Hypnotherapy is increasingly being regarded as a legitimate tool for therapeutic change.  In 2001, the Professional Affairs Board of the British Psychological Society concluded that “Enough studies have now accumulated to suggest that the inclusion of hypnotic procedures may be beneficial in the management and treatment of a wide range of conditions and problems encountered in the practice of medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy.”

Hypnotherapy For Any Aspect of Our Lives
It can help with many issues such as stress, relaxation, anxiety, phobias, addictions, weight loss, and confidence.  It is a wonderful resource for relaxation.  Even when I am treating patients for issues such as smoking cessation, they often report what a wonderfully relaxing experience they had.

Is It Possible to Self Hypnotise?
Hypnosis can be expensive, and a good hypnotherapist can sometimes be difficult to find.  However this does not need to be a problem because it is entirely possible to hypnotise yourself.  You do not actually need a hypnotherapist.  A hypnotherapist does not actually hypnotise you anyway.  They guide you into a hypnotic trance, but with just a little practice you can guide yourself.

What is a Hypnotic Trance?
Before attempting self hypnosis, it may help to know what a hypnotic trance is.  The best way of describing it is like daydreaming.  When you daydream you are actually going into a hypnotic trance, which is a perfectly natural and normal state of mind that most of us slip into several times a day.  We slip into a trance when we are engrossed in a book or TV, where people try to talk to us, or significant things happen around us that we remain blissfully unaware of because we are so deeply absorbed.

Practice Makes Perfect
With practice your skills of going into trance should increase.  With a little patience and persistence you should soon be able to go into a hypnotic trance quickly and effortlessly.

Tips on How to Hypnotise Yourself
First it is important to make sure that you will not be disturbed for about an hour.  Turn off all phones, and tell family and friends not to bother you.  Find a comfortable place.  Subdue the lighting if this helps.  You can be seated, or led down, whichever you prefer.

6 Simple Steps to Self Hypnosis – do take your time!

1. Relax and close your eyes.
2. Take 5 slow deep breaths in through the nose, and out through the mouth. Say to yourself the word ‘Relax’ on each out breath.
3. Imagine yourself at the top of 10 steps with a door at the bottom.  Very slowly walk down, one step at a time, counting back from 10 to 1.  With every slow step you take down, feel yourself becoming deeper and deeper relaxed, until you finally reach the door.
4. When you reach the bottom, open the door to your ideal place of relaxation.  It could be a tropical beach, a garden, anywhere you want.  It could be somewhere real, or imagined – your own unique special relaxing haven.
5. Use as many of the senses as you can.  Take a good look around.  Pause and listen to any sounds.  Perhaps you can hear the call of a bird, or the breeze gently blowing.  Maybe you can smell the sweet scent of flowers, or the salt from the sea?  Touch objects and make the experience as real as you can.
6. Explore your relaxation haven, and enjoy it for as long as you wish.

This is a great technique to help relaxation, and your ability to relax will improve the more you do this.  Most of us do not relax anywhere near enough, and this can damage our health in many ways.

What if I Want Some Help With It?
If you are struggling with this technique, persevere.  Getting into a hypnotic state is a skill that will improve over time.  Don’t expect too much.  Hypnosis is not the ‘magical state’ that the media often portrays.  You will probably still be aware of what is going on around you, and may well think ‘is this it?’.  However you will notice the difference when you wake up.  If you are struggling with this technique then it may be worthwhile visiting a clinical hypnotherapist, or buying a recording at least once, in order to experience the feeling of a trance.  When you have experienced a trance a few times, you will be more informed as to what the state of mind is that you are seeking.

It Can Only Get Easier
With repeated use, you will find it becomes easier and easier to slip into a hypnotic trance, and your mind will become calmer and more ‘still’ than ever before.  You may wish to eventually experiment with certain types of therapy.  For example once you open the door, you may instead visualise yourself at your ideal weight, or being really confident in a job interview, or even winning a sporting event.  Whatever you visualise vividly and repeatedly, your mind will strive to make it happen.  Great improvements can be made in this simple way.

There are many other ways to do self hypnosis, but this is one of the easiest and most powerful methods.  Have fun relaxing, growing and learning with this technique!

Meditation is commonly practiced for various reasons such as inner peace, self-realization, calmness, or to be connected with the universe through soul. There are many techniques and tools to help a person meditate and relax. Visualization is one of them.

