How Hypnosis Works

For hypnosis to be successful, you should have an understanding of how the parasympathetic nervous system works. The preparation for hypnosis, the breath work, the movement of the eyes, and the relaxation process is what a body needs to relax, in general. 

The nervous system has two basic modes of action. Fight, flight and freeze is the sympathetic nervous system. It gives you the impetus to flee and run. However, when the parasympathetic nervous system doesn’t calm you after a surge of fight or flight chemicals, then you can become anxious. 

Learning how to activate the parasympathetic nervous system with hypnosis is the key to peace. 

I will give a detailed explanation of what I do to help you retreat from your anxious thinking. 

How Hypnosis Works

A Question to Ask Yourself

Here is the answer, first. I want you to memorize it. So, when you ask yourself the following question, there will be only one answer.

The Answer is: There is only one goal: peace of mind. 

The Question: What is the only thing that is important right now? 

Before you begin the process of erasure and hypnosis, there is only one important goal: to release the physical brain and body to make room for insight, creativity, and peace.

The Preliminary Exercise:

I prefer a recliner for hypnosis. The primary reason is to get your head above your heart. This position will provide a resting position but not likely lead you to sleep. If you use a bed, prop up your back and head with pillows. 

Begin with your eyes open. Move your eyes upward toward the ceiling and inhale for five or six seconds, think about gathering light, peace, and healing from wherever you imagine those powers exist—in heaven, on Earth, within you, or in nature. 

As you exhale, move your eyes toward your toes, using the exhale to let go of all negativity. I imagine the negatives going out of the bottom of my feet. 

Use either five or six seconds to inhale and exhale without any space between the inhales and exhales. When you balance the inhales with the exhales, you:

1.     Slow down your heart rate; and 

2.    Lower your blood pressure.

Do this sequence with the breath and eye movement three to ten times, depending on how relaxed you are when you begin. 

Sometimes, I spend more time on balancing my breaths because I start out wired and anxious. If I’m already relaxed, I may not need to work as hard to get my heart rate and blood pressure under control.

Before we begin the eight steps to relaxation, ask yourself: What is the only thing that is important right now?

See if you can remember the answer.

How Hypnosis Works

1.    Positioning the Eyeballs and Eyelids

Gently close your eyes. Raise your eyeballs up and down, side to side, noticing what color you see with your eyelids closed. This is an exercise for the mind. The color you see is what we will refer to as the canvas of your mind. 

You’ll notice that when you close your eyes, the color of the canvas doesn’t change with the movement of the eyeballs. 

The open eyes are connected to the computer brain. The closed eyes are connected to the mind or your creative, inductive source. What you see with closed eyes (no matter the color: black, grey, orange, white, multiple colors…) is what you see with your mind, using your imagination.

With this knowledge, imagine that on the canvas of your mind you draw a circle the size of a cruise ship window. Notice you can see outside the window in your mind.

Stare up at the circle in your mind. Know that this circle is a doorway to another dimension outside of the canvas of your mind. The window can have a beautiful butterfly beckoning you from the outside to fly away with it. 

Carefully notice every color of the rainbow in the butterfly’s body. Also, imagine the window is a doorway from your thinking brain to your dreaming mind. 

Begin to intensify your stare through this window onto the canvas of your mind’s imagination, as if you are trying to discover what is on the other side of the window. 

As you stare, you should feel that your pupils are dilating or the muscles in the back of your eyes are relaxing and expanding. 

Now, as you continue to stare, check to see if your eyelids feel locked. (Don’t try to force them open! Simple try gently to open them.) 

If they do feel locked, you can move on to the next step.

Don’t forget to remain staring while you try to open your eyelids. The act of staring with a strong gaze should lock the eyelids.

You need to accomplish the locking of the eyelids before the next step. Practice until this method or the alternative method below works. One of these methods will work. I’ve never had anyone not be able to do one or the other.

The Alternative Method

The following method is a more traditional hypnotic approach. It’s called a walk-down, using the connection of your open eyes to the brain. 

While in the reclined position, begin by staring up at the ceiling—at any point. Staring at one point slows down the brain. 

Count back slowly from 20 to 1. When you get to one, gently close your eyes with your eyeballs still pointed upwards at that point. Don’t lose focus, even though you gently close your eyes. 

2.    Accessing the Mind

Once your eyelids are closed and locked, what you see before you is with the inductive, dreaming, and creative side of the brain’s function. 

Though I’m creating a difference and clarification here between the inductive side of the brain and the mind, I see 0ne as an extension of the other. The inductive brain leads you to the mind, yet the inductive part of the brain and the mind together are the function of the human brain that causes dreams and intuition to flow through you. 

The bliss people feel while meditating and in a successful hypnosis session is when they experience this weightless space through the channel of their brain. 

