Self development

Back in December I talked about my first attempt at self hypnosis and my amazement at being able to, simply by imagining it, lift my own hand up using my subconscious.

Needless to say I didn't just leave it at that, and over the past few weeks I have done more self hypnosis. The wonderful thing is that I seem to be getting better and better at the whole hand levitation trick. A few days after my last blog post on the subject I was able to lift my whole arm, including my elbow, up above my head. I have repeated this exercise a number of times since then, and I feel that I have gotten much better at it, needing less time to start it off, and getting a much faster movement.

Despite this success, the biggest hurdle that I have been trying to overcome is the way in which, just like when other people try to hypnotise me, a return to conscious control never seems to be more than a misplaced thought away. I think this is why nobody has ever been able to, for example, "stick" my hand to anything. All I have to do is so much as think about consciously controlling my arm and I can feel the catalepsy instantly melt away.

Now, over Christmas I was given Igor Ledochowski's Deep Trance Training Manual Vol.1 as a present; I have found this incredibly useful and I highly recommend it. This books states that one important principle of hypnosis is that in a battle between imagination and will, imagination will always ultimately win. It was with this in mind that I came up with the following idea. What I did was I gave myself contradicting instructions. With my arm floating up in front of me I consciously directed it to fall, whilst at the same time holding onto the image of it still rising.

It worked! For several seconds my arm was actually rising even though I was consciously trying to force it down as hard as I could!

In fact it worked so well that, buoyed up by my success, I was somehow completely unable to repeat it despite making a couple of attempts. I have found this before too, that I will achieve something new, but it will then stop working, almost as though my mind becomes tired of trance and needs some time to recharge.

What does feel good though is that I do believe that I am getting better at this. Perhaps there is hope for me yet!

Of course I'm not jealous of the subjects I've had who've naturally been able to go from naught to somnambulism in less than 30 seconds. Most certainly not!