Awareness of the Breath

 

In the following blog, you can learn and apply self-hypnosis. As every meditation technique self-hypnosis also begins by practicing of the awareness of the breath.

The technique below is a very simple and effective trance-inducing breathing technique that Dr. Brian Alman has developed. All you need to do is following these simple steps.

Please, close your eyes and focus your attention on your breath.

Take a breath and allow it to be as it is.

You don’t need to manipulate it.

You do not have to do anything with it, just dwell with the attention of your breath as it flows in and out of its own rhythm.

As you do so, you gradually become aware of the four different phases of breathing: inhaling, exhaling, and the two turning points in between.

However, you breathe, it is perfectly fine!

Whatever the phases of the breathing, it is perfectly fine!

Do this exercise daily for 5 to 10 minutes and you’ll wonder how well it relaxes you, gives you fresh energy and helps you overcome the hurdles of the day.

 

No suggestion, no great goal, just linger 5 to 10 minutes with your breath as it is!

 

Release and Refuel

After you have breathed and allowed breathing for a while, you can begin to imagine that with each exhale you release more and more. You can let go of whatever bothers you: tensions, thoughts, events, stress.

Imagine in your own way how you let go and give up these things. Like the spent breath, they can leave your body and mind.

 

Maybe you exhale them just like the spent air. Perhaps with every exhalation, all this flows down to the feet and through the feet into the ground.

Maybe things will pour through your whole skin, through every pore of your skin. Maybe you would think so differently.

As a further step, after a while, you can add the idea that you are taking in helpful things with each inhalation, just as you inhale the fresh air: power and energy from an inexhaustible source of the universe, healing, courage, compassion, patience or whatever you need right now.

Continue to let it go with exhaling.

 

Reflect Your Own Experience

Sit down somewhere comfortable, and if you like, you can play a piece of gentle relaxing music in the background. Maybe you’ll take a few deep breaths first, buckle and stretch, yawn a few times and just make sure you’re okay and find a position where it’s easy for you to relax and go inward.

Step 1

When you’re ready, rest your eyes on an object or a place in the room. In the course of the process, you will immediately express your current perceptions to yourself. The experts call this also to pace what means to mirror or testify. Of course, feel free to use the blog images.

Put simply, you say to yourself what you are perceiving. Here you start with:

5 statements about what you see, then

5 statements about what you hear,

and then 5 statements about things that you feel.

 

Here’s an example:

“I see the picture there on the wall, I see the wardrobe, I see the patterns on the wallpaper, I see the window out of the corner of my eye and I see my hands resting on my thighs.”

“I hear the sound of the lawnmower outside, I hear voices of children, I hear the music in the background, I hear the clink of the heater, and I hear my own voice, which speaks this to me inwardly.”

Or: the own breath, the beating of the heart, the rustle of clothes when I move, etc.

“I feel my feet on the floor; I feel the contact my body has with the pad, I feel the weight of my hands on my thighs, I feel the gentle movements that my breath creates in the chest and in my stomach, and I feel that the breath blows through the nostrils like a light, pleasant breeze.”

Or: Where the clothing touches the body, other places that are free of clothing, the beating of the heart, the coolness or warmth of the hands or other body parts. After each sequence of 5 statements, you can attach a suggestion to help you relax.

For example:

“… and I allow myself to go deeper and deeper inside,”

“… and I allow myself to relax more and more,”

“… and I start to sink lower and lower,”

“… and I enjoy it more and more to sink deeply and let go,”

“… and I enjoy it more and more,”

“… and I let more and more going on” and so on.

Easy, isn’t it?

Just let your eyes close as soon as they become heavy and tired and you feel the need to close them. Then replace the outer visual perceptions with inner things that you see with your eyes closed: pictures, scenes, colors, patterns, darkness or brightness.

 

 

And if it should be less than 5 in an individual case, you simply repeat the same experience again and again!

“I see this darkness in front of my closed eyes; I see this darkness in front of my eyes, I see this darkness in front of my eyes.”

However, you will probably never have complete darkness in front of your eyes, as long as you sit in a lighted room because then you can still see the light through the closed eyelids, and then you can name that as well!

Just give it a try!

