A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis by Melvin Powers (best summer reads of all time TXT) 📕

The foremost use of hypnosis has been for relaxation, and it becomes more and more important as world tensions, anxiety and strain increase daily and millions seek vainly to "get away from it all." Inasmuch as all methods of hypnosis discussed in this book utilized relaxation as the first step, it should not be necessary to go over this material. Simply review the many induction techniques.

Lung cancer has become a very real threat to many people today, and the professional hypnotist is besieged with men and women who wish to curtail or quit smoking. This is easier said than done because smoking, although there are no physical withdrawal symptoms when one stops, is a strong, conditioned reflex and cannot (except in rare instances) be accomplished by the will alone. The best way to stop smoking is to make it an impossibility, and that is exactly what you do when you follow the method touched on in an earlier chapter.

All of us have tasted or smelled certain foods or medicines that nauseate us. The subject who wishes to quit smoking is asked to conjure up the vision and the actual taste and smell of the substances which upset his stomach and offend his nostrils, transferring its properties to cigarettes. This, of course, must be done under hypnosis. The subject then conditions himself in the following manner: One ... This cigarette tastes and smells just like (mention name of repugnant substance). Two ... It is the most vile and repugnant taste I have ever encountered, and I shall not be able to continue after the third puff. At the third puff, I will develop a paroxysm of coughing. Three ... I cannot smoke the cigarette any longer, and I will have to put it out.

This sounds like a simple procedure, and yet it has worked for thousands. Some switch to chewing gum or candy, but the cure essentially lies in substituting one conditioned reflex for another. This is comparatively easy with hypnosis because, unlike narcotics, barbiturates or alcohol, smoking is purely a psychological addiction. There is no need for tapering off.

Stopping drinking, unlike smoking, doesn't involve merely the creation of a physical aversion to the drug. The patient's entire personality should be changed and more mature viewpoints substituted for the unrealistic and infantile viewpoints which lead to the addiction in the first place. The subject should give himself suggestions that he will be able to "face up" to the problems of every day life without recourse to the crutch of alcohol. It is a well-known fact that nothing is as bad as we think it is going to be once we confront it.

One of the strange aspects of drinking is that it is actually a form of self-hypnosis, and the cure lies in substituting a new viewpoint for the old. This fact can be demonstrated by the fact that drinking is begun in the first place so that the individual can be "one of the boys" or because it is the thing to do. Those who do not drink, at least as a social lubricant, according to this code, are "squares." Because of this, self-hypnosis must be directed toward reorienting one's sense of values. Sober reflection should convince anyone that the truly intelligent person does not drink to excess.

Nail biting is an unsightly habit, one that may even hinder one's social acceptance. The help lies in a therapeutic approach similar to that for cigarettes.

It is not hard to predict that many of those reading these pages are suffering from overweight. With 30 million Americans in this category, it has become one of the nation's chief health problems, and it is the predisposing factor in many other diseases such as heart trouble, diabetes, hypertension and atherosclerosis. If you are overweight, it is well to remember that (unless you are one in a million) you cannot blame your glands. The plain truth is that you eat too much.

We know today that overeating for some is an emotional problem, stemming from feelings of rejection and insecurity. Individuals who feel unloved, whether this is truly the case or not, make up for this lack to themselves by stuffing in large quantities of food. It would even appear that these people are masochistic, making themselves even more unloved by their gross gastronomical habits. A big factor in overweight in women is "raiding the refrigerator" while doing their housework. Most of them do this so unconsciously that they swear they eat less than most people.

There are a number of appetite-curbing drugs on the market today, but they should not be necessary for anyone who has acquired self-hypnosis. If you have learned to visualize yourself (visual-imagery) in different situations, you will have no trouble in picturing yourself having a slim, attractive figure, exactly as you were when you felt you looked your best. Keep this figure ever in mind and use it along with conditioning yourself against certain fatty and starchy foods. A trick used by some hypnotherapists is to have the subject purchase a dress or suit several sizes too small and then work toward being able to wear it. This actually has worked in many cases because it adds the element of competitiveness to the procedure.

Not all people overeat because of emotional problems. Some come from families where "licking the platter clean" was the rule because food was scarce. Others come from rich families where overeating by the parents established a habit pattern in the children. Certain races and nationalities look on fat as a badge of wealth and prestige, and children in such an environment are likely to be deliberately overfed. Regardless of the reason for overweight, however, the use of self-hypnosis is one of the answers to the problem.

