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Alter Your Experience - The Art of Self Hypnosis (Work in progress)

Sections:

  • Alter Your Experience - Section 0: Provides a framework for self hypnosis and a pep talk.
  • Section 1 - Foundations: Discusses the Seven Steps to Self-Hypnosis ritual.
  • Section 2 - Core Skills: Improve effectiveness.
  • Section 3 - Advanced Self Hypnosis Flows: WOW POWERFUL TOOLS (dealing with specific issues like IBS.)

Section 0

Before you begin

  • Beliefs
    • Act like what you do makes a difference - it does.
    • Fake it ‘till you make it.
    • Pause, notice, and note down changes you’d like to make.
    • Believe in the process, believe in the possibility, expect positive outcomes. Use self-affirmation mantras.
    • References: William James (1896), Albert Bandura (success expectancy) (1997)
  • Propensities
    • Use imagination, vivid sensory experiences, and curiosity to your advantage
    • Nurture creativity through creative output (storytelling, drawing, music, whatever)
    • Reduce distractions and immerse yourself in sensory experiences
    • Develop a deep curiosity on how these techniques will work
    • Exercises:
      • Pause for 60 seconds to immerse yourself in your sensory experience.
      • Pause reading for 60 seconds and reflect - notice shifts in your experience.
  • Attitudes
    • Resilience, Flexibility, and Self-Compassion
    • Be persistent - failures are an opportunity to learn in this context.
    • Be flexible and experiment.
    • Don’t rush the process - embrace it.
    • Exercises:
      • Journal your progress. Reflect and journal that right now.

Understanding your approach

  • References - Fromm & Kahn 1990 on understanding if you have a structured or intuitive approach to learning.
  • Structured
    • Qualities: Following instructions, knowing the process, goal-oriented
    • Maximizing: Following structure, be consistent, tailor the structure
    • Exercise: Notice how it feels to go along
  • Intuitive
    • Qualities: Flexible process, trust your intuition, and exploratory.
    • Maximizing: Mix and match techniques, adaptability, reflect and adjust (iterate)
    • You can mix and match these components - shift your approaches through the process.
  • Structured and Intuitive Exercises:
    • Explore your own thoughts - getting close to using metacognition to adapt your approach.
    • Write down what you think your approach is.

You have an innate capacity for change

  • Exercise: consider - what was the last time you adapted to a challenge? (What internal resource helped you?) This helped you change.

The Role of Culture and Practice

They brand self hypnosis as - well, a ritual…

Many self-hypnosis practices have origins in ancient traditions going back thousands of years. Practices such as meditation, mindfulness, prayer, chanting, dance, song, and storytelling have been integral parts of cultures worldwide for millennia. These traditions provide frameworks that encourage personal exploration, healing, and connection (Winkelman, 2011).

The ritual is the tool we use to access these resources, not the mechanism through which they work.

Recognizing our Natural Abilities

  • We can self modify our experience and representation of reality. EG - seeing a needle as a feather when being injected.

Empowering Self-Directed Practice

You already have these abilities to shift awareness for change. Don’t search for them, just use them when you need.

Defining the Practice

/me adds this to the bucket of hypnosis definitions uwu

Self-hypnosis is the intentional and skillful practice of directing your attention and harnessing your imagination to alter perceptions and experiences in pursuit of specific outcomes.

Jacquin, Anthony. Alter Your Experience: The Art of Self-Hypnosis (p. 28). Anthony Jacquin. Kindle Edition.

Exercise:

  • Focus on your breath without altering it. Breathing is a fundamental tool of altering your experience.
  • They suggest a 6/6 breathing exercise (6 seconds in, 6 seconds out)
  • Our breathing has changed to be more rapid in America, we should breathe through our nose, and we should slow down. They cite James Nestor 2021 - Breath.

Embracing Personal Transformation

This is a personal experience - personalize it.

Section 1 - Self-Hypnosis

Introduction to Self-Hypnosis

The science of hypnosis and self-hypnosis is still developing.

The Evolution of Self-Hypnosis

(I’m skipping this for now - not because I’m not interested - I want to really digest this information instead of skimming it. I might not recommend it for book club.)

Integrating Historical Insights Into Modern Practice

I think we should read this in book club.

