconscious is simply incorrect. Don’t envision the crazy histrionics of the traveling hypnotist that gets people to do absurd things on a stage in front of strangers.

Those entertainers are very good at identifying people with extremely high suggestibility levels. In some cases, they’ll use planted audience members on their team to make it look like they have amazing powers of hypnosis.

All hypnosis does is allow you to speak to your subconscious. That’s it.

It’s a lot like meditation. Through self-hypnosis, you can enter this state safely. You then make suggestions of actions and habits you’d like to embrace. You continue this practice for several weeks, and your subconscious realizes this is important to you.

It begins to embrace these new thoughts and belief patterns. You begin to act in ways conducive to these new thoughts, which is one way self-hypnosis can help you trade bad habits for good ones.

That said, what can you expect? How long will it take for you to sleep better, have more self-confidence, lose weight, and keep it off? The short answer is that there is no short answer.

90 Days of Self-Hypnosis Is Recommended

Everyone can enter a state of hypnosis. Some people might just require a little more work than others. But the truth is that even if you’ve never done something like this, you can place yourself in a safe and aware hypnotic state where you can access your subconscious.

Some people see a dramatic change in just a few weeks. Others notice changes starting to slowly appear almost instantly. Most of the time, a hypnotherapist will tell you that you should keep repeating sessions for at least 90 days as a self-hypnosis beginner.

The sessions themselves can last from three to five minutes or longer. Getting started is the only way to find out what will work for you.

Get your hands on a proven self-hypnosis method or step-by-step program. Take action. Put yourself through the process. You’ll find immediately, even after your first session as a beginner, that you can dramatically lower your stress levels. As you become more proficient, you’ll find you can change negative behaviors and adopt healthier habits through self-hypnosis.

Do you close your eyes during self-hypnosis? Most people do. This is an easy way to minimize distractions. You’ll have nothing begging for your visual attention. Closing your eyes is vital if you’re in a setting where a lot is happening around you.

That’s not the type of environment where you usually want to have an auto-hypnosis session. However, when you can grab a few minutes and enjoy a productive self-hypnosis session, why not? Practice will make you better at hypnosis with your eyes wide open.

Whether you should keep your eyes open or closed during hypnosis is not really a zero-sum game question. It’s not always answered with a simple yes or no, nor should it be. You access your subconscious every day without realizing it, and your eyes are open as you engage in some conscious activity.

What Do Hypnotherapists Say?

Hypnotists and hypnotherapists have differing opinions on the subject. Why shouldn’t they? They are people just like you and me. You don’t always agree with your friends and loved ones, do you? Of course, you don’t. These are the people you care the most about in your life. While that’s true, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have drastically different opinions than them on certain subjects.

Hypnotist Barrie Saint John has spoken on the subject on the website SelfHypnosis.com. He says that the public perception of hypnosis always envisions the patient with their eyes closed. Movies, films, and books have driven home this belief as well. Sometimes, however, a hypnotherapist will ask that a patient open his eyes after a hypnotic state has been induced.

It really depends on the hypnotist in question. Regarding self-hypnosis, the recommendation is to try with your eyes open and closed. See how you feel. What delivers the best results? You should always cater any type of therapy to your unique situation and preferences.

When Your Attention Strays You Could Be under Hypnosis, with Your Eyes Wide Open

We’ve all been listening to someone talk endlessly. They seem to be in love with the sound of their own voice. The rambling goes on and on and on, with no end in sight. You’re politely listening and possibly even nodding your head and making attentive gestures.

At the same time, your mind strays. You’re not deep into the conversation anymore. You might pick up bits and pieces, and the person talking thinks you’re actively listening. But in reality, you’re miles away in your mind.

You can see the room around you. You are aware of your environment and everything that’s going on. Your eyes are wide open. You could act consciously and physically on what you’re seeing, hearing, and smelling.

Yet you are in a state of hypnosis. Your eyes are open, but your mind has taken a journey somewhere else.