Without keeping some part of the brain awake, there would be no chance that your human self could physically and mentally experience this existential peace. 

3.    Distinguish the difference! 

Your mind is not your computer brain. The mind is the place where your dreams, your intuition, and creative images exist. 

As you peer into the darkness, beneath your eyelids, you use your mind only. 

Continue to look through the lens of your mind onto the canvas and through an imaginary window while you begin the first breathing exercise. 

Yogis have been using this partially awake-mostly asleep phenomenon for centuries. The asana, or movement practice in yoga is to lead your fatigued body to total relaxation while still being conscious. The practice of shavasana at the end of the of yoga class is designed to let go of the physical body and become aware of only the breath, the pranayama. 

4.   Progressive Release of the Body

The objective of this exercise is to unhook from all of the control of the body as you continue to observe. 

Try to imagine now that you are floating up near the round window on the ceiling. Pretend you can see your own physical body beneath you. It’s as if your mind now holds a remote control for all of your body, mind, and even your breath control. 

Imagine the observer is holding the strings of a marionette doll—you. And you are progressively cutting the strings that control your body. 

If you notice that any muscle in your body is particularly tight, with the remote control of your mind, tighten that muscle even more, hold that muscle for three seconds, then release it. This should take care of releasing any muscle tension in the physical body. You might want to do this progressively from the feet up to the top of the head.

After you finish, take another sweeping look from the remote-control center on the ceiling to see if any residual tension exists in the physical body. To rest completely you must get all of the muscles in your physical body to feel completely free of tension. 

They must feel weightless. Objectively, you want to feel as if the entire body is no longer being controlled by the brain and is motionless. 

A hypnotist may say to you, “You could move your legs if you wanted to, but they are so relaxed that it’s difficult to imagine moving them. In fact, you can’t move them at all. It feels magical and light for your legs to be released from your brain. 

“Your arms, hands, and feet, also, feel completely released from your control.  Your body feels light. You could float right off of the recliner.”

When you have accomplished this, on your last breath, feel as if you are breathing out your Spirit or your consciousness out of your physical body through the portal, window with the butterfly. Let your spirit fly freely without the body.

Let your physical body rest completely. Observe your body but let it rest completely. It deserves to rest. Your body and mind deserve to rest. 

5.    Release the Control of the Breath

You are not giving away control of any part of you in this portion of the exercise. You are providing a way to the observer mind.

To accomplish this, you must imagine your consciousness is outside your body. Feel your breath happening to you. Let your body breathe you.

Lead the body and mind through its natural stages of release. Some may experience quick breaths as they observe the body. Others may feel as if the body is lying still for a long time before it needs the next breath. Nothing you feel or experience is bad or wrong. It’s important to remember not to judge what happens during this process. 

Just observe your humanness and take your time to let go of it. If it helps, imagine that you have angels or positive spiritual influences all around you. The angels will take care of your human body while you leave it for your journey into the dream state of your mind. We don’t need the physical body or brain to experience the next phase of this exercise.

6.   Try Not to Let the Natural Impulses of the Body Interrupt Your Rest

As you pull away from the control of the body, realize that the body doesn’t need to move or itch itself or reposition itself. You don’t need to move, because you are imagining what the body would be like during sleep. It doesn’t need your attention while you sleep. You don’t even need to respond to a sudden itch, a cough, or a random movement. Just observe the body and its issues. 

7.    Ego Resistance

You may notice that the ego doesn’t want to be left alone or dismissed. Imagine the ego is pure narcissism. You may cough or choke and wonder if you need some water. You may… But remember, the ego is really trying hard to keep you awake and anxious. That’s its job. However, you really want to find the path to the mind, so you listen and comfort your body, but simply appease and nothing more. 

Recognize that your body is acting more like the little child who doesn’t want to go to bed. You are the parent trying too hard to comfort him at your own expense. The child is manipulating you. So, you shut off the light and say, “Okay, now Daddy has to go to sleep. So, if you call to me again, I may not hear you. I’ll be asleep.” 

You must teach your body to trust your mind. It deserves your trust. The mind is the strongest and most important part of your thinking functions as humans. 

A petulant child needs your attention and your care, but he or she doesn’t need you to intercede or scold it every time he or she acts up. If you were to do that to a child, the child would get the impression that it had to act up to get your attention. 

So, too, with the body. The body is like your own child at this point of the learning process. Coddle it, but also be stern so you will not indulge it and teach it bad habits. You have already put your child to bed. With certainty, she doesn’t need any water. He doesn’t need to go to the bathroom. She doesn’t need food. 

The child is ready for bed, even though he or she wants your attention and may even cry and tug at your heartstrings. With love, you carefully remove yourself from the child’s room, perhaps leaving a light on or a stuffed animal beside him to help him feel safer. 