  • Setting the Scene - Sounds and Atmosphere
  • Cultivating Self-Empathy: Building Trust and Self-Rapport
  • Harnessing Imagination and Autosuggestion
  • Cognitive Rehearsal: Conditioning Positive Changes
  • Focused Attention and Mindfulness
  • Recognizing and Using Your Natural Abilities

Show me the Evidence

(Skip for now, may not recommend for book club, but I’m interested.)

Self-Reliance, Self-control, and Self-efficacy

  • Reflect on the previous section and think about how hypnosis might help you manage your issues.
  • Reflect on what you want to improve with self hypnosis.
  • Take 60s and visualize what this might look and feel like.
  • Commit to a routine.

Seven Steps to Self Hypnosis

The first three steps are the most important - the rest are icing on the cake.

  1. (Foundational) Stop
  2. (Foundational) Sit
  3. (Foundational) Sense
  4. Set - Figure out your future and shit, aligned with you.
  5. Suggest - Use a tool to make change.
  6. Surface - Get out of hypnosis, but in a cool way.
  7. Set-Off - How to do this on the fly.

Step 1 - Stop

  • Imagine…
    • someone, with the same authority of a teacher in a noisy room, as a voice inside of your own head telling you to stop.
    • A big stop sign visually. Imagine it cutting through your sensations.
  • The intention is to interrupt everything for just a moment.
  • Put everything else aside.
  • Use your 6/6 breathing as a focus point.
  • This interruption is your foundation for change.

Steps:

  • Stop and interrupt everything, pausing.
  • Use 6/6 breathing. Focus on your breath and the current moment.
  • See yourself as “the calm within the storm.”

Take a Breath and Create an Island of Being are structured similarly in the book, but I don’t want to just like - rip the whole thing off. So, here’s an overview.

  • Take a Breath
    • Move your attention to your breathing. Use the 6/6 breathing method. Place your hand on your belly to bring awareness there.
    • Keep your breathing comfortable for at least 10 cycles. Become aware of how relaxing it is to your body. Use a manta. EG: “With each breath out, calmness flows through me, bringing my attention back to the present.”
  • Create an Island of Being
    • Simply be aware of the current moment. Self-suggest pausing your flow, stillness and awareness.

They highlight…

  • Consistency in practice - do this regularly.
  • Do this in a quiet place to practice. (It’s easier to learn to swim in a pool rather than when you need it after taking some cheap tickets on the Titanic.)
  • Increase the amount of time you focus on your breathing, for up to 20 minutes.
Reflection Questions

This stuff feels like CBT to maximize the ritual’s effectiveness. Reflect on:

  • When do you feel overwhelmed? How might this exercise help?
  • What was it like when you ‘stopped?’
  • How would incorporating this ritual help?
  • Does the gesture make it more effective?
  • How’s the 6/6 breathing doin’ for ya? How’s your mood and mental clarity change after 60s?
  • How could you incorporate this into your day-to-day casually?
  • What would fuck this practice up? Think up some strategies to work around or with those circumstances.
  • How will this help you practice self hypnosis later? (I mean, I know, but if this was my only resource on hypnosis so far, I’d be like… ‘uhhhhhh’)
  • What commitments can you make to doing this exercise?

Set the bar so low that you cannot fail.

Jacquin, Anthony. Alter Your Experience: The Art of Self-Hypnosis (p. 68). Anthony Jacquin. Kindle Edition.

References: Kabat-Zinn 1990 - STOP Stop; Take a Breath, Observe, and Proceed

Step 2 - Sit

Described in a few ways - here’s how to sit:

Don’t:

  • remember
  • imagine
  • think
  • examine
  • (want to) control (EG - don’t think about how much you want to change your experience) …just chill and experience.

(These are obviously covered in more detail in the book.)

Some tips on sitting:

  • Sit upright but alert.
  • Self-suggest what you’re doing with your inner voice.
    • Reasonable voice: “I’m seated comfortably, able to relax and ready to experience what I experience, feel what I feel, and notice what I notice. Distractions do not bother me.”
    • Gremlin fishmatist voice: “I am sitting my happy ass down. I am my happy ass. Nothing matters but how comfortable and happy my happy ass is.”
  • If you can’t keep your eyes closed, let your focus gently rest on a single point.
  • Self-suggest the previous don’ts. EG - “let the effort of analysis leave through the next breath.”
  • It’s OK if…
    • your attention wanders - just gently bring it back to the present moment
    • you need shorter sessions
    • your improvement is incremental (this is supposed to be a building block)
Reflection Questions

The usual CBT style reframing questions… The book does a better job of this - but here’s the quick notes.