Simple headaches, arthritis, neuritis and other painful symptoms yield readily to hypnotic suggestion. If physicians have given up on the problem and placed a subject on a maintenance drug dosage for pain, hypnosis can potentiate the drugs or even obviate them.

Two of the major uses of hypnosis are in childbirth and for intractable pain of cancer or some other incurable diseases. Although patients usually start with hetero-hypnosis, they are put on self-hypnosis as soon as possible, and there are many cases of women waiting too long and having their babies at home painlessly through self-hypnosis. The father invariably is the only one excited in such cases. The mother knows that she is an excellent subject and has been instructed in prenatal classes about every contingency that could arise. Inasmuch as stopping the birth pangs is similar to stopping other pain, the method should be learned so that it can be accomplished in a minimum of time.

The best way to stop pain is to let your right arm slowly rise while you are under hypnotic suggestion. Do not help it. If the suggestions are strong enough, it will "float" up. As soon as the arm is straight overhead, you should give yourself the suggestion that it is as rigid and unbending as a bar of steel. Following this, a suggestion is given that the hand is beginning to tingle and become numb. As soon as the numbness has spread through the entire hand, it will be insensible to pain. The hand is then placed against the part of the body where pain exists, and you will feel the numbness flowing from the hand to the affected area. This happens as a result of your suggestions and is the method followed by most subjects. Only a deep somnambulistic subject is able to remove pain by direct suggestion to the painful part.

There are many people today using self-hypnosis in the realm of sports, and an entire book has been written on improving one's golf game with this method. It is called How You Can Play Better Golf Using Self-Hypnosis by Jack Heise (Wilshire Book Company—Publishers).

Dr. Huber Grimm, team physician of the Seattle University basketball team, recently related the results when Dave Mills, a six-foot five-inch junior forward, asked for his help because he "froze" during competition. He had been benched on the eve of the West Coast Athletic Conference tournament in San Francisco. Spectators made Mills so fearful that he was afraid he would make mistakes—and in this frame of mind, of course, he did. Under hypnosis, Dr. Grimm suggested to Dave that he would be unaware of the spectators, be completely relaxed and would play exceedingly well. Dr. Grimm asked coach Vince Cazzeta to allow Dave to play and the result was astounding. Mills scored 60 points and cleared 63 re-bounds, and his brilliant play led to his selection on the all-tournament team.

"All I did was free his spirit," Dr. Grimm reported. "He was in need of confidence, and I gave it to him through hypnosis." The Associated Press told the story as follows: "Dave Mills, a vacuum cleaner off the back-boards, led a fast-breaking Seattle University team to victory last night. It was hard to recognize Mills as the same player who has been with the Chieftains all year."

Dr. William S. Kroger, a pioneer in hypnosis, undertook to improve the batting of a professional baseball player with equally sensational results. The player had been "beaned," and his fear of a recurrence was so strong that he became "plate shy." He had changed his batting stance so that he always had "one foot in the bucket" so that he could back away from the plate more quickly. He was given a posthypnotic suggestion that such an event happening again was exceedingly remote, and this was amplified by suggestions of confidence that he would immediately start slugging as well as ever. His batting average soared immediately.

Dr. Michio Ikai, professor of physiology at Tokyo University, and Dr. Arthur H. Steinhaus of the George Williams Laboratory of Physiologic Research in Physical Education, Chicago, have proved that track men can far surpass their best previous times under hypnosis. Their tests, incidentally, proved that there is no danger of an athlete going beyond his physiologic limit while bettering his former marks. They attribute the superior performances to the removal of inhibitions, which psychologically prevent an athlete from doing his best. This report was made before the International Congress on Health and Fitness in the Modern World held in Rome during the last Olympic games.

All reports, as a matter of fact, show that athletic performances are improved by psychological, not physical, means, and that built-in automatic reflexes protect the athlete against the danger of overexertion at all levels of awareness—hypnotic or non-hypnotic.

Psychologists are using hypnosis more and more to facilitate concentration and learning, and it is likely this use of the ancient science will become even more popular than its medical applications. The reason one learns so quickly under hypnosis is because of time distortion which allows you to obtain the equivalent of many hours of study in a relatively short length of time.

Undoubtedly, you have had experience with time distortion in your daily life. Remember how slowly time goes when you are not interested in what you are doing and how fast it speeds by when you are? And the drowning man, who sees his whole life go by, is an excellent example of this. Enough people have been saved to know that this actually happens. The point is that the subconscious mind