How to hypnotise yourself for less stress

We’ve all experienced stress at some point in our lives. A lot of us are walking around unconsciously holding stress in our bodies. It’s been there like a burden, gradually destroying our health. I’m going to introduce you to the 60 second anti-stress exercise. Once you have rehearsed this a few times you will be able to significantly reduce your stress levels whenever you need.

Now, the important thing here is to note that this is a form of self-hypnosis … not in the ’spooky swinging-watch look-into-my-eyes’ type … but the sort of hypnosis that allows you to be in total control of how you are feeling. (Shhhhh …. this is one of the secrets of hypnosis - shifting state!)

So how do you change state in 60 seconds? You’ll have to rehearse a bit but the key is to immerse yourself in a real or imagined memory of something pleasant … not as an intellectual thing, but as a full sensory remembering.

Try the following:

1. Make sure you are in a safe, non-disturbed environment (at least when you start-off to practice this).
2. Close your eyes and recall a time when you experienced a wonderful feeling of release … perhaps on a holiday or going to the beach for the weekend, or the picnic you took with your family or the romantic date you had when …
3. Begin by imagining you can see the memory from a birds-eye viewpoint and as you do imagine floating down into the ‘you’ that is in that memory … as if you were there.
4. Run the scene in your imagination as a movie … as if you were there.
5. See things in color and as you do, recall any sounds that were there … sounds that you can hear now in this scene you are participating in.
6. Take the feeling that you begin to feel and let it amplify in your body.
7. Bask in the imagined memory, first person, surround sound, with the feeling you felt then welling through you in the present.
8. And taking a deep breat, gently open your eyes.

You should have quite dramatically changed your state by doing the above exercise. Learning how to hypnotize yourself isn’t as difficult as you might imagine! Practice it. Try different memories. Fantasy works as well … use your imagination. Find out which ‘re-living’ example brings about the biggest state shift.

Make a promise to yourself to become more aware of when you are holding onto stress and use that as a trigger to do the exercise.