This Package is Ideal
for you, if:
- You're
intelligent, and curious about hypnosis, or
- You just want to
understand more about hypnosis, or
- You want to use
hypnosis to help yourself and others, or
- You might add
hypnosis to your professional toolkit, or
- You're considering
studying hypnotherapy as a career.
You are about to discover how easy it
is to hypnotize other people and what safeguards and
responsibilities that entails.
By the time you've
finished reading you will have a greater understanding of:
- What hypnosis is
- What it can be
used for
- What you can
accomplish with it.
Who can you
safely hypnotize? People who could benefit from positive
suggestions. And who have no underlying pathology. Likely candidates
are people who want to:
- Overcome exam
anxiety
- Enhance sports
performance
- Stop smoking
- Achieve specific
goals
- Amplify their
creativity
You can induce
hypnosis, give such people the positive suggestions they've
requested and feel great about helping them.
Hypnosis is currently riding a wave
of popularity among the public.
There are no side
effects with hypnosis; it can relieve or banish so many
psychological and physical ills -- and it's easy to learn.
Not only will you
gain first-hand knowledge from the inside, so to speak, but you'll
also enjoy the process, and obtain relief from your own problems.
The rewards are
immense. Not only can you help millions of people achieve lifelong
goals and health benefits, but you can also earn a decent living
doing so if you wish.
HAVE A LOOK AT SOME OF THE CONTENTS :
Chapter 1: Simple connections .
In this
chapter some simple practical examples are given which allow the
reader to explore in person and with others some of the obvious
things about the way in which the mind and body work. In particular
attention is a drawn to the way in which activity in one part or
subsystem of the brain can lead quite naturally, but usually in a
little time, to activity in another part. But the speed and quality
of the response varies from person to person. These results are
related to "tests of hypnotisability" and to "hypnotic inductions":
which are ways in which they have been regarded in the past.
Chapter 2: Switching off systems.
In which we explore various ways in which muscular
relaxation can be induced. The main systems used to do this include
the verbal, visual, emotional, musical and humorous. We end with a
sample compound induction script.
Chapter 3: The visual imagination
We explore the visual imagination, which is
enormously rich and varied. This is a tool much used in hypnosis and
so it is valuable to explore its natural processes in many people,
including yourself. You may agree that one of the main functions you
have when helping another to explore his or her imagination is in
helping to maintain focus, primarily by asking questions. The
question of what kind of meaning such an exploration gives is left
open. There are a wide variety of interpretation schemes which you
will find: I simply urge you to keep at least TWO such possibilities
in mind so that you are less likely to jump to unjustifiable
conclusions. Sometimes the asking of questions will help to resolve
a conflict between two interpretations. The material you find is
seldom strange by the standard of dreams.
Chapter 4: Directing and Controlling the Imagination
The visual imagination can not only be used for
exploration, it can be guided and directed. This chapter provides
exercises to develop this ability. The specifics used are to imagine
a place, then a strange element in it, then a changed, floating
viewpoint, then a floating journey. Next the ability to change
images is used to change a small memory; then developed to see if a
completely different life can be pictured. This chapter should teach
you how much can be done with the imagination in many people without
any "induction" or other hypnotic techniques.
Chapter 5: Exploring "Inductions"
In this chapter for the first time we will meet some
processes which have been passed down the years as being ways of
producing some dramatic changes in the functioning of people. These
are what have been called "hypnotic inductions". We start with a
close look at an induction used by James Braid, the father of
hypnotism. Then some others, again from well-known names in the
history of our subject, are given more briefly for you to try. The
question of whether as a result of such inductions a given person
will respond more readily to suggestions is one that you can explore
practically. Some reasons are given why such inductions may have
been more successful in the past, and need modifying for the present
day.
Chapter 6: Posthypnotic suggestions
Posthypnotic suggestions are a large part of what
people regard as typical of hypnosis. We start by comparing it with
the common phenomenon of social compliance: the fact that people
quite normally will do what another asks them to do. A description
of a subject (Nobel Prizewinner Richard Feynman) is used to
illustrate what it feels like to carry out a post hypnotic
suggestion. Both phenomena are based on establishing a causal
connection between two subsystems of the brain. Some exercises are
suggested for you to find out how easy it is under ordinary
conditions to establish such a causal connection between two
subsystems of the brain, so that you can (as in the previous
chapter) later compare the ease of doing the same after a
preliminary induction. In fact the usual word to describe the
creation of a causal link between two systems is learning!
And you are asked to consider the conditions under which learning is
most likely to happen well. I suggest that a focused attention
is generally best. However this matter is complicated by the
fact that the brain consists of very many subsystems and we may
consider each to be capable of independent attention, or arousal. To
explore this exercises are given aiming at maintaining the attention
of just one subsystem (in this case that connected to fingers) while
conscious attention subsides.
Chapter 7: Resistance and Rapport
We focus on high-order mental systems: those which
determine whether to accept or reject statements made by another.
The ability to reduce the resistance and increase rapport is an
important part of hypnosis. This highly practical chapter gives
exercises which take the form of two-person games which may be used
to increase your skills in this way. We run through making
impersonal statements; statements about yourself and then personal
statements about another person: all in an everyday setting. Then,
in a more "hypnotic" setting, we practice making every statement of
an induction totally acceptable and then a series of personal
suggestions acceptable. The question of the difference between the
system of active resistance and active rapport is discussed. No
specific exercises are given for building up the latter: though you
can find out by asking a few extra questions after the previous
exercises how well you are doing. It is suggested that high levels
of rapport depend on being good at hypnosis, on being honest to
yourself, but on top of that there seem to be some innate
characteristics that will make rapport between yourself and certain
other people arise naturally.
Chapter 8: Bringing it all together
The main lessons are summarized. And then the rest
of the chapter is directed at giving you a variety of goals -
changes that you might make in a subject - in order to practice and
expand on what you have learned. Many of these are accompanied by
hints on how to go about them. The advantages of writing out scripts
for yourself at this stage are presented.
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