A careful balance exists here between the crying child’s body and the all-knowing parent. Learning to fall asleep is about finding this balance between parenting and gently resisting the need to coddle the crying baby within.

You’ll never get to sleep if you keep wondering if the baby is sick or thinking she is afraid. The baby will be okay on its own because you have checked it thoroughly the first time she cried. It’s important to establish this kind of safety with a baby; otherwise, a parent would never sleep. 

We have all heard horror stories about babies with all-night tantrums. Perhaps, they had never been taught to be alone. Being alone and feeling safe is a learned behavior. 

When a parent returns to the room all night, over and over again, or when the baby is truly hungry, the baby begins to understand that love returns, and it doesn’t need to behave poorly for attention. 

This metaphor is so important, because with absolute certainty you will return to your body when you’re ready to feed it or do whatever it needs to be comfortable the next morning or after your rest.

You must encourage yourself each time this exercise in persistence works, to establish trust in the process. You are not that abandoned child. You are a trusting baby with a great parent who returns when the child is truly in need. 

After you successfully leave autonomous control to your body, you feel liberated emotionally, physically, and spiritually. This is a peculiar paradigm, though, because you can now feel as if your mind is like that remote control center of your body. You could control it from outside yourself, if you wanted. 

You are not trapped in this position. You want to be here, so it’s easy to let go to these annoying ego sensations.

One caveat: if you do have a persistent cough, tell yourself that once the coughing stops, you will very easily return to your quiet space. “Coughing or sneezing will not prevent you from total rest.” I have plenty of clients who are trying to quit smoking and have smoker’s cough. I suggest to them that they probably cough throughout the night, but they sleep in spite of the cough. This is the same circumstance. 

This liberated place outside of the body is now free from the physical attention the ego brain. You will get excellent and perpetual love while sleeping and all the mental rest that meditation affords.

If you feel something different than peace in this place outside of the body, you are not in the perfect peace of the mind. You are in the computer brain, lost somewhere and needing directions back home. 

When You Get Lost in a Thought

If you get stuck, feel trapped, or find yourself in an old thought, just start back at the beginning and make another attempt at finding home. You may need to experience this new pathway many times before you memorize the direction to your destiny. 

Don’t be annoyed with the trying. This is a process, a practice. Eventually, you won’t need to practice as many times to get to the parasympathetic nervous system’s response. However, be like the athlete in training. Do this as many times as you need to be a success. 

Your only other option in the metaphor is to stay awake all night. You might as well use this time to learn to sleep.

Without beating yourself up with thoughts of never being able to achieve this result, simply begin again.  Trust that the peace for which you search exists outside of your computer brain. This is the main goal. Don’t pay attention to any voice in your brain that tells you stories—probably trying even harder now—to get your attention. 

Spirit speaks in images. 

So, you can release the voices of chaos for now and simply search with your inner eyes for the peace you deserve and require.

8.   Invite Your Imagination to Begin to Dream

Remember how the actor trains to say his lines with depth and meaning? Sometimes we need this mental equivalent to provide a clear emotional memory to help us along to an authentic feeling. 

This mental equivalent helps us to imagine something like the person who loves you the most in the world holds you. Experience being wrapped up in that love. 

You could also guide yourself safely out of your body into an angel’s arms. Remember the definition for angel is helper. Let your angel friend help you fly in a shuttle to your favorite place in the universe—the safest, happiest place for your soul. 

My special destination is often the beach or on top of a mountain, above the clouds in Maui. This is a perfect mental equivalent, because of how they have impacted my soul in the past. 

Up to this point, you have been controlling this entire process. Now it’s time to let go completely. Even let go of your imagination. Just stare into the black space beyond the canvas of your mind… with an empty stare. 

You don’t need to blink, because your eyes are closed, so just stare. Simply stare as if you are surrounded by benevolent spiritual beings.

Let dreams happen. You can invite dreams by letting go, but you can’t make them happen.

You can’t make a dream. Dreams come to you. They float up from your subconscious mind. Give them silence and space.

Just let your silent gaze reveal your dream’s destiny. You are totally letting go to whatever peace and assurance this moment has for you. It’s safe now to let go completely.

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The purpose of this blog is to realize that the stories in the brain are impulses from Spirit to help us heal, if we are willing to take the time to understand our own pain. Most of us want to avoid it. But, if you are tired of reliving your stories over and over again, try learning to become the observer of your mind. Restore and Renew Your Mind. Finding out more about the Stages of Grief.

GIVE IT A TRY.

With 31 years of experience and a new, great office in beautiful Fort Lauderdale, Hypnosis on Las Olas creates a clear path to health and prosperity for many people in South Florida. I will help put you on the road to peace of mind and keep you there, so that you may rewrite your prosperous story daily and learn the True Meaning of Healing: “Your New Story, Your New Life.”

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