Like in a self-hypnosis session, you can voluntarily bring yourself back to your current state. You can answer a question posed to you or otherwise engage in a conversation. This is a simple example of hypnosis with your eyes open.

We’ll go back to what we recommended earlier. Try self-hypnosis with your eyes closed. If that works well, there might not be any need to try the other option. On the other hand, there may be times when having your eyes open is preferred. Just understand that having your eyes open or closed won’t guarantee or limit the success of a self-hypnosis session.

There are a lot of comedy routines in movies that revolve around hypnosis. One member of a comedy team will claim that he can’t be hypnotized. He makes fun of hypnotism in general and goes on and on, claiming that a hypnotist in question is a scoundrel and a faker.

You know what happens next. That same comic only minutes later is on stage clucking like a chicken and pecking at imaginary grain, drawing raucous laughter from the audience.

The hypnotist pulls the actor out of the trance and asks him how he feels. The comic remembers nothing of what has just happened. He vehemently professes his inability to be hypnotized, which draws another round of laughter that bewilders the unfortunate victim.

We fully understand that Hollywood isn’t about real life. They dramatize and overblow many things, and hypnosis is often a target. We just bring up this oft-used plot element in comedy to make a very important point.

Anyone can be hypnotized … if they want to.

Can an Absolute Beginner Hypnotize Himself?

Yes, this even applies to someone who has never encountered hypnosis before. Placing yourself in a hypnotic state doesn’t take years of training. You’re in control the entire time. With self-hypnosis, you can open your eyes and remove yourself from a subconscious state of being at any time.

This isn’t experienced how you’ve read about it in books and seen it in films. You aren’t a puppet that anyone can manipulate in a trance-like state.

Self-hypnosis is a method of accessing your subconscious. You do this because your subconscious mind leads to your conscious behaviors. Your behaviors and actions create the results you have in your life, good or bad.

This explains why some people struggle to change some aspects of their life. They desperately want to change something and try very hard to do that. They’re not lazy. They’ve taken all the courses and followed all the advice. They simply can’t get that change to stick. Their subconscious holds onto memories, beliefs, and ideas, continually creating an unpleasant reality.

Self-hypnosis allows you to change that subconscious programming.

If You Voluntarily Desire Change, Self-Hypnosis Can Help

To reiterate, absolute beginners are successful with self-hypnosis all of the time. It’s not that difficult. You follow a few steps that put you in a relaxed state. Then you access your subconscious and begin to tell it what it is you want.

Since your subconscious has no opinion and it believes anything you tell it, real or imagined, repeating this process starts to create the reality you want. Look into self-hypnosis if you’ve struggled to make lasting change and finally want to give yourself the life you deserve.

What is aromatherapy, and how can it make your self-hypnosis sessions much more productive? The key to aromatherapy can be found in the word itself. Certain aromas are used as a therapy to improve mental and physical health states. This practice has been around for thousands of years because it can positively impact so many aspects of wellness.

One of the central ideas of aromatherapy is that the essence of some plant materials is very potent. Different benefits are delivered depending on the plant this essential oil is taken from. For instance, a lavender essential oil is a well-known stress reliever. Aromatherapy practitioners will place just a few drops in a diffuser that intermittently delivers a fine mist into the atmosphere.

Since this and other essential oils are organic products of nature, your blood-brain barrier sees it as friendly. It instantly passes into your brain and can positively affect your nervous system. The blood brain barrier won’t allow harmful agents to pass through. It only has this relationship with positive compounds like essential oils, water, and oxygen.

You breathe the lavender aroma in the air, and the sensation of less stress and more peace of mind is nearly instant. How can this help your self-hypnosis practice? Let’s take a look.

Many of the More Than 300 Essential Oils Are Effective Stress Relievers

One thing you’ll do with most self-hypnosis programs is an attempt to reduce stress. Whether listening to an MP3 or guiding yourself with your voice, the beginning of a self-hypnosis session is about getting comfortable and reducing stress.