What’s this mean to you? When was the last time you did this? Are you a control freak? What happens when you try to let go? When was the last time shifting your focus to the moment helped? What suggestions feel the hardest? How would this help? Has your “relationship with sitting” changed? How does sitting help?

References: Tilopa’s (988-1069) Six Nails, Ken Mcleod 2024, Alan Watts 1957

Step 3 - Sense

All about being aware of your current sensations.

  • Sensing is an active process. (Personal note - be curious about your sensations - it’ll help you avoid labeling.)
  • Sticking a label on something can help you let go of something. EG…
    • Good: Oh, that’s my phone in my back pocket. (Goes back to sensing and letting go.)
    • Less ideal: Oh, that’s my phone in my back pocket. Ugh, I should have put that on the desk. Is that a notification I feel? I wonder if my boyfriend is texting to rearrange my insides. I should clean the place up.
  • Metacognition and dissociation. Or “I am experiencing pain” vs “OW FUCK.”
  • If we’re trying to get back to our metacognition and we get distracted, get a label sticker, slap that bad boy on there and call that “a thought” or “thinking,” and let it go. Labeling is a shortcut so you don’t end up down the rabbit hole of the direction of the thought.
  • More dissociation:
    • “Treat your mind as an observed entity.”
    • Reframe and compartmentalize - “I’m having the thought that I’m an anxious wreck” rather than “I am an anxious wreck.”
  • Your perspective should be curious. The universe is not stranger than we think it is, it’s stranger than we can even imagine. (Or from the quote from JBS they use “queerer than we can suppose…”) Which is a great thought but you should see my twitter feed.
    • The book suggests this is accepting feelings and “surrendering,” but this feels like active and automatic reframing.
  • Accepting that negative thoughts exist is easier than trying to not have them.

Sense tips:

  • This is… pretty much the same as the previous section.
  • You might notice tingling, weight, temperature, your heartbeat (anywhere in your body)
  • You can label with the VAK system (I’m hearing, feeling, or seeing)
  • Gradually shift your awareness to include more - notice the speed of change.

Key considerations:

  • Be curious
  • Label and observe
  • Go back to noticing your breathing (or whatever your anchor is)

References: Nyannasatta 1994, Mahasi Sayadaw 1971, Assaz 2018 (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ACT), John Burbon Sanderson 1927

I’m not particularly interested in the rebranded CBT section here.

Step 4 - Set

They suggest shifting from goals to what you’d like your overall legacy to be. I don’t like either of these approaches, and there’s not a lot of meat in this chapter.

  • Write down your legacy statement, and it can be your guide.
  • Imagine how this looks and feels from every angle.

If you want to go this angle, I’d recommend the tools page at Clearer Thinking as an alternative. Perhaps explore some of the goal-setting approaches, or take the Intrinsic Values Test for fun.

Step 5 - Suggest

They kick this chapter off by downplaying the need for trance and hypnotic induction for creating change - which I’m on board with, but can take a bit of the fun out of the experience.

Engagement can be receptive or active. They provide plenty (like 10) example suggestions for each group. I might go back and dig out my favorites here. This is another place where the book will shine in comparison to my summary.

