How To Do Self Hypnosis - A Self Hypnosis Guide

The first thing to know about learning how to do self hypnosis is that in order for it to really work for your benefit you first need to be mentally and physically relaxed.

This is because relaxation helps to shut down the clamour and jangle of the doubting, critical and inhibiting conscious mind, allowing the subconscious mind to be more receptive to and accepting of the positive suggestions and mental imagery used while you're hypnotizing yourself.

If you weren't relaxed, your conscious mind would constantly interfere and keep you distracted and unable to focus and the "message" that you want to impress into your subconscious wouldn't get through and have its beneficial effect.

Your fundamental view of the universe and consequently the reality of your life within it is derived from your subconscious. The connection between what is going on in your subconscious mind and what you experience as reality in your day to day life is real and is of tremendous importance to you and your future.

When people talk about being in control of their own destiny - as far as it's entirely possible to be - what they're really talking about is knowing how to access and use the power of the subconscious mind in a way that is positive and beneficial for them, and learning how to do self hypnosis is one of the best and most effective ways of doing this.

In order to start, you first need to learn how to relax.

Some people are so tied up with anxiety, stress, self consciousness or whatever that they have forgotten how to allow themselves to relax. "Allow" is an important word here. You can't force yourself to relax, you have to just let it happen.

A good way to start with this is to make a point of putting aside two daily periods of about 10-15 minutes each, say once in the morning and again later in the evening, when you're going to make sure that you can have privacy, quiet, and can be comfortable. Some people may prefer a more spontaneous approach but it really is ultimately better to discipline yourself into sticking to a rough sort of timetable.

Committing yourself in this way gives you motivation and once you've actually started you'll find that not only is it doing you good but also that you're beginning to look forward to your relaxation and self hypnosis sessions.

When you're sitting or lying down comfortably, close your eyes and begin to breathe in and out quite deeply, slowly and regularly. Then begin to imagine - feel - the muscles of your feet and ankles loosening and relaxing. Then allow the feeling of limpness to extend up through your calves, knees and thighs and feel - imagine - the tension draining away from your lower body.

Now feel your abdomen, chest and back loosening and relaxing, all the while breathing slowly and deeply, breathing in, breathing out...

Now let your fingers, hands and wrists go limp, then feel the looseness moving up your arms to your shoulders, feeling any tension draining further and further away.

Now begin to focus on the neck and facial area. Many people hold residual tension in the neck muscles, and this can end up causing all sorts of things like shoulder and back pain, even headaches, so it's important to let go of any tension here.

Just let your neck and face loosen and relax, and if you're sitting down as a pose to lying down, just let your head fall forward if that's what feels best.

Looked at in written form like this, all this could look like being a more time consuming procedure than it actually is. With a bit of practice you can put yourself into a deeply relaxed state like this within 3 or 4 minutes.

Now that your whole body is limp and relaxed - with practice you'll get a sensation of floating, especially if you're lying down - you can begin to focus on your mind.

The fairly deep physical relaxation that you've achieved so far is also naturally relaxing your mind, opening up the pathway to the subconscious. In learning how to do self hypnosis an appreciation of this is essential. As alluded to previously, your subconscious is ultimately what makes you tick, for better or worse, but through relaxation and self hypnosis you can "train" or "educate" your conscious thought processes in such a way that they can influence your subconscious to work for you and not against you.

If your subconscious mind is working for you then you truly are in control of your own destiny, and you will find yourself being "instinctively" guided towards people, situations, circumstances and events that will lead you to the fulfilment of any desire that you truly have.

Let's assume as an example that in this particular case we're concerned with losing weight. We've tried all the diet regimes, vitamin supplements etc but nothing's worked in a lasting and permanent way.

So let's also assume that you've read something about how to do self hypnosis and have decided to spend a few minutes lying or sitting down and are now physically - and mentally - relaxed, as described above. Now fill your mind with an image of yourself as you'd like to be, slim, supple and healthy. Ignore or dismiss any thoughts such as "That couldn't be me" or "I'll never be like that", just let your mind imagine - and feel - yourself as being slim, active and healthy.

See - visualize - yourself wearing the slim-fitting clothes that you'd like to wear, doing the things that you'd like to do, feeling happy and assured about your body and physique. Mentally inject as much detail as you can into your visualization, and feel - emotionally feel - yourself as a slim and active person and feel it as something that's happening right now, not as something in the future.

All the while maintaining your relaxed state and holding the mental imagery in your mind, now begin to whisper or say to yourself something along the lines of "I'm slim, healthy and attractive" or "My body is fit, healthy and beautiful". Repeat this around 20 times, quite slowly and deliberately and holding the feeling and visualization in your mind.

After a few more minutes of this, just let it all fade away and bring yourself back to normal consciousness.

With regard to self hypnosis generally it's important to understand that the sense of emotional realness and immediacy, in combination with the mental imagery itself, is what - with relaxation and repetition - gets impressed into the subconscious which then begins the process of transforming the feeling and image into an actual reality in your life.

In this particular instance, the goal is weight loss. If you kept up and practiced the above outlined self hypnosis session using relaxation, visualization and positive suggestion twice a day - every day - before long you'd notice your appetite diminishing and your desire for physical activity increasing. A couple of weeks more and your whole attitude to food and exercise would have changed significantly, and you'd be on the way to becoming the slim and active person you visualized and the change would be deeply ingrained and permanent.

So with nothing more than a certain amount of focus, dedication and commitment you can use these simple but powerfully effective techniques to help address and resolve a wide range of issues including - but not limited to - confidence building, quitting smoking, psychosexual problems, overcoming phobias and some health problems.

Some people may however experience a certain amount of difficulty with using visualization and positive self-suggestion simultaneously. The need to maintain a certain level of conscious awareness required to repeat positive suggestions or affirmations can distract from the visualization itself, in other words it can be difficult to mentally do both at once effectively, even if you're deeply relaxed.

The solution to this potential problem can be found through the use of pc/mp3 hypnosis downloads. There are a huge range of downloads available, created by professional hypnotherapists and designed and worded to deal specifically with whatever the issue may be.

It's an increasingly popular and inexpensive way of basically having your own home based hypnotherapy sessions, where you can deal with whatever the specific issue may be in your own way and at your own pace.

Instead of using verbal self-suggestion while you're visualizing the achievement of your goal, you can simply relax and visualize and allow the positive suggestions from your pc or mp3 to gently work their way into your subconscious and gradually become absorbed and accepted, thus "reprogramming" in a positive way the thought processes or beliefs that were causing the problem.

So there are slightly different ways of learning how to do self hypnosis, just find your own technique that you're most comfortable with, with or without the use of hypnosis downloads. The important thing to remember is that it's all based on relaxation, visualization and suggestion. Applied with consistency, you can transform yourself or your life in any way that you really want to.

For more about self hypnosis techniques and about its uses in quitting smoking, losing weight, building confidence and more, visit www.self-hypnosis-the-key.com.