Step 2

In a next round of mirroring, you go through the three sensory channels again one after the other (see, hear and feel), but this time you name only 4 things that you currently perceive. After each sense, you add again a pleasant suggestion that supports you.

You do the same thing 3 times, then 2 times and then every sense only 1 more time.

Then you should be pleasantly relaxed and in a pleasant trance. Stay in this state for a while and let the inner things happen. If you drift off in the reflection of your individual senses in between and lose the thread — great!

Then you are already in a pleasant trance and do not need to do anything, go back to your dreams, fall asleep or start with planned hypnotic work. That’s the easiest way to learn self-hypnosis!

Step 3

Here is another way you can do self-hypnosis to help you achieve your goals:

After you’ve defined the topic, your goal, for example,
to do well in a job interview,
to do your best,
you just pretend to your subconscious mind that the trance asks you to examine all the experiences of your past and bring them to where you have done, in one way or another, this task or tasks that were similar in some way very well!

And your subconscious mind can activate and integrate into your life what was most important in these situations, for future endeavors and situations.

For example:

“I ask you, subconscious mind, in the coming trance, to search for experiences in my life where I have been able to do XY very well or experiences that will help me perform XY optimally in the future.”

Take the most important of these experiences and investigate.

Explain in detail what it has done so well and what can best support you in the future, then put all the important learning experiences into your life. ”

This work can then be done entirely on an unconscious level, without you aware of it. But it may also be that your subconscious consciously allows you to participate fully or partially in it.

This means that you more or less consciously remember optimal and helpful situations. It does not always have to experience that, make it obvious that they support the desired situation – the subconscious has its own wisdom!

 

Step 4

And how do I get back from the trance?

Quite simply: Before your trance, give your subconscious the task of getting you back to your day’s consciousness exactly 15, 20, 30 or for how many minutes.

You can still add the suggestion:

“Then I will open my eyes, wide awake, very content, cheerful, fresh and rested and feel very well.”

With a little practice that works wonderfully! If you do not really trust your subconscious yet, then you can set yourself a timer that will wake you up again — but that’s a lot more uncomfortable, isn’t it?

Do you have any questions?

Here are some answers to common questions:

What if I fall asleep during the trance?
Wonderful! As Tad James likes to say: pray for it! If that is not the case, for example, because you still have an appointment, then just imagine a timer that wakes you up at the right time.

With a little practice, you/your subconscious can also train very well to bring you back from the trance and into the waking state after the desired time.

Give him clear instruction at the beginning of the trance.

For example:

“In twenty minutes I will be bright again, and I will feel refreshed and rested, completely ready for the rest of the day.”

I just can not stop my thoughts.
A thousand thoughts go through my head, and all sorts of things from the outside world distract me. What can I do?

First of all: to have thoughts and to be distracted is completely natural! You stop thinking only when you are dead.

So, first of all, accept your thoughts and just keep coming back to your practice. You realize, you are distracted and return to the practice by starting somewhere in one of the last steps. Do it again and again.

If my thoughts and distractions are getting worse and worse. 

Maybe you know this from falling asleep: the more you try to fall asleep with the will, the less it works! In addition, you can support yourself by using the distractions for the trance while you are integrating and interweaving them into your trance​.

This can, for example, look like the following:

“… I feel my hands; I feel my breath. … Oh, I forgot to call Mike, but that just shows how necessary I have the relaxation. I’ll think about it right after the trance and now I’ll go back and feel my breath.

That noise is terrible out there.

Others might get upset about it, but I’ll just keep practicing. Do not let it stop you from practicing because you are distracted.

It’s just the same as with other things: It’s always going to make you feel lighter and better the more you practice. And with more practice, you will dive faster and deeper into a pleasant and creative trance!

I hope you enjoyed the process and gained many benefits from it.

I would love to read your comment about how the process worked out for you, and the experience you made. So, please take a couple of minutes and give me feedback! If you have any questions, please, send them also! I would love to support you on your way!

Please, join me in the next part of the blog where you can add and experience hypnotic suggestions of health and well-being in your self-hypnosis. Continue to read here.

Until then all the best for you!

Aloha, Jenna

Live up to you!

 

The beautiful images are included with the permission of their painter Jurica Jonke. Thank you, Jonke!