Active:
  • Engagement: motivation and goal visualization, visualizing your way through a situation, affirmations (mantras,) not procrastinating and time management, planning and finding solutions, habituation
  • Assertion: Shifting your emotional response to take control - EG: visualizing yourself with swagger during that talk, or reminding yourself how sexy it is not to eat the rest of the cookies you just baked. (BRB…)
  • Focused Concentration: Mantras, visualization (counting, colors, scenes, an emotion) focus on interoception (breath, feeling)
  • Integrative Synthesis: A fancy way of suggesting the importance of your past experiences and applying them towards the current situation. Seeing the self in various temporal senses, self-reflection on values and spirit
  • Reflective Awareness: CBT, journaling, tracking state behavior and emotion, analysis (behavior, emotion, dialogue), self-compassion, your strengths and sore-spots, intentions
  • Curiosity: Non-judgemental exploration of the self, techniques, feelings, emotions, sensations, reframing dreams, or imaginative roleplay
Passive:
  • Mindful presence: Apply metacognition to everything. Walking, eating, emotions, farting. Put a bird on it.
  • Intuitive insight: Trusting your gut and your first responses. “Energy reading (auroas).”
  • Emotional Release: Catharsis. Embrace your emotions and fully experience them. Shaking exercises ala Urban Tantra and not like Ratshaker, scream it out, go exercise. (This area looks like processing your emotions to bring closure. Don’t reinforce your trauma.)
  • Compassionate Self-Care: Love yourself. I’m allergic to this stuff, but you can look up loving kindness or call taking a walk a self-care ritual. A lot of folks habituate gamer rage - it doesn’t look helpful but🍿let me know how it works out for you.
  • Resting state: Imagine yourself at the beach or do some fucking yoga. (I’m a bit salty at this point - but… I really should do some yoga.)
  • Overwhelmed State: Emotional self regulation. Ground yourself. It suggests calming music but KMFDM hits the spot for me.
  • Creative Exploration: Creative output - music, symbolic journey, draw, write, whatever.
  • Open Receptivity: Let thoughts flow. Either internally or with output (automatic drawing, writing, etc.)

Creating your Self Hypnosis Flows

Build your own ritual. Here’s what they suggest:

  • Figure out what you want out of your session.
  • Pick your hypnotic tools.
  • Sequence the session.
  • Iterate.

This chunk is like a cookbook for various (25ish) issues. If you’re into this sort of self-help, this might be genuinely helpful for you. I’ve got a salty take on this sort of therapy - it feels dismissive. It’s like throwing an asprin at someone that just broke their leg depending on the severity. I can see so much of this shit backfiring if misapplied.

Many of the suggestions here are repeats. It’s not bad - just not particularly encouraging unless you specifically want someone to prescribe a ritual for your public speaking anxiety.

Like - here’s the vibe if it was a cookbook:

  • How to bake cookies
  • How to bake cookies with chocolate chips
  • How to bake slightly burnt cookies
  • How to bake brownies - but in the shape of cookies
  • How to bake brownies - but in the shape of a banana

Here’s a list of things that struck me while reading through:

  • A focus on mantras - these are underutilized.
  • Floating and modifying interoception.
  • It’s not unique - but bind suggestions happening “more” with each breath, or going through each body part.
  • The Enhancing Focus Flow: Attention and Clarity may be recreationally applicable.
  • Thankfully, near the end of most sections - they suggest you combine your visualization with actual action that’ll help.
  • Interestingly, Medical Procedures Flow: Reduce Anxiety and Heal might give inspiration for some scenes.
  • If you want borderline unethical control and pre-negotiated it, you could also re-tailor the Spiritual Development Flow: Cultivate Wisdom and Purpose. You’d probably have better luck and a safer time after going through Sleepingirl’s Brainwashing Book.
  • Some of these recipes might be useful for ameliorating tension before a recreational session.

If you need pain relief (and the budget for another book,) you might want to supplement this with the suggestions from Michael D Yapko - Trancework for a small 5% boost.

Combine with Medical Treatment: This flow is designed to complement, not replace, medical care. Use it as an additional tool to manage pain alongside other treatments.

Jacquin, Anthony. Alter Your Experience: The Art of Self-Hypnosis (p. 138). Anthony Jacquin. Kindle Edition.

Step 6 - Surface

Ah, this is cool. They hint at making sure your work is complete during hypnosis and using awakening to cement resolve. In other places, this is called ‘ratification,’ or markers that “yeah what just happened is real, true, and changed.”

I like some of the awakeners in here. When I personally bring people out of trance, I suggest they come back at their own pace, noticing how good they feel when they open their eyes, not coming back any more quickly than they can savor the experience of returning. The suggestions in this book do much the same thing - linking the experience of awakening to ratifying the changes you’d like to make. They also remind you that when you’re done, go do the thing to reinforce the changes you made in the session. Oh yeah, and more CBT.

Step 7 - Set Off

They remind us that…

  • Change takes time and practice to reinforce.
  • Remind yourself of why you’re doing this.
  • Make this a habit.

And more CBT. So much CBT.

