Self-hypnosis is more about controlling the mind rather than mind control. Its purpose is to get in touch with the subconscious mind, to explore it and manipulate it by becoming familiar with the subconscious. With this ability, you will strengthen the subconscious and take full advantage of it. By practicing self-hypnosis, you will be able to link your conscious mind to the subconscious. Once you have done that, you will be able to correct bad habits you may have such as anxiety, fears and low self-esteem.
The subconscious is basically the sum total of all our past experiences, both negative and positive. Think of the subconscious as a store room for anything and everything that has happened in your life. These experiences may not be remembered unless there is some sort of ‘trigger’ in your life. For example, you decided to ride a Ferris wheel at a fair. As the wheel begins, you suddenly feel uncomfortable, even though you have never been on a Ferris wheel before. Then the uncomfortable feeling turns into fear, a fear that you really can’t understand. When you finally get off the ride, you are a little shaken up and more than happy to be off the wheel. That night, when you have relaxed and getting ready for sleep; you remembered a childhood incident when you had fallen off your garage roof and broke your arm.
At that moment, you had reached your subconscious with a past experience you had forgotten, until the Ferris wheel ‘triggered’ that memory. This is an example of how you linked your conscious mind with your subconscious mind. In the example above, the experience was random and unexpected. With self-hypnosis, you will be able to get in touch with those forgotten memories and impressions you had formed in the past and reprogram the subconscious mind.
Because the subconscious stores past memories, we can attach emotions to them, which is also stored in the subconscious. The uncomfortable feeling you had on the Ferris wheel turned into the emotion of fear, which is probably what you experienced while falling from the garage.
When you learn self-hypnosis, you can tap into those old memories, which will help you first in understanding your reactions in life and consciously change those behaviors. Self-hypnosis is a great stress reducer as well.
Self-hypnosis can be achieved by sitting or lying down in a quiet area and breath slowly by breathing in through your mouth to the count of four then releasing your breath slowly, also to the count of four. You should concentrate on what it is you want to change, but you may want to begin with an easier task, like just relaxing. Count backwards from 10, slowly and repeat this as often as necessary. Begin to relax your body by focusing your attention on your feet, going up through the legs and up through the body to the head. Once you begin to relax, let the counting fade as you focus more on relaxing. After you have achieved a desired state of relaxation, start counting from 10 to one and tell yourself you will be fully awake and fully relaxed.
Another good way of practicing self-hypnosis is to purchase a self-hypnosis tape or CD, which will guide you into hypnosis. Once you have practiced with a tape, you should have no problem being able to do this on your own.
Conrad Raw is an expert in practical techniques for personal and spiritual development. He is the author of "Forbidden Secrets of Personal and Energetic Development." He travels the world to learn and teach and is the founder of www.greaterhumanpotential.com a website devoted to bringing you easy to learn techniques to increase your human evolution. Visit his website for a free newsletter filled with tons of great tips and advice.