Hypno Journal

Arianna Huffington and Tony Robbins are soliciting stories about overcoming crisis for an online event they are collaboratively hosting called Breakthrough: The Power of Crisis. They are asking for participants  to post written or videotaped answers to the questions below.

1. What was your life like right before the challenge or crisis hit?
2. What was the crisis you faced? What happened — what did you feel and experience?
3. What pulled you through this difficult, unjust, or impossible time? What was the trigger or catalyst for change? Was it a belief, a strategy, a faith, a person, a tool? What made the change possible?
4. Once you turned the corner mentally or emotionally, what did you do to turn your life around?
5. How is your life better today because you lived through the crisis? How have you transformed? How are you stronger emotionally, physically, spiritually? What gifts do you have to give because of this?

Whether or not we choose to participate in this event, these are worthwhile questions for reflection. Vividly remembering a time of strength, and the resulting transformation, can empower us get through a current or future time of great difficulty. I would recommend writing a reflection and then adding a self-hypnosis session to experience the memory of strength and transformation with as many of the senses as possible. The session might end with the affirmation, “I am strong, resilient, and resourceful.”

I came across this article on Ezine and love the author’s creative approach for incorporating self-hypnosis into daily routines. Enjoy!

Everyday Self-Hypnosis – How to Use Your Daily Routine to Change Your Life
By Forbes Robbins Blair

Abe Lincoln apparently said, “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four sharpening the axe.” I believe my approach is a different way to incorporate self hypnosis. I meld the power of autosuggestion with the symbolism of daily tasks to get results easier and just as effectively. That’s what you need to spend most of your time sharpening.

You’re just missing out on a huge opportunity for self-improvement by not taking your daily simple chores and applying the symbolism of applied psychology to change your habits.

Here’s a good way to start to understand what I mean. When you consider conventional hypnosis or self hypnosis, you probably just think about closing your eyes and entering a deep trance. Good. But you’re leaving out those trances you enter into each and every day which are called “natural trances.” They can be used to promote powerful personal growth when repeated through the various and multiple daily tasks you perform.

Natural trances are a kind of hypnosis you experience in daily life. You slip into and out of them while performing common chores like cooking, cleaning or driving. You tend to go on automatic as your brainwaves slow down into what is called the “alpha state.” You can take advantage of these natural trances as you go about your everyday routines.

Self-talk and Goal-setting — Powerful Tools For Self-growth

Dr. Shad Helmstetter, Phd, one of the founders of modern personal life coaching and author of thirteen books on personal programming and goal-setting, said this in his ground-breaking classic, “What To Say When You Talk To Your Self”:

“My objective all along has been to find the real solution to self-improvement — to separate the practical from the not-so-practical, and find out what works for real people.”

He encouraged people to ask themselves the right questions first. He’d thoroughly researched that there was real value when you apply daily positive self-talk to find your direction, stay motivated, and move forward.

My twist on that concept combines aspects of the science and art of self hypnosis with Jungian symbolisms, and then shows how you can apply those lessons to everyday tasks.

How I Discovered It

I began using natural trances to improve my physical and emotional health one morning a few years ago. It started like any other morning: I was taking my usual morning shower. I was becoming very relaxed as the warm water passed over my body. My mind was drifting off very pleasantly. But instead of just humming or reflecting in that private moment, I carried out an experiment.

Little did I know I was about to stumble upon a way to take that simple experience, apply its symbolism, and then rearrange it into a personal meditation that would help me reach my life goals. So, with this “simple” idea, my life began to change very positively over the coming months.

Achieving Everyday Self Hypnosis, Step by Step:

1. Attach the correct symbol to the task. I asked myself the question of what kind of symbolism showering or bathing carried. The answer was cleansing. Then I thought about how I could create a kind of autosuggestive mantra.
2. Create an appropriate auto-suggestion phrase. I’d repeat that out loud three times with emotion, “I cleanse myself of all accumulated anger, fear and self-doubt.” I imagined that the symbolic form those negative emotions took became like dirt leaving my body and going down the drain. Taking that shower had become a symbolic ritual for cleansing my inner self!
3. Do this on a daily basis for as long as it took to see a positive change in myself. At first, I barely noticed anything. But after several days of repeating this everyday self-hypnosis I noticed my mood brightening and my thoughts turning much more positively toward how to get what I needed and wanted in my life. It seemed that the natural trance state together with the power of everyday self-suggestions were really paying off.
4. Create a list of task-symbols-suggestions to cover your most common daily tasks. Here are just two examples (of many): Ironing my dress shirts became a way to use natural trance to “iron out the wrinkles in my relationships.” Driving to the farmer’s market became a way to work on “driving myself to greater success.”

