For deep inner work, it helps to have a guide, a teacher, a hypnotherapist, or a wise friend. The inner terrain can be challenging, and a guide can help you to move more skillfully on these trails. But you can do a great deal of healing work
on your own.
Help Your Mind: Watch Your Thoughts
Stand back and become the witness of your thoughts and subpersonalities.
Become aware of the kinds of thoughts you habitually think. Do you tend to
catastrophize, to create the Worst Possible Scenario for the events of your life?
(This is also called the “Woe is Me” syndrome, where everything is a potential
disaster for you.). Do you tend to think depressive thoughts, to feel that you
won’t be able to be happy? Do you think anxiety thoughts, creating all kinds of
dangers for yourself, most of them in your lively imagination? Do you tend to
obsess, to keep going over and over certain thoughts? Watch also how your
subpersonalities are taking control in certain situations as “Poor Me” or “Not
Okay” or “Have to Be Perfect to Be Loved.”
When you stand back and observe, you begin to get some degree of objectivity.
You may want to record your findings in a journal. Or you may want to record
your thoughts so you can dialog with them or with your subpersonalities.
You might want to exaggerate the tendencies so much that they become
caricatures, even to the point of becoming humorous. You might want to bring
your essence in to remind your subpersonalities that you do have innate worth or
that you are doing competent work or that you are healing yourself now.
It works to affirm who you really are, to tell the truth to all other inner
influences, to remind them over and over again:
“I AM the power of healing, and within me is love. I am strong and whole, and I
am healing myself now!”
Using the words “I AM” to begin your affirmation helps bring your essence in to
help with any situation. If you are going through a particularly difficult time,
such as a time of anxiety or depression, you can watch the thoughts that come
up, and every time they do, you can say, “No, that’s not so. I am healing myself
now.”
You may also want to enlist the support of a recalcitrant subpersonality by
showing it your goals; you can take the more dysfunctional part and show it
what you really want to do in life, and you can ask for its assistance. You may
want to give a subpersonality some other way of getting its needs met so that it
won’t sabotage you any longer; so for example, if a part of you is eating too
much in order to handle certain thoughts or to get some comfort, you may want
to find other ways that can help to quiet your mind or bring comfort. You may
also want to merge your subpersonality with essence so that you will be free to
act from a more centered place.
Being able to watch yourself more objectively can help to free you from the
bondage of repetitive thoughts or from stubborn subpersonalities. When you get
in touch with your essence by relaxing and centering yourself, you have greater
ability to be objective and to bring your strength, wisdom, and love in to heal
your situation.
Record Your Thoughts
Write or use a recording device to identify your specific dominant difficult
thoughts and subpersonalities. Exaggerate and experience them, and then find
ways of helping them.
Induce Deep Relaxation
There are many techniques for deep relaxation or self-hypnosis. I’ll elaborate on
two of them here. Other ideas are in the section called “How It’s Done.”
For self-healing, first find a comfortable place where you won’t be interrupted.
You can either sit or lie down. Close your eyes, and take a deep breath in.
Breathe in and out three times, and begin counting from thirty down to one. As
you count, relax various parts of your body. You can say, “My feet are relaxing.
My hands are relaxing.”—and so on, as you count. This will focus your mind
inward and help you to experience a deeply relaxed state. When you feel
relaxed, you can then do posthypnotic suggestions, affirmations, visualizations,
and any of the other techniques I’m describing here.
Here is a more extended relaxation process that you can use, either by having
someone read it to you or by recording it and listening to your own voice:
“Just let yourself relax and get comfortable now, and take a deep breath in and
exhale. Just let go of any stