How you can use SELF-HYPNOSIS to improve anything you NEED in your LIFE!

Hypnosis is an amazing tool and it can help you a lot! So today I’m going to teach you how you can use and practice self-hypnosis on your own to work and improve pretty much anything that you need in your life!

Like any other tool, hypnosis also has its limitations! Even if you decide to pay for a very expensive professional, just know in advance that the technique itself is not capable of forcing you to take a decision and commit to it, unless you are a very suggestible person, which means accepting suggestions without questioning, obeying and following without arguing, and I can assure you that most people are not like that!

So don’t be surprised if you meet someone who has tried 10 sessions of hypnotherapy to quit smoking and still can’t, they probably haven’t made a genuine decision in order to commit to the process.

If you’re having a hard time to take a decision, just ask yourself how much frustration you can still endure or if you’re willing to hit the rock bottom before you have that “click” and decide to change the course of your life. Usually this kind of decision and commitment to the process of change happens when the person comes to the conclusion that they can no longer live like that. When this happens, then yes, hypnosis can facilitate this process and it does so by building new associations through the use of suggestions in your subconscious mind.

When you discover the new associations and suggestions that will help you to promote changes in your life, and don’t worry because I’ll tell you how to do that, you can implement them in your mind in two different ways, the ideal is to use both because one reinforces the other:

• During the day you can consciously repeat the suggestions to yourself because your brain learns by repetition
• At night, before going to sleep, you can put yourself in a hypnotic trance state and visualize the new suggestions and associations you need

In fact, you can visualize at any time, but before going to sleep it’s more effective because for things to get out of your conscious mind and penetrate your subconscious, they have to go through the critical barrier, and when you sleep, it’s not there! The longer a suggestion stays in your conscious mind, the more likely that critical barrier won’t let it pass into your subconscious, which is why visualizing before bed is more efficient!

The Hypnotic Trance

People tend to think that a hypnotic trance is something magical, sometimes even supernatural, and in reality, that’s not how it works! In fact, it’s quite normal for a person to go for a hypnosis session and during the hypnotic trance, wonder inside their head if they’re really being hypnotized.

So let me clarify what a trance is, it’s a natural brain state that you can feel many times a day, every single day! It is a state of relaxation and focus where your perception of time is altered! It’s the transition between sleeping and waking up! You can also feel it when you do relaxing activities like reading, driving and watching TV! Technically speaking, it happens when your brain frequency operates on alpha and theta waves!

There are many different techniques that the hypnotherapist can use to guide people into this state, and you may wonder why the pendulum has become such a symbol for hypnotherapy? There is a technique called eye fixation where the hypnotherapist asks the person to focus on an object in a fixed way, in parallel he gives repetitive suggestions such as “inhale deeply, exhale, relax, your eyes are getting heavy, they want to close, you want to sleep”. Hypnotic trance is about focus and relaxation, so with this technique you can induce a quick trance as you get focus from the eye fixation and relaxation through the suggestions and the way the hypnotherapist shapes his own voice.

You can try this technique by yourself when you do self hypnosis, you can use any object to focus your eyes and give yourself suggestions to relax. After you close your eyes, you can deepen your trance state with a progressive relaxation. Just imagine that someone is giving you a massage, starting at your feet and going all the way up to your head. After you relax all your muscles, turn your attention inwards, and work with visualizations and suggestions in the most real and vivid way possible!

And by the way, hypnosis and meditation are very similar! Both use trance states, the difference between them is that in hypnosis you use visualization, suggestion and association, and in meditation you train your focus and learn how to observe your thoughts! If you’re used to meditate, you’ll master self-hypnosis easily!

Associations and Suggestions

Your subconscious mind has many positive and negative associations, and they were formed mainly in your childhood. Some of them you may be aware of, most of them, for sure you are not!

When you have a bad habit, you probably have a positive association in your subconscious, which is why it’s so hard to change! The good news is that you don’t need to know what it is to rewrite your subconscious programming. All you need to do is connect that habit with something negative and it’s more effective if you use something that you already know.

Let me explain better! Let’s say that you want to stop something that is bad for you, you can bring up a memory of something that makes you really sick, and when you have all the negative feelings going on, bring up the image of what you want to stop and connect with that. This kind of work can be done in the opposite direction as well, let’s say you want something but you already have some negative feelings about it, you can work on your mind and build positive associations. For example:

• You want to learn how to swim and you are afraid of water, associate it with relaxation
• You want to start exercising and find the gym boring, associate it with fun
• You are afraid of public speaking, associate it with the pleasure of chatting with friends

When you use visualizations to create new associations in your mind, in addition to the mental picture and feelings, you also need to give yourself the correct suggestions, aligned with the things that you want. Focus on what you want and avoid negative sentences because your mind cannot understand them. When you say things like “I can’t eat sugar” or “I can’t smoke”, your mind only understands “sugar” and “smoke”, so the only thing you get is to create more mental desire for these things!

And there’s another thing I need to mention about suggestions, anything that you say to yourself in the trance state, you need to repeat many times at any given moment because you want to create solid and clear pathways in your brain and in your mind, and the best way to do this is by repetition!

So basically what I’m saying is that if during self-hypnosis you give yourself the suggestion that you sleep very well at night, and then you meet a friend and say that you’re having troubles to sleep, you end up destroying all the work that you have done! Just say something that implies a positive action like “I’m working to improving this”.

Now let me give you some very clear examples to illustrate everything I said because I want to make sure you can do this kind of work by yourself!

• If you’re a smoker, you can imagine a disgusting room with all the nicotine you’ve ever smoked and all the money you’ve ever burned with cigarretes, and tell yourself that you want to be free, that you want your lungs to be clean and wish to breathe fresh air
• If you are overweight and tend to overeat, you can imagine yourself being skinnier, having smaller portions and tell yourself that the less you eat, the lighter you feel and the better your life becomes
• If you have troubles to sleep, you can remember a vacation where you felt relaxed and slept easily, and tell yourself that you can disconnect, that you feel relaxed, that sleep is a natural ability of your body

These are just a few examples, but I hope you got an idea to customize your own suggestions and associations to improve anything you need in your life!

And remember, for each thing you work on, you need multiple associations, positive and negative, and different suggestions as well. And if you need help, let me know in the comments and I’ll share some ideas with you!