Learning how to hypnotise yourself can really improve your life by helping you overcome fears, breaking bad habits, getting rid of pain and achieving success. What hypnosis won't do is give you the ability to have total control over people. It's nothing like you see in the movies where you just look at someone and they are automatically in your control. Then you "brainwash" them into setting a trap to get the superhero out of the way so you can work on world domination. Too bad huh? Then again, world domination might not be such a good thing. Let's just work on personal domination ok?

Now, as I have said, you can't control people but you can use hypnosis to influence someone to follow your lead. But I'll talk more about that a little later.

1. Find a quiet, comfortable, friendly place where you can go to at the same time every day. Doing this will make self-hypnosis easier and you will get more out of it. For example, if you are shy, don't do these techniques sitting out on your front lawn. Sure it might be summer, its peaceful, birds are singing, the warm sun is shining on your face... but at the same time you keep opening your eyes because you feel that your nosey neighbor Edna is watching you! So go ahead and pick a spot in your home and please make sure to turn your telephone ringer off. It's really quite the shock when the phone rings and you are totally relaxed while under hypnosis. By the way, it's also not a good idea to do hypnosis while you have your computer in front of you. One time I turned off all the lights in my room and got nice and comfortable in a chair in front of my computer. Half way through my session, my computers screen saver came on and shocked the heck out of me. Not a good way to come out of hypnosis!
2. Sit up straight with both feet on the floor and get yourself centered. Some say that you can lie down, but I don't like to because I have sometimes fallen asleep.
3. Decide how long you would like to be under hypnosis and what you would like to get out of your session. Your mind is very powerful and if you want to be hypnotised for 10 minutes, make note of it and your mind will know when 10 minutes arrives. As for the part about thinking of what you want to get out of your session, the reason you are doing this is so that your unconscious mind will work on it. For example think to yourself... I am hypnotising myself to allow my unconscious mind to make the changes that I need to help me to be more relaxed and not get stressed out when problems come up.
4. Stare straight ahead and focus on something small. Try to pick something at eye level as well.
5. Take some deep breaths through your nose and make sure that you breathe from you stomach. Your stomach should rise and fall while breathing and not your chest. As you do this, be aware of your body and try to relax. As you stare at your object, think that the longer you stare, the heavier your eyelids feel. Think that they will get heavier and heavier until you can't keep them open any longer.
6. Now close your eyes and continue to take these deep breaths. Imagine all of your tension leaving your body. Start from the tip of your toes and slowly work your way up your body telling each of your muscles to release any tension. Don't forget the muscles in your face as well. Once you have done this, feel how relaxed you are and feel yourself sinking slowly into your seat. Say to yourself, every muscle in my body is completely relaxed.
7. See yourself at the top of a very long staircase that is any place that you find comforting and relaxing. Walk down these steps and count backwards while being aware that the further down these steps you go, the deeper into relaxing you will go. Picture that these stairs are leading you to whatever you think is the most relaxing place in the world.
8. Once you are at your special place think of a word that will describe where you are. This word will be used in the future to bring back these wonderful relaxing feelings that you have in this special place any time that you want to. Any time you feel stressed or just want to experience these feelings again, then say this word to trigger those feeling from your subconscious. You can spend as long as you want in this place so just enjoy yourself.
9. When you are ready to end your self-hypnosis session, tell yourself that you are going to count down from 5 to 1 and when you reach 1 you will feel energized and fully awake. When you count down, do it slowly.
10. Spend a few moments to feel how great you feel, collect your thoughts and let any emotions flow and enjoy this moment. If you wish, keep a notebook near by to write down your thoughts and feelings or any ideas that might come to you at this time.

I would now like to get rid of any fears that you may have because of some things you may have heard. First of all being hypnotised is a natural state to be in, in fact, daydreaming is a form of hypnosis. You also can't get stuck in hypnosis or you won't be in danger because you are not aware of things going on around you. You are always aware of what is going on.

This technique that I showed you is used to help relax you and to make you a better person. There are other types that can be used, like I mentioned earlier, to help influence others to follow your lead. This type of hypnosis is called Conversational Hypnosis. Using Conversation Hypnosis techniques when you speak, you can easily get peoples attention, bypass their conscious mind and access their unconscious mind and then direct their responses. If you decide to try this type of hypnosis, please use it for good and not evil :-).

There you go, now you know how to hypnotise yourself and you know what benefits you can get from it. Now go try it and learn the pleasures that it will bring and live life the way it was meant to be lived!