Just about all courses you go to will teach this basic hypnosis induction and we’ll do just the same. It can quite literally have an enormous positive impact on your life learning this particular form of self hypnosis. It is used in various guises with:

• stress management,
• meditation practice,
• as an exercise in helping people sleep
• hypnosis sessions
• as an introduction to guided imagery
• preparation for sports and martial arts
• etc. etc.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Yes, you’ve probably heard of or even experienced this for yourself. It may not have been under the ‘hypnosis’ label but it is a classic hypnosis induction technique. I’ll give you my version of it here:

(Warning – if you have high blood pressure or a heart problem you might want to skip the tensing part … just imagine tension flowing out into the floor as you progressively go through the muscle groups below).

1. Get into a comfortable chair or couch (you can even to this lying down … but you might fall asleep )
2. Loosen any tight clothing you may have, remove your shoes if they are tight.
3. Center your balance by gently rocking backwards and forwards, side-to-side, making the movements smaller and smaller until you feel perfectly centered.
4. Take a deep breath … and as you breath out gently close your eyes.
5. Starting with the top of your body (e.g. your eyes), as you breath in, tense them more than you are now (e.g. scrunch up your eyes), hold for a count of 3 … and release … let go … as you breath out.
6. Repeat for your cheek and jaw muscles … breath in … and as you breath in tense your jaw muscles more than they are now (don’t go overboard with the tension people … we trying to relax, not stress you further) … hold for a count of 3 … and as you breath out …. feel as if all the tension is melting out of your face … dripping onto the floor. Move your jaws … make sure it is relaxed. Repeat this if necessary.
7. Move on down for all your muscle groups … your shoulders, your biceps, your hands, your stomach, your buttocks, your thighs, your calves and your feet/toes.
8. Don’t go overboard on the tensing … the key is to begin to notice the difference between tension and relaxation … and to consciously let go … we often don’t realize just how tense we are holding our muscles.
9. Remember to tense as you breath in … release as your breath out …
10. When you have reached your feet … you should be totally relaxed. You could consider this to be a mild hypnotic state.

Practice this at least once a day … after a couple of weeks you should be able to just ‘intend’ to relax, take a deep breath and let all the tension go as you exhale (you can skip the progressive muscle bit – that’s just to make you aware of the difference between tension and relaxation).

Have a good trip!

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The thing is, and I realize this now, is that I really knew nothing about hypnosis back then. And after spending 25 years exploring what you would consider some pretty unusual applications of hypnosis I still feel I’ve got so much yet to discover … hmmmm

So you want to learn to hypnotize do you?

We could start where a majority of the courses and products start – and focus mainly on technique – … or we could explore some basic principles that if you take to heart will jump-start your understanding of how to do hypnosis. Perhaps it will take years off the learning curve as you go forward and explore the wonderful and sometimes weird world of hypnosis.

So let’s start with something that you MUST get right:

Hypnosis is not something you do to people – it is something that they do to themselves.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions there is out there. The person being hypnotized is doing all the magic! Sure, you might be a great guide, an artist even, in helping people open their internal doors that allow the ‘hypnotic state’ to occur. But they are ultimate master and author of their experience – not you! And this is where trust comes into things … the more comfortable someone is with you the more they may open up. And the more congruent you are in your behavior – the better the experience for the other person. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Check out some of the other articles, entries and comments on this site. If you want to learn how to do hypnosis you can start here and see where the journey takes you.

Have a great trip …

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