To start using this hypnosis technique find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Sit or lie down and start focusing on breathing slowly and deeply. Allow your eyes to close and allow your attention to drift over each part of your body relaxing every muscle in turn. So far this is just like any other self-hypnosis session. But this time you will use the technique of fractionating. When you are ready open your eyes and focus your attention on the outside world, it may help to stand move your arms to become present in your body. Do this for a few seconds, then breath deeply into your belly and let out a long drawn out sighing breath. This time you will go into a slightly deeper trance.

Repeat the above steps as many times as you wish, each time going into a slightly deeper trance. This way you’ll be teaching your mind and body what it’s like to go into trance and what a deep trance is like in a much shorter time than normal.

There are several benefits of being able to go into a deep trance. When you are in a deep hypnotic trance you can have a much greater ability to make changes at the unconscious level. Your critical factor will be completely disabled which will allow you to install positive affirmations and visualizations with ease. Keep practising the exercises I taught you in the other parts of this series and soon you’ll be reaping the benefits of knowing how to hypnotize yourself.

By now everyone knows how powerful positive affirmations and visualising your success is. Yet for so many people it doesn’t seem to work. First of all don’t doubt for a moment that mentally rehearsing successful behaviour works. For example neuro-scientists have found that the parts of our brain we use to act out real behaviour is exactly the same as the parts that we use when we imagine that behaviour, or see others doing it. So it has a real scientific basis.

The reason why a lot of people can’t get positive visualisations to work for them is because of two reasons. The first is that their current beliefs and behaviours are ingrained into their neurology to the extent that any visualisation of new beliefs and behaviours is rejected by their minds. The second is that humans possess something called the critical factor. This is a part of your mind that distinguishes between what it thinks is realistic and possible and things that are not. Whether the critical factor is correct in these assessments is irrelevant, it does its job in a way it sees fit to.

Hypnosis is the ideal tool to bypass the critical factor and to momentarily suspend your habitual beliefs and behaviour which means that when you are in a hypnotic trance… anything goes.

So your exercise for the next time you put yourself into a hypnotic trance (See: How to learn Self-Hypnisis: Exercise 1) is to visualise yourself doing the behaviour you think you need to do in order to reach your goals. So if you want to one day retire on a tropical island imagine yourself researching a new business idea, finding partners to work with and working efficiently and productively to make the business a success. The key is to not focus on the end goal (that would just be day-dreaming) but on the journey. You can either see yourself doing this from outside or experience it through your own eyes whatever feels best to you.

This is the best way to use positive visualisations and by learning how to do self-hypnosis you’ll be setting yourself up to make the most of this powerful tool. Learning how to hypnotize yourself is one of the most important things you can do to get ahead so I advise you keep practising and keep exploring.

This exercise is one that you can use to hypnotise yourself into a relaxed light trance and can be repeated as many times as you want in order to go into a deeper trance.

First of all find yourself a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Make sure you sit or lie down comfortably and start breathing deeply into your belly. This means that your belly moves in and out as you breath.

When you are ready, close your eyes. Take a deep breath in and as you exhale say to yourself in soft and relaxed voice: ‘I relax my feet’.

Again, breath in deeply and as you exhale say to yourself in an even more relaxed and deeper voice: ‘I relax my ankles’. Continue breathing and with every breath out say to yourself that you are relaxing a part of your body. Work your way up from your feet to the top of your head.

You can repeat the whole sequence as many times as you wish, each time going into an even deeper trance. However most people will usually feel warm and relaxed by the time they get to the top of their head. Once you are in this state you’ll be completely focused on your body and how good it feels, hardly aware of the outside world.

In this state you’ll be able to imagine all the wonderful things you want to experience in your life. So imagine achieving your goals and how you’ll set about achieving them in vivid detail.

Practising this every couple of days will teach your body how to relax and feel good and will program your unconscious mind to drive you towards the ideal life you vividly imagined in the trance state. This exercise teaches you the most important skill that you’ll need in order to start your journey in learning self-hypnosis, so practise it often. Soon you’ll be able hypnotize yourself easily in order to get the better results in your life.

Let me start off by telling you that it is true that hypnosis can help you in all areas of your life, weight loss, to stop smoking, to do more exercise, be more successful, procrastinate less and become more confident. The problem is that many people have misconceptions about what hypnosis is. Ask the average person what comes to mind when they think about hypnosis and they’ll probably imagine someone on stage asking volunteers to join, telling them their eyes are feeling heavy, then getting them to make animal noises. Of course that kind of act happens all the time, it’s called stage hypnosis. In stage hypnosis, the hypnotist actually looks for volunteers, people that volunteer to go on stage are naturally more outgoing and thus more willing to display a range of emotions and behaviours in front of people, couple this with the fact that they have the expectation that the hypnotists has power over them. That last point is actually the key to understanding all hypnosis, not just self-hypnosis.

The stage hypnotist takes advantage of the fact that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. A hypnotist can not make anyone go into a trance, they can only help you put yourself into a trance. The biggest secret in hypnosis is that a hypnotic trance is something that you do to yourself and is something you can get better at the more you practice. This is why the best hypnotists will actually help you go in and out of trance multiple times in a hypnosis session as this quickly teaches you what it is like to go into a trance. This is the one thing you need to remember when learning any kind of hypnosiss

How to hypnotize yourself: A simple exercise

To get started with self-hypnosis try this simple exercise. Sit or lie down in a quiet room where you won’t be disturbed. If you want close your eyes and breathe deeply into your belly. As you exhale say to yourself, quietly or in your mind: ‘I relax’. Keep doing this over and over as you slowly feel warm and relaxed all over your body. At this point you’ll be in a light trance where you are completely focused on your body and your mind with almost no awareness of what is going on in the outside world.

This is an ideal state to be in that will let you explore your emotion, motivations and beliefs. However in this exercise I want you to vividly imagine what kind of person you want to be. Imagine what your ideal self would do every moment of every day, what do you say to yourself, what activities do you do, how do people treat you and how do you treat them. You can focus on one particular part of your life or imagine a totally ideal life, whichever you choose. Once you’ve done this for as long as you feel necessary start listening for sounds in the outside world, feel the bed or chair underneath you and slowly bring your awareness back to the outside world. That concludes the first self-hypnosis exercise. It will help you shape how you feel about yourself and what you believe you deserve in life, it will reprogram your subconscious and eventually lead to real changes in your life.

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to self-hypnosis. And feel more confident that you can now hypnotize yourself. The more you practise the exercise the better you’ll get, and you’ll be building a strong foundation for your future endeavours in hypnosis.