The art of self-hypnosis has lots of different names; relaxation, meditation, auto-hypnosis, changed state of awareness, selective awareness, focussing, trance and they are all a natural state for the brain to experience. All these provide deep relaxation; however, self-hypnosis is more directive and creative. Relaxation is a good enough choice to help alleviate the harmful physical and mental effects of stress. However, self-hypnosis really does open more doors to change.

Self-hypnosis can help you achieve so much more in your life; it gives you the opportunity to use ¾ of your mind which is unconscious, revealing strengths, weaknesses, motivation, habit control and advancing you to your full potential.

Lots of people are surprised that they have the ability to hypnotise themselves; they are lead to believe, especially by the media – that hypnosis is something which is done to them and not within their control.

We all go into self-hypnosis every day, many times, without realising it – it might be when we are concentrating or focussing on something. However, if you want to really hone to skill to your advantage you can learn how to bring yourself in and out of self-hypnosis by listening to a self-hypnosis CD or MP3 download recording, by being taught it from a professionally trained person or by training to be a hypnotherapist yourself.

If you feel you have never experienced self-hypnosis before and are curious as to what it really feels like; below are some of the comments people have told me about their personal experience:-

(Remember we are all different and unique; we all enter self-hypnosis in our own way – there is no right or wrong way – only the way YOU feel comfortable.)

• ‘My limbs feel as light as a feather’
• ‘It’s just like daydreaming – only with direction’
• ‘My eyelids flickered a lot and I felt as if I was floating’
• ‘My breathing slowed down, I have never felt so calm before’
• ‘When I get home from work, I have 20 minutes before the kids get home – so I go into hypnosis and recharge my batteries’

Your conscious mind is very good at working things and figuring things out. It really wants to understand the whys and wherefores of anything – that is perfectly natural to want to understand something.

However, your unconscious mind is acceptable to the simplest of language and lives in the now and holds such a vast source of tools and resources for your strengths, weaknesses and tools and resources, just waiting to be recognised and utilised. Your unconscious mind holds years and years of experiences, strategies and ways of dealing with the little challenges in life in a constructive way that suits you as an individual.

Self-hypnosis (and all hypnosis is self-hypnosis!) is a perfectly natural state of mind; just like the feeling before we go to sleep on an evening and wake in the morning. There is no right or wrong way to enter hypnosis – it is often helpful – in my experience of working with clients – for you to close your eyes to cut out distractions and take deep breathes to help you get plenty of oxygen into your blood stream as you relax and feel more comfortable.

When you close your eyes, switch on your CD or MP3 player, you may wonder if you are doing this self-hypnosis thing correctly. Just let yourself go and experience comfort the best way for you, give yourself permission to relax. If at first, it feels strange to close your eyes – then keep them open. It really doesn’t matter, so long as you enjoy the experience. In time, you will develop your own personal way of going in and out of self-hypnosis.

Here at HypnoShop.com we’re often asked the question; “how many hypnosis downloads can I use at once?”

Firstly, I recommend you do not overload your mind with too many new ideas and new ways of being. That would be one way to achieve no change at all. In fact, listening to too many hypnosis downloads at once could simply make you feel confused and disorientated. It’s rather like ‘doing ten jobs at once’; sounds good, but probably better if you finish one at a time for better success.

The best way to go about using more than one hypnosis session is to alternative; rather like the idea I gave a lady who ordered and downloaded the following hypnosis recordings;

Super Self Confidence – to help improve how she felt about her self image.

Anxiety Release – she suffered a lot from stress at work.

Driving Test Confidence – she was due to have her test.

Fear of Flying – a holiday was booked later that year.

Listen to one at once and deal with one subject at a time.

Yes, build your confidence and feel less stressed. But, wait a little before your driving test. It is possibly better to learn to like yourself and feel more assertive at work, before you start taking any tests. Then, you are more likely to pass your test first time.

Also, once your confidence is growing more and more; along with improvements at work, you stand more chance of feeling like you really have the ability to tackle driving, and feel less anxious about flying – enabling you to move onto feeling ever more comfortable about your holiday.

The lady listened to the self confidence hypnosis recording for the first week; free from anxiety the following week and then started to listen to the driving test confidence session.

She took her driving test and passed first time a month later.

Her holiday was booked in a couple of months and she then started to listen to the fear of flying hypnosis recording. (She was still listening to the anxiety and confidence recording from time to time, depending upon how she felt.)

Oh, she had a wonderful holiday and completely forgot about the fear she might have had when it came to getting there in the first place.

So, to summarise, I recommend you listen to the recordings in the order you feel comfortable with; and if you are in doubt, do ask us – we are always happy to advise you.

Deal with one subject at a time and do not overload your system. Take it easy and steadily notice the improvements within your life.

Your unconscious mind is like a goal striving machine. Unless it is given any direction in life, it drifts off making its own – usually in a negative way. Unless you programme your unconscious mind with positive goals and positive expectations it is programmed by chance and circumstance, and is often working to achieve negative goals such a ill health, unhappy relationships, failure or financial loss.

