Self-Hypnosis: Now You Are Under Your Own Power

With self-hypnosis, you are giving yourself encouragement and support to do most anything, like get better sleep.  It can take a while to convince yourself that you can and will change, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t change right way.

Henry Ford once said, “If you think you can do a thing or you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”  This one sentence is the secret to learning self-hypnosis, also called “autosuggestion” or “positive reinforcement”.  Although you can certainly go to a certified hypnotherapist, you can also easily learn the same techniques that they employ.  The hard part is whether you can believe that you can change.

Who Needs Self-Hypnosis

If there’s something about you that you need to change, such as quitting smoking, losing weight, having more self-confidence, stop a stutter or sleep better, self-hypnosis can work for you.  You still have to actually do stuff in the real world, such as not smoke or stick to your diet, but many people have found help in doing this with self-hypnosis. 

You are giving yourself encouragement and support.  It can take a while to convince yourself that you can and will change, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t change right way.  Give yourself the same slack as if you were learning a new sport or skill. 

Step One: Relaxation

First off, you need some quiet time where you won’t be disturbed.  Start with fifteen minutes or a half hour.  You can sit up or lie down.  You are actually not going to sleep, just putting yourself in a very relaxed state.  You can use silence, a white noise generator or some soft music, whatever helps you relax and your body to get loose and floppy.  Just let it happen at it’s own pace.

Step Two:  Deepening the Relaxation

Yes, this gets you even more deeply relaxed and open to suggestions.  Some people count down twenty to one, some chant a favorite prayer or poem – silently.  There’s no need to do it out loud.  Doing it out loud might make you tense.

Step Three: Making the Suggestions

This step is pretty self-explanatory.  After you are really relaxed, just repeat quietly to yourself whatever you want to change.  “I am a successful writer,” for example, or “I can be happy without snacking!”  Something short and easily memorized is best.  There is no right or wrong way to know when you are relaxed enough to make the suggestion.  Just let your instinct guide you.  Remember, you are not taking a test on self-hypnosis.  You won’t fail.

Step Four:  Waking Up

Once your positive suggestion is made, you can wake up and rejoin the real world.  Just make another suggestion to wake up, feeling refreshed and full of energy.  You might want to do the opposite of your deepening technique.  If you counted down to deepen your relaxation, count up.  Or you can just say “The alarm is going off now.  Time to get up.”

Step Five:  Practice, Practice, Practice

As you practice, you will find it easier and may be able to take shorter sessions or longer ones.  If you keep falling asleep, perhaps you could just repeat the suggestion to yourself while you are fully awake, even writing the sentence down over and over again.  There is no one way of self-hypnosis technique that works for everyone.

Links to References

• http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hypnosis/MY01020/DSECTION=what-you-can-expect 
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/valorie-j-wells-phd/anxiety-self-hypnosis_b_878694.html
•  http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1985-06-05/news/8501220402_1_advance-ethical-hypnosis-students-breathing

Image of Hypnosis statue from Wikimedia Commons