It’s An Easy Method to Create Self-Empowerment

There’s nothing complicated about the technique. Here’s how you can start to incorporate it too:

* Select an ordinary activity,
* Recognize its underlying or symbolic meaning as it applies to your life,
* Create a beneficial suggestion to accompany that activity,
* Recite the suggestion three times as you initiate the task, and
* Await the positive life changes you want.

You can choose among several activities you perform on any day. If you follow the rules of the technique, after about a week you’ll start to notice genuine change start to manifest in your thoughts, emotions, actions — and then behaviors. (For stubborn habits I suggest that you stick with this new system for at least three weeks.)

It’s a Powerful Technique for Busy People

I’m a very busy person and you might be as well. You might not have enough time to use the traditional closed-eyes methods of self hypnosis.

Everyday self hypnosis allows you to use natural trances during the things you have to do each day (brushing your teeth, walking the dog, etc.) to get the benefits without interrupting your life.

Everyday life tasks turn into powerful opportunities for personal transformation. The combination of natural trance, suggestion and the symbols found in your daily tasks makes a strong impression on the subconscious mind.

Generic affirmations cannot compare.

Forbes Robbins Blair is the author of the new book Self-Hypnosis Revolution: The Amazingly Simple Way to Use Self-Hypnosis to Change Your Life, which makes the understanding of everyday self hypnosis clear in many varied and effective ways. His website, http://www.instant-self-hypnosis.com, educates people about how self hypnosis can benefit them.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Forbes_Robbins_Blair

A client’s story, which I have permission to share

“Well, I get it now!” She exclaimed at the beginning of our session.

“Get what?” I asked.

“Self-hypnosis. I get how it works!”

I knew that she had been using it to help her relax into sleep each night, but she had yet to use it for the focus of our work together.

Her revelation about the power of self-hypnosis came during a medical crisis. Her doctor was explaining that she might have a serious medical condition, and she could feel her blood pressure rise just thinking about the possibility. It occurred to her that if she could use self-hypnosis to help her sleep, she might be able to use it to calm down in the doctor’s office. It worked! She successfully used it again when she was sent to the hospital for tests.

Thankfully, she is okay. This experience made her realize that she has the ability to relax herself at will and shift her negative thinking anytime she needs to. She recently sent me an email letting me know that self-hypnosis has helped her through the stress of the holiday season. She is also using it to reinforce her goals.

I teach self-hypnosis to all of my clients and suggest that they practice it a few times a day for a week or so—at times when they don’t really need it—so that it will be second nature when they do need it.  I believe that my client’s ability to calm herself at the doctor’s office was made easier by the fact that she had practiced self-hypnosis before she went to bed each night.

What is self-hypnosis?

Self-hypnosis is the process of inducing a trance state in oneself in order to achieve a focused awareness or positive selective thinking that can be used for self-improvement.

Actually all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. Even in a hypnotherapy session, it’s the client that does the real work—a hypnotherapist serves as a guide.

How to do simple self-hypnosis

• Get into a comfortable position. Most people prefer to sit or recline, but you can also do self-hypnosis while standing.
• Stretch your eyes up towards the ceiling to make them tired.
• Take three deep breaths.
• With the 3rd exhale, close your eyes.
• Count from 10 down to 1, saying the words “deeply relaxed” between each number. You can count and say “deeply relaxed” either out loud or silently. Focus on getting into “the zone” (let all distracting thoughts fall away, and focus your concentration on relaxing your mind). If you have had the experience of being guided, by a hypnotherapist, into a trance state, remember that your body and mind have a memory of what that’s like.
• When you get down to 1, you might imagine yourself releasing any negative thoughts or feelings you are having. You can bat them out of the ball park, or let the ocean waves lap up on shore to dissolve them—there are no limits to the symbolic ways you might release. Then you might imagine what you want to be thinking and feeling instead. Make that come alive inside of you.
• You might alternatively, or additionally, repeat a simple mantra or affirmation about 10 times, e.g., “I release stress from my life, and I feel calm and relaxed, healthy and free.” (You can come up with the words that you find helpful.)
• Count from 1 up to 3.
• Open your eyes.