Section 2 - Core Skills

Crafting Effective Suggestions

  • Use present tense. It’s not ‘I will do blah’ it’s ‘blah is happening and increasing.’
  • Positive framing (actionable suggestions.) Do something instead of don’t do something. (Or - replace a habit instead of stopping one.)
  • Be specific. “I feel good” is less effective than “I can feel my body pulsing with strength and resolve, 9000 is a number for the weak.”
  • Time bound (give suggestions multiple chances to happen.) EG - “I will feel more motivated as an artist” vs “every morning I eat breakfast, and every time I check out cute toasters on e621, I feel my body surging with motivation to draw.”
  • Use sensory suggestions. Feel something, give your body something to do, or describe how something feels. EG - drawing with confidence and conviction, my arm is an extension of my powerful soul. Or something.
  • Repetition with Variation. Say the same-ish thing different ways and maximize your chances of success.
  • Subvocal suggestions. Mantras - but under your breath. On the in-breath “I am…,” out-breath… “a sexy, attractive programmable toaster.” (Sorry, I’m on a Protogen kick today.)
  • I am becoming. Similar to present tense suggestions. This also doesn’t demand that the thing is already happening.
  • Pacing and leading. If you’re here, you probably know this one.
  • Combine and remix techniques, repeating them.

Mastering Self-Hypnotic Phenomena with Self Hypnosis

Hey this is kinda cool - response expectancy in the wild. They start out mentioning that you can blur the line between what’s real and imagined, but then describe it as a semi-transparent reality.

Actually I think a more useful phrase than real is a semi-transparent reality… A hallucination doesn’t need to be vivid, or real as real, it just needs to be something I can acknowledge.

Jacquin, Anthony. Alter Your Experience: The Art of Self-Hypnosis (p. 250). Anthony Jacquin. Kindle Edition.

References: Bernham 2006, Lynn 1990, Jacquin and Sheldrake 2013 (yay!), Nadon 1991

From Doing to Happening

I like their 4 step structure to creating phenomena. This section has a bunch of classic hypnotic antics (including mosquito hallucinations) and how to create them.

  1. Doing. (Conscious engagement. Stick your arm out, create a starting point like it being feeling it being weightless. )
  2. Engage imagination. (Then engage with your imagination. I put a Costco pizza in your hand. How’s that feel? Heavier? Sinking? Wet?… Sorry about the grease.)
  3. Shift to happening. (Notice the feeling increasing - you’re not making it happen, you’re letting it happen. I hope you’re not doing the Costco pizza suggestions - you’d notice how your hand is becoming slimy, and you might just want to drop that slice of pizza.)
  4. Let it deepen. (Allow that hand to become so heavy it just rests in your lap. Wipe the grease off with some paper towels.)

Along with these basic ideas - they offer a few quotes on how to self-suggest these things. EG - paraphrased:

  1. Sit your ass down.
  2. “I’m noticing just how heavy my body is becoming… sinking down into the seat.”
  3. “I’m unable to stand, I’m stuck now.”
  4. “Wow holy shit I stuck. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t budge.”

I might recommend a lot of these exercises as beginner suggestions to street hypnotists. This ain’t bad. I might be self-selecting for things that fit my preferred styles. I do like how they describe verbal inhibition - it’s like a component of classic ‘name amnesia.‘

Progressive Relaxation: A Streamlined Approach

Includes a neato history of the PMR from Jacobsen 1929, to Wolpe’s improvement in 1958. it might be cool to look up the Abbreviated Progressive Relaxation Training (APRT.) They mention the technique of tensing muscle groups and then relaxing - common in some types of meditation.

Oh hey - here we go! Relaxation Scripts from the Oxford Cognitive Therapy Center. Good enough for this guide.

There’s 5 million PMRs - but the neat thing here is self-suggesting that you’re relaxing as you release physical tension after clenching.

POWER ANCHORING TRIGGER YOUR INNER RESOURCES WOW

Sorry the title hit me like a combination of NLP and brawndo.

Oh wait, yup. there’s the NLP.

They describe Pavlov’s conditioning (1927), moving to Andrew Satler’s Conditioned Reflex Therapy (CRT) from 1949. CRT just sounds like conditioning. 🧂 And then we have the mandatory NLP mention. For a talk on anchoring, check out Graham Old’s book Revisiting Hypnosis, my notes here.