What is known as Visualization Meditations are guided meditations by the meditation teacher. The teacher guides their students on a relaxing journey using many images and sounds that help calm the body and mind. For example, the teacher may say, “Visualize healing light all over your body, and feel that you are becoming more relaxed by the second.” The benefits of visualization, for the beginner, help them concentrate, focus, and relax. For the advanced practitioner of visualization, they will have the ability to see objects with closed eyes.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Misconceptions of Visualization
Visualization is being claimed around the world as a means to manifest your desires – wealth, health, and achieving goals. Blindly believing in this misconception will not advance their visualization practices. For example, the “Law of Attraction” is not true. Only when you put sincere efforts on your path will you see a result. Merely imagination or visualizing will not help you.

The Process of Visualization
Visualization is the ability to see objects (people, places, things) with your eyes closed. If you wish to heal someone in meditation, you would want to visualize their face so that you can direct healing energy and positive thoughts towards them. Visualization is not an easy practice to do at first, but with effort it will become natural to you.

Visualization first starts with imagination. Using the example of healing a person, you would want to imagine them sitting in front of you and imagine healing them. After many months of practice of imagination, you might start to visualize.

Visualization begins to happen after imagination. When you are able to see the person’s face and body with your eyes closed, without imagination, and able to see yourself direct healing energy towards them, this is an example of visualization. Both imagination and visualization belong to the mind.

After Visualization comes Actualization. Actualization is the direct experience through your soul with the person you are healing. Your eyes are closed, you are still sitting in the same position, and yet you literally can see the person you are healing and what they are doing. You will see what they are wearing, how their hair is, and where they are located. It’s a real-time experience of the soul with another soul. Real healing happens in Actualization. The mind is completely absent in Actualization.

A Simple Visualization Exercise
1.    Light a candle
2.    Stare at the flame for 30 seconds
3.    Close your eyes and try to see the flame
4.    Once the flame disappears in your mind, repeat the exercise

After each week of daily practice of this simple technique, practice extending the time of seeing the flame when your eyes are closed. When you are able to close your eyes and see a figure of the flame (without needing a lit candle) you are beginning to practice visualization. When you are able to close your eyes, see an actual flame and turn the flame on and off at will, you are practicing actualization.

How to Visualize and Actualize People
This visualization exercise can also be applied towards people.
1.    Get a person’s picture
2.    Stare at the picture for one minute
3.    Close your eyes and try and see their face
4.    Repeat steps

When you are able to see a person’s face without the physical photo and without imagination, you are practicing visualization. When you are able to see what the person is literally doing, this is actualization.

Why you should Practice Visualization
· Increase focus power
. Increase strength
· Ability to Concentrate on one point
· Discipline of the body
· Possibility to Actualize (see objects in real-time, for an extended time, with eyes closed)

Visualization is one of many tools for meditation and healing. Remember, where there is selfishness and ego, real visualization and actualization cannot happen. It happens when a person is fully relaxed. With practice, visualization and actualization will become your nature and effortless, like meditation should be.

At this time, with respect to a goal you are working on, you are here, and the goal is there. Between you and the goal is a path, or various paths, that you have to take before you get there. In the same way that I had to wind my way through a mountain trail path for 5.5 miles to get near the top of a mountain recently, you are going to need to wind your way to your goal by taking multiple actions. How do you figure out which actions you need to take?

Let Your Mind Do The Work

What you want to do is to let your mind solve the problem of lighting up the path to your goal. You need to disconnect from other activities for a period of time, and imagine yourself either where you are with relation to your goal, or already at your goal and looking back, and your mind will fill in the pieces of what you need to do. If your vision is to rent office space in a local building to start your own face-to-face type company, you can imagine yourself already at the office, glad about getting there. Then you will see what the details of your vision are, like that you will need rent money, or that you will need to get your qualifications that you will put on the wall.

You Will See The Steps To Take

Regardless of what your vision is, you get a better idea of what the steps are to get there if you stop and visualize yourself getting there. Maybe then your mind will tell you that you will need to hurry and focus before a certain deadline, or that you need to talk to a certain person to get help from them, or that you need to practice something for the next three weeks. These all have a sense of urgency to them, but this urgency isn’t palpable until you visualize the process or result, which puts your mind into a state where you can’t ignore the reality involved in building your dream or making a step towards a goal of yours.

This Is A Mindset Development

Making the choice to visualize as described here is an upgrade from not doing so, because it brings your mind right in line with the reality it knows. It doesn’t work to visualize in some perceived reality, because then it will feel like fantasizing or daydreaming. Real visualization goes smoothly as long as you take the reality you gain from it and act on it right away. If you visualize and don’t take action on what you gained, it might as well be worse than not having visualized at all.

Here is the main process:

1. disconnect from other activities and spend some time visualizing your desired state or goal
2. accept any realistic difficulties you see in the process of getting there
3. take a couple of pieces of actionable information from your thinking and write down a plan to work on them
4. carry out what you can handle
5. repeat as desired along the way to your goal