How to do Self-Hypnosis

Copyright © Donald Robertson, 2011.  All rights reserved.

I’ve been practising self-hypnosis more or less daily, without much interruption, for about twenty years.  I first became interested in self-hypnosis and meditation when I was a schoolboy and years later trained as a hypnotherapist.  I must have taught about a thousand people how to do self-hypnosis on workshops and courses in London and around the UK over the past fifteen years or so.  My main interest is in evidence-based practice and the wealth of scientific research relating to hypnosis.  So in some respects, I’m bound to begin by saying that hypnotism and self-hypnosis are vast subjects, full of controversy, about which a great deal has yet to be conclusively established.  As the psychologist Hans Eysneck once said, no subject has had more “tarraddidle” written about it, and there are very few decent books at all on self-hypnosis and plenty of pretty awful ones.  However, I do believe that several basic points can be made at the outset, which one would expect most researchers and serious clinicians  to agree upon,

1. The internet and popular media are rife with misinformation about hypnosis and this is a common obstacle when it comes to teaching the subject.  Many people, unfortunately, pick up misconceptions from training courses and books on hypnosis, which are so far removed from reality that they have actually been shown fairly consistently by researchers to inhibit genuine hypnotic responses.
2. Hypnosis is not normally a sleep-like or unconscious state, although a small percentage (roughly 10-15%) of people may report feeling as if they have been asleep throughout standard hypnotic techniques.  It is very common for the majority of people to feel as if they were partially asleep or drifting in and out of awareness during standard hypnotic techniques.  This is not genuine sleep, however, and the vast majority of people remain aware of their surroundings during hypnosis.  In fact, it should be obvious that one needs to be conscious and aware during self-hypnosis as otherwise it would be impossible to know what to do, and what suggestions to give.
3. Hypnotic subjects are not under the “control” of a hypnotist who “speaks directly to their unconscious mind” (whatever that means).  The purpose of hypnosis is not normally to control people’s minds without their consent but rather to guide them in using their imagination to evoke responses.  In other words, as many hypnotists put it, “All hypnosis is self-hypnosis.”  James Braid, the founder of hypnotherapy, also took it for granted that hypnotism required the conscious, voluntary collaboration of the subject.  Again, self-hypnosis would be impossible if hypnotism were a form of brainwashing, coercion, or control of another person.
4. Likewise many people assume (or are misinformed) that their role in hypnosis is to become passive and to distract themselves or “wait and see” how their “unconscious mind” responds.  (Again, this seem contradictory in self-hypnosis.)  However, research on hypnosis has generally shown the opposite to be true.  People who passively “wait and see” tend to respond to fewer suggestions than people who actively imagine the things being suggested, i.e., consciously “thinking along with” the suggestions.

James Braid originally defined hypnotism (and “self-hypnotism”) as consisting of focused attention upon a powerful idea or image of some response, accompanied by the expectation of it occurring.  For example, prolonged and heightened attention to the idea of your finger twitching and rising, while strongly expecting this to happen, would be a form of self-hypnosis.

It’s now quite well established that people can learn how to do self-hypnosis, just like any other skill.  In particular, Prof. Nicholas Spanos of Carleton University in Canada developed a training programme called the Carleton Skills Training Program (CSTP) for hypnosis, which has been supported by numerous studies conducted at different universities.  Self-hypnosis is best learned by instruction from a hypnotist and observation of demonstration subjects (behavioural models).  However, it can apparently be learned from books and written instruction and I have taught many people this way.

It’s easier to learn self-hypnosis when you begin with simple autosuggestion tests.  This can really be any observable response.  However, the best one for this purpose in my view is the traditional eye-fixation technique.  This simply involves looking upward, either at a point on the ceiling or toward your forehead, in order to strain your eyes slightly (but not so much as to cause significant discomfort).  In this position your eyes will tire and eventually close, without any suggestion.  The purpose of autosuggestion is therefore to speed up the rate at which the eyes naturally tire and close, which is generally one of the easiest responses to achieve using autosuggestion.  It doesn’t matter how you do this as long as your eyes close in a way that feels like an “automatic” response evoked by your use of imagination rather than because you simply closed them voluntarily and deliberately, without using your imagination to make it happen.

Some people tell themselves “My eyes are growing heavy, sleepy, and tired…” repeatedly.  Verbal suggestions should normally be said meaningfully, with belief, rather than repeated in a “rote” or detached, manta-like way.  To put it another way, it’s the meaning of the words that constitutes the suggestion rather than the sound of the words.  Some people just imagine the feeling of the eyes growing tired and sleepy.  Many people use metaphors or mental imagery, e.g., picturing a bright light shining into their eyes making them feel like closing, or imagining weights attached to the eyelids, pulling them down, etc.  Some people just “make-believe” that they’ve been staring at the point for many hours and recollect what it feels like to be so tired.

It’s a good idea to practice doing this about half-a-dozen times as it tends to get easier with each repetition, the eyes closing more quickly each time.  People tend to like doing this and it’s usually quite easy for them to relax as a result.  However, this is really just a way of confirming that you’re in the right mind-set to respond to suggestions, it doesn’t have any power to put you into a “hypnotic trance”, a concept which has been abandoned by many leading researchers.  However, if you’re able to do this (and it’s quite easy) or any other suggestion test then you can take that as an indication that you’re in the right frame of mind to employ additional suggestions for therapeutic or personal development purposes.

Generally, it’s a good idea to begin by relaxing your body very deeply, because this is an easy response and one that’s useful for therapy.  The secret to hypnotic relaxation is “fractionation” or dividing the response into parts or stages.  There are two ways of doing this: division into components or into degrees of intensity, e.g., “depth” of relaxation.  When it comes to relaxation, the first method typically involves suggesting “My arms are feeling heavy and tired…  my legs are feeling heavy and tired…”, etc., and relaxing different parts of the body in turn.  The second method, which works very reliably, especially when people have had some practice with relaxation already, involves counting from ten down to zero, and imagining oneself relaxing more deeply, tension melting away, etc., with each number counted.  Learning to relax in this way is a good starting point and should be practised for several weeks.  A typical example of a more complete self-hypnosis routine for relaxation might be as follows,

1. Eye-fixation and closure
2. Relaxation of arms
3. Relaxation of legs
4. Relaxation of whole body, with three deep breaths
5. Relaxation of breathing (which becomes more regular, abdominal and shallow in hypnotic relaxation)
6. Counting deepener (usually ten to zero)
7. Focus on breathing, perhaps with the repetition of a single autosuggestion (e.g., “PEACE” or “RELAX”) on every exhalation, for as long as is comfortable, i.e., 5-20 min.
8. Emerging from hypnosis (not essential but recommended to avoid disorientation), usually by counting upward from one to five energetically, with suggestions to become more alert, etc.

I won’t go into detail about other uses of hypnosis here because it’s more important to focus on these basic issues to begin with and you can learn about them elsewhere.  For example, you’ll find lots of information about the theory and practice of self-hypnosis on our UKhypnosis.com blog, in the “self-hypnosis” category,

http://ukhypnosis.com/category/hypnotherapy/self-hypnosis/