The best essential oils for stress relief are the lavender mentioned above and orange, lemon, bergamot, ylang-ylang, and chamomile. You can use an electric diffuser to benefit from these stress-relieving oils. You can also mix them with a carrier oil and apply them topically to the body.

When your brain senses certain aromas or smells, it instantly triggers a predictable response. This is why when you smell smoke in an environment where you shouldn’t, panic and fear are often experienced. With these essential oils, your brain triggers a release of feel-good hormones and chemicals that make you relaxed. They remove stress and anxiety.

Less stress makes you more susceptible to responding favorably in a hypnotic state. Consider getting your hands on a diffuser and some stress-relieving essential oils. They can help make your self-hypnosis sessions more productive. You can also receive various additional health benefits that essential oils and aromatherapy have provided for thousands of years.

If you’ve seen a stage hypnotist make someone bark like a dog or remove his clothing, you’ve got the wrong idea about hypnosis. While some people can be suggested to do those things, that’s an extreme level of silliness. The truth is that you can use hypnotherapy or self-hypnosis to create lasting change in your life.

Meditation makes the same claims. People reach a calm and centered state of being when they meditate. They move to a state of consciousness like the one you reach in self-hypnosis. Both meditation and auto-hypnosis help you move past the limits of your conscious mind.

No wonder these two similar self-healing practices have been used for thousands of years for stress relief. Other mental and physical health rewards have been credited to hypnosis and meditation. They deal with improving your well-being by digging deep into a lower level of your conscious being.

What Are the Differences between Meditation and Self-Hypnosis?

In most meditation practices, you are totally awake and alert. You are aware of your surroundings. A relaxed state is achieved through a specific breathing process, and the spine is usually straight and direct, with the shoulders open. Good posture is usually recommended.

Self-hypnosis works best when you’re relaxed. There is a focused awareness, like in most forms of meditation. However, unlike meditation, hypnosis often puts a person in a dreamlike state. They can still be aware of their surroundings and are capable of acting upon them. But this deep level of accessing the subconscious makes them highly suggestive.

Meditation is not used to make suggestions that are hopefully acted upon. While self-hypnosis usually has you sitting up with your feet on the floor, this is not always required. The “trance” a person goes under is not like you see in the movies. A hypnotized person can’t be convinced to do something she wouldn’t do in a normal, conscious state of mind.

Generally speaking, meditation is all about living in the present moment and being aware of the now. Self-hypnosis puts a person in less of a state of present moment awareness. This is where the subconscious is accessed, so suggestions of positive behavior can be delivered.

Both autohypnosis and meditation have plenty of rewards. Regular meditation practice has been credited for a longer, healthier lifespan. Other rewards include less stress and anxiety and better emotional control.

On the other hand, self-hypnosis can help you change any undesirable pattern of behavior. It can help you stop smoking or drinking alcohol. You can finally lose weight, keep it off, and create the financial reality that’s escaped you.

It’s highly recommended that you meditate regularly and use self-hypnosis to bring about positive change in your life. They can lead to health and wellness in mind and body and a better understanding of who you are and what you’re capable of.

“You are feeling sleepy, sleepy, sleepy!” If that hypnotic suggestion sounds familiar, you may have watched some cheesy Hollywood B movies that have painted a possibly negative picture about hypnosis. It’s not as schlocky and campy as it’s often portrayed by the entertainment industry.

You don’t go under so totally that you’re not in control of your actions or aware of your surroundings. And despite what you might believe about Franz Mesmer being the founder of hypnosis, that isn’t the case.

Ancient civilizations often used hypnotherapy to treat physical and mental illnesses and disorders. It can be found in the historical records of magic, sorcery, and even medicine.

As far as scientific history goes, Mr. Mesmer probably deserves the credit for introducing hypnotism to the modern scientific community. He was a German physician who employed hypnosis as an alternative treatment for health problems in Paris and Vienna in the late 18th century.