Once you have decided a positive goal and feel a strong urge or intention to achieve that goal, your unconscious will be your slave. You have the ability to change the script, and reprogram it.  You see, your unconscious has always been there to fulfil orders given to it by your conscious mind. It was designed to serve and makes a very poor master, yet most people allow it to control their lives. You’ve probably heard the saying, ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he’, well, if your conscious mind keeps telling yourself how much of a failure you are, your unconscious is going to believe it before long and it will do whatever it can to help the rest of you believe how true it is. Then, once you start to behave as a loser, your conscious mind can agree as it notices what kind of pathetic existence you have become. Not a good state to be in, is it?

Making and setting goals in your life is a way to achieve results you have planned for yourself. This brings with it a real sense of satisfaction, because the results were designed, planned and worked on, by you – all the effort was your doing. Remember that success is an attitude, and with the help of hypnosis you can help change this attitude and bring about positive results.

Suggestions are simply a group of words delivered in an acceptable way to the other person.

Suggestions spoken in the correct way are there to help us make changes within our lives. If we listen to, or try to, make suggestions which are not worded in a positive way; they could provide us with the opposite results. The last thing you want is to feel worse than you already do now!

A certain degree of understanding of how our brain takes on board information is needed; along with practice and a good deal of experience to obtain the best results. Obviously the better worded they are, the better the results can be.

Believe it or not, we are constantly giving ourselves suggestions all day long. Our internal dialogue (that monotonous voice we sometimes hear criticising certain decisions we have made?) is always giving us ideas about how to think, feel and behave in any given situation. The more positive suggestions we give ourselves, the more positive the reaction.

It can be so easy to think we are saying or suggesting the correct things to ourselves and without realising; we create a very negative pattern of the complete opposite of what we really desire.

An example might be of similar nature to this,

Clients often say things like, ‘I will feel better’ or ‘I can do it’ or ‘I am not scared’. These are all good comments and have potential for being positive suggestions.

Let’s take a closer look at ‘I will feel better’ – Will is not giving a timeframe for change. Will could be anytime in the near future. Would it not be better to FEEL WELL NOW?

Next, lets take, ‘I can do it’ – Again, can does not specify a time. Our unconscious mind lives in the now and is more acceptable to suggestions made as if they are happening now.

If it were a driving test you wanted to pass, would it not be better to say, “I drive with confidence“?

If we constantly tell ourselves we are not scared, eventually we will probably become so scared, we will never do that particular thing again! Our unconscious is not good at taking a negative, i.e. ‘not’ – it would rather hear “I am free from smoking” or “the air I breathe each and every day is so clear and fresh, I am so very healthy”.

Which version makes you feel better?

At HypnoShop.com, our recorded hypnosis CDs and MP3 hypnosis downloads are so carefully worded; they are read over and over to check the receiver of each suggestion would feel the maximum benefit. We take every care to deliver the best way of receiving quicker and healthier results.

With the economy as it is at the moment; the cost of living rising every week, its hard work to save money. It can be ever more difficult to stick to some kind of budget. The financial worries of bills, loans and mortgages can really affect our health. The build up of stress is often unnoticeable at first, until it makes us vulnerable and susceptible enough to catch things like colds or a virus. The last thing one would think of doing is to spend more money; often, especially for ‘breaks or holidays’ and ‘nice little pamper treats’; they are often forfeited.

I have seen one or two clients for hypnotherapy recently who have been particularly worried about money – in fact their head (and bodies) seemed to be taken up or consumed with worry. So, I thought to myself and said to them, ‘do you have any room for money in your life?’ A strange question, I realised, but if someone is full up with worry then how do they have space for anything else?

I then put it to them that if they want more money in their life, they need to make a space for it first; then, they can focus on developing new strategies to, ‘bring in more money’.

So, we put it to the test.

They listened to my self-hypnosis CD regularly and within a month; their heads were filled with new thought, new ideas; new feelings. This generated new directions within their lives; subtle at first, but one particular client made some great changes.

He was always giving new ideas about how to run the team at work; he enjoyed sharing and working together. However, there was (and always seemed to be) someone who would rather take the benefit from my clients new ideas for himself and often snatched the credit first. This lead to more bonuses being paid to the wrong person, if you like.

Now, my client felt he was ‘itching’ to be more assertive and take his new ideas to a higher rank at work so he himself could be recognised. And he did. How? Well, he arranged a meeting with the appropriate people; shared his ideas and proposed a strategy to move things forward. He also explained where he felt he fitted in with the new project. His bosses like it and it took off from there!

This man went from being consumed with worry and anxiety to being full of new ways of work and actually generated a new job at work for himself, with more bonuses.

Now, I am not saying that all of you out there can do this. What I am saying is that if you find you are ‘full up’ with worry about money – it is not productive or healthy. Making space in your life to make changes can be a better way of living a fuller life with more potential.