They run through the steps of anchoring (setting the intention, recall and immersion, amplification, breaking the state, testing, and reinforcement.) The neat part here is the self-hypnosis spin - instead of having a hypnotist set this up for you, they suggest combining other tools (self-suggestion, reliving moments, immersion) to build it up yourself. They also mention ‘impromptu anchoring,’ where if you’re feeling particularly good at some moment (like you just won the lotto,) go ahead and anchor that on the fly with a unique movement like pressing into an OK hand gesture.

Establishing Ideomotor Signals: Tapping Into Your Inner Self

A history to contextualize ideomotor response:

  • Patellar Reflex (that knee jerk thing.) They found that after conditioning you could just tap the tendon and get the same response.
  • James Braid uses this reflex to explain involuntary movements in hypnotic response.
  • Ouija boards are just automatic movements attributed to spiritual response.
  • Chevreul’s Pendulum (the thing where you dangle something from a string and let it move in circles to give you an answer.) I didn’t know Michel Chreveul was a chemist.
  • Leslie Lecron using subtle movements during self-hypnosis to ask and respond to questions (see aforementioned warning.)
  • Milton Erickson doing arm levitation to ask questions (and likely tacit contracts - when the suggestion takes the arm will settle.) Ernest Rossi of course tagged along for this one.

So:

  • Sit down and relax.
  • Figure out what you’d like to use for signaling - pick an arm, a hand, a finger, whatever, and self-suggest that.
  • Focus on your breathing - ask when “your true self is ready ready to communicate” and wait for a response. 🤮
  • Reinforce those movements with a “that’s right” and remind yourself that it’s working.
  • Reinforce the signal itself a few times when ‘the other part of yourself’ is ready to ‘move forward.’
  • Use it.

Try…

  • Making sure you’re relaxed (use whatever technique you’ve got to relax yourself. Breathing, visualizing the tension melting away, be gentle in your invitation for the signal. I like this last one - a requirement of gently inviting a signal is being relaxed.
  • Try a different body part if one doesn’t work.
  • Swap out motor movements for tingling or sensations.
  • Physically gently encourage movement - like a tap on the hand, ‘letting it happen.

Imaginative Journeying

They really… don’t say how to use this for change. I guess the point is to practice visualizing a journey. Anyway, if you want to mess with this, go ahead and imagine tossing in other destinations.

  • Pick a familiar journey/commute.
  • Close your eyes and imagine away - rotate through your senses if you need it to be more immersive.
  • Notice landmarks.
  • Reach your destination - savor it.
  • Do this regularly.

Psychological Flexibility

Steven Hayes (2022) developed acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT.) They saw ‘one set of skills’ as one of the most effective components of therapy. More effective than “self-esteem, supprt from friends, family, or your therapist… whether or not you have negative, dysfunctional thoughts.” So, that’s what they’re going to talk about in the ACT - the ability to use ‘psychological flexibility.’

The three pillars are, improving and maintaining ‘value driven behaviors’, being open to experiencing events (and preventing barriers to change,) and improving awareness of the self and environment to pick the ideal behavior.

To be aware, notice the present moment. You can suggest you see, feel, and hear, now - experiencing it. (Shift focus to the moment.) Without judgment, accept the moment and experience, ‘allowing’ difficult thoughts and feelings. Avoid ruminating - you can label thoughts as ‘knowing’ something. After that, do an internal value check to see what matters to you, and ‘commit to meaningful action.‘

Mini-meditation: The Essence of Simply Being

This is really just all about taking a moment, during whatever you’re doing (or in a break of silence,) being aware of yourself, your experience, and your body.

There’s mention of loving-kindness meditation and techniques - just taking care of yourself.

The Essence of the Self in Self-Hypnosis

A pep talk for using self hypnosis and some thoughts on experience.

They mention two of their personal goals were to…

  • Asking profound questions like “who am I” to delve into your self of being.
  • Bring out moments of awakening

I dig the namedrop of Vedic practice. I do think that Vedic psychology has it’s place - but it’s easy to misapply dogmatically.

They plead you:

  • Understand yourself before delving into change.
  • Develop a sense of being through the thoughts of “I am.” Being in the present moment. (Then dissociating your self from your experience by reminding yourself that you are aware of your experience - therefore, “you” are not “it.”)
  • Be aware of the ‘non-objective’ experience. (They are very careful to not call it the subjective experience.)
  • Notice that you can notice observation. Now try to notice the observer. it has no physical location, but it is there.