He believed that a force called animal magnetism could flow through a hypnotist into the subject. Positive healing energy could be sent into a patient to correct some health issues. While he was quickly discredited as a reputable scientist, his method was named after him. We still use mesmerism and mesmerize today to refer to someone in a hypnotic or trancelike state.

Introducing Hypnotism and Hypnosis

Fast-forward to the middle of the 19th century. English physician James Braid began a deep study of Franz Mesmer’s methods. He coined the terms hypnosis and hypnotism. Those words are based on the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos.

People were a little less close-minded then, including scientists. Braid was also more polished and well respected than Mesmer had been in his day. Hypnosis began to attract attention across Europe just before the start of the 20thcentury. That’s when Ambroise-Auguste Liebault used mesmeric methods. This little-known French country physician drew the attention of Hippolyte Bernheim, a medical professor in Strasbourg.

Bernheim and Liebault believed hypnosis had nothing to do with physical energy forces, as Mesmer had stated. At about the same time, famed Austrian physician Sigmund Freud began looking into hypnosis for treating neurotic disorders. Hypnosis was eventually used successfully to treat combat neurosis that soldiers developed during World War II.

American psychiatrist Milton Erickson used suggestive language as a type of hypnosis to communicate with the unconscious minds of his patients. He developed the Ericksonian hypnosis method, which he practiced and taught until he died in 1980. In the latter part of the 20th century, the American Psychological Association created the Division 30 Society of Psychological Hypnosis.

The practice of hypnosis and self-hypnosis is now seen by the established medical and scientific communities as a viable treatment method for several mental and physical health issues. It’s no longer seen as fringe science, and self-hypnosis has helped many people create positive life changes.

Self-hypnosis can be a life changer, quite literally. You use it to reprogram the most influential force in your life … your subconscious. From childhood to the present, your subconscious has acted as a supercomputer. Your experiences, trauma, memories, feelings, and values have combined to program your subconscious.

In some ways, that programming might not have been good. That’s why you may catch yourself doing things that don’t agree with your conscious thoughts and desires. This is quite common. It happens all the time. Fortunately, the subconscious can be reprogrammed. You can get it to believe in your conscious hopes and dreams so that you move in the direction of the reality you would prefer to see.

To make self-hypnosis more productive, you can do a few things. Here are five simple ways to make your self-hypnosis sessions more successful: getting more of what you want out of life.

1 – Be Easy on Yourself

If you’re a beginner or relative newcomer to self-hypnosis, don’t beat yourself up if you’re not successful immediately. Every new venture requires practice for you to become experienced. You’re not going to be the best at just about anything initially.

2 – Set a Specific Amount of Time for Each Session

Time yourself when you get started. See how long your first few auto-hypnosis sessions take. Don’t push them. Don’t rush through them. You want to be as comfortable and relaxed as you possibly can. If you’re clock-watching, this isn’t going to happen. Just time yourself, and then look at the length of time of your most enjoyable and productive sessions.

Start scheduling each session for the same amount of time. Use a timer at first. After a while, you’ll naturally be able to bring yourself out of your hypnotic state without an alarm.

3 – Eat Right

Your diet influences so much in your life. You can make yourself much more likely to benefit from hypnosis when you give your body the nutrients it needs to stay healthy. Your diet can create excellent mental and physical health and wellness. It can also do the opposite. You need to be healthy in body and mind for the best self-hypnosis results, which means eating right.

4 – Get Plenty of Rest at Night

What’s one of the first symptoms of a lack of sleep? You get brain fog. Your memory and focus also lag. A continued lack of restful sleep can wreck your health from head to toe, both physically and mentally. Get plenty of rest at night if you expect your daytime self-hypnosis sessions to pay off.

5 – Stay Hydrated throughout the Day

This is another overall wellness tip. Did you know the average person is dehydrated? They don’t get enough water passing through their body daily. Moderate dehydration causes confusion, fatigue, an accelerated heart rate, and muscle cramping. Severe dehydration can be downright deadly. Sip filtered water or herbal teas throughout the day for a productive self-hypnosis session.