Since we will be dealing with the aspects of hypnosis in our persuasion efforts, it makes sense to talk about and practice self hypnosis before we begin using it on others.
Self hypnosis is also one of the simplest and extremely effective ways to “reprogram your unconscious mind” to work with you instead of against you, which is what’s happening with the vast majority of people and they don’t even know it.
Here we’ll briefly look at what hypnosis is, how to induce a trance, how to do effective self hypnosis and we’ll look at some free software that will help you create your own self hypnosis MP3s to work on your issues, be it procrastination, lack of “confidence”, better memory, better speaking skills, dealing with limiting beliefs or even quitting smoking. You’ll learn it all here on this page.
What Is Hypnosis
There are several definitions of hypnosis and every one is right to some extent and wrong to the other. There is no complete consensus but we’ll look at two definitions that are more or less accepted and make sense.
Definition #1: Hypnosis is a bypass of the critical faculty and establishment of acceptable selective thinking.
Critical faculty, a part of the conscious mind acts as a bouncer between the realm of conscious mind and unconscious mind and protects the latter from inputs (statements, suggestions, …) that are in conflict with the current values and beliefs.
Here’s quickly what this means… the conscious mind has a part that acts like a sort of a “bouncer” and it’s named “the critical faculty“. This bouncer makes sure that not every statement, suggestion, etc. goes down to the unconscious mind and acts on it because the unconscious by itself doesn’t distinguish between good or bad, right or wrong, it just does whatever it is told and is accepted by the critical faculty.
The job of the critical faculty is to evaluate the input, compare it to current values and beliefs and accept or reject the input based on that comparison.
During hypnosis, this part of the conscious mind is “off duty” so to speak and most of the suggestions we put in during this time will stick and the unconscious will begin to work on them immediately and without pause.
As we’ll see in a later article, this happens naturally to us almost every day and we don’t even know it.
In fact, when we get to the part where we begin using covert hypnosis on others, you’ll learn techniques on how to exploit and even create these little moments and how to secretly slip suggestions in the other person’s unconscious mind.
So, when we bypass the critical faculty, we establish acceptable selective thinking.
All this means is that the subject is narrowly focused and will proceed in that way if there’s no conflict with his or her morals (if we want to suggest something that is against the morals – like, for example, suggesting to kill someone – the unconscious mind will simply ignore the suggestion or the subject will snap out of trance instantly).
The second definition is much simpler and more self explanatory. It’s also not a real scientific definition but for our purposes it’s good enough.
Definition #2: Hypnosis is a state of mind, when we are much more open to suggestion than normally.
Simple and to the point. But definitions only help us to define a subject and give us the feeling that now we know something about it. But in and of them selves they don’t give us much information on how to actually hypnotize someone (in this case ourselves) and this is what we’ll look at next…
Can Everybody Be Hypnotized?
Contrary to popular belief, everybody can be hypnotized. But there are about 10% of people that are naturally super suggestible and are hypnotized extremely easily.
These are the people that stage hypnotists look for with their “hypnosis tests” where they make the audience put together their hands and make them imagine that they are glued together.
About ten out of a hundred people won’t be able to take their hands apart and these are the best subjects for the stage hypnotist.
But don’t worry, even if you could never be hypnotized or think that you can’t be, I’m here to tell you “Yes you can!”. It’s a simple matter of training yourself.
And, by the way, don’t worry, when you become good at dropping into a trance, you’ll still be “immune” to outside suggestions. You’ll have complete control over your trance and you won’t become like one of those 10% of the people that are naturally super suggestible.
Dropping Yourself Into A Hypnotic Trance
If you’ve never been hypnotized before, you’re in for a real treat and if you’ve already been hypnotized before, you’re also in for a real treat! You see, a trance state is so wonderfully relaxing and a simple suggestion during this state can make you feel so great that you’ll want to do it again and again.
What’s more, the suggestion can extend the trance state and can make you feel great after you’ve “awakened” from the trance completely.
For the induction technique we’ll use a slightly modified famous Dave Elman induction, which is a rapid trance induction that’s so effective that everyone goes into a trance the very first time, whether they were ever hypnotized before or not.
I’ll slightly modify the induction to make it suitable for a recording because when you do it with a hypnotist, he or she has the benefit of easily testing your trance state and delivering the suggestions accordingly.
Watch how the Elman induction is done so that you’ll know what we’ll be talking about later. I found an amazing video that demonstrates it very well. It’s a good idea to do first watch the video and then go through the actual induction as he gives instructions. At one point he’ll lift the subject’s hand and then let it go. At this point you can imagine he did it or, if you want, lift it slightly and when he lets go, just drop it down and go deeper into relaxation…