Section 3 - Core Skills

This is starting to feel AI generated… and other parts feel the same way - looking back. This section’s mostly an outline. If you’ve got a digital copy and you’re bored - throw some stuff that feels a bit ‘fluffy’ at https://gptzero.me/ and make your own call.

  • The Exposure Walk Flow. Go walk somewhere, notice fear or anxiety, shift your experience to interoception and be aware of those feelings. Repeat until it feels like exposure therapy.
  • The Clearing Technique. Visualize some baggage. Acknowledge it. Then decide you’re ready to let it go. Self-suggest waiting for some signal that it’s time to let it go, then imagine doing so. Gesture or say something to mark (anchor) that the gunk is cleared out.
  • Pathway. Pretty much the same thing as the previous steps. Just visualize a path.
  • Glove Anesthesia. Visualize numbness or some sort of anesthesia. You can make your hand the ‘anesthetic’ and slap it on whatever hurts. You can suggest a time limit.
  • Adapting the Glove for IBS. Avoid the giggle fit when you experience the obvious imagery. Rub your soothing, anesthetic magical hand on your belly. Throw the glove out in a biohazard bin. (Oh wait - err. Save it for later - hypnotic anesthetic gloves are naturally sterile.)
  • More glove stuff. It’s obvious. Probably talk to your doctor.
  • Rewind Flow. Detach and watch the future event on a screen. Watch it be fine. Try an NLP style submodality spin like watching it as a cartoon.
  • Arrow Technique. Chill. Use shooting a target with an arrow as a metaphor for ‘breaking through’ your pain and gaining freedom.
  • Time Machine. Guide yourself through imagery of putting yourself through a time machine and supporting yourself through a previously shitty event. Put a positive spin on it and pat yourself on the back for learning a lesson and getting through it.
  • Resource Retrieval. NLP style anchor a resource. Buy Graham Old’s book on PHRIT and read that instead.
  • Three-Step Negotiation. Prime yourself for ideomotor response. Imagine your ideomotor response does the work of bringing back associations or shit getting in the way. Now with the spare hand - let that hand do all the work of finding resolution. Reflect on everything.

(Man - after this thing failed the AI vibe check I’ve been so mad at the fluff it’s been difficult for me to continue reading. I haven’t been this pissed at a book since Monsters and Magical Sticks.)

  • Non-Conscious Negotation. They talk about parts therapy and pop-psy Internal Family Systems. A lot of the same ideomotor ‘give me a sign I’m willing to communicate to myself’ trash. Find resolutions. Yadda yadda.
  • Non-Conscious Negotiation for Weight Control. Another ideomotor-based suggestion. Suggests shit you already know. Read my notes from Clinical Hypnosis and Self-Regulation on smoking and weight loss instead.
  • Non-Conscious blabla… Okay, enough how to bake a walnut in five different orientations - I’m skipping this.

Also, try transforming the reflection you see in a mirror in your mind’s eye.

Conclusion

Likely, an AI generated summary.

Book club notes - what to read:

Section 1

  • Integrating Historical Insights into Modern Practice - Cool stuff here.
  • Seven Steps to Self Hypnosis Overview - if you’ve meditated, you’re pretty much there. Steps 1-3 could be compressed into 1 step. Step 4 (Set) feels out of order. Step 6 is cool and indirectly uses tacit contracts. Step 7 is self help rambling.
  • Step 1 Stop - not for the content, just for how they split up components of the suggestion, as well as the “reflection” CBT.
  • Step 3 Sense - Might be handy if you haven’t meditated before.
  • Step 5 Suggest - All right. A lot of rebranding the same ideas but nice for some inspiration.
  • Step 5 - Creating your Self Hypnosis Flows - Might be handy just for the suggestion to plan this stuff out.
  • Scrollll through the rest of section 1 unless something specifically strikes your fancy.
  • Step 6 - I like the idea of as part of awakening, you make your suggestions “real.” But… could probably be written in a paragraph.

Section 2

  • Crafting Effective Suggestions - not hard and fast rules but good tips.
  • From Doing to Happening - baby-stepping your experience from imagining to happening.
  • Power Anchoring - if you haven’t put up with read NLP before.
  • Establishing Ideomotor Signals - Don’t use these like they do for therapeutic purposes. But they are handy. Feel free to skip the history.
  • The Essence of the Self in Self-Hypnosis - I particularly hated this section, but I might be biased against it…

Section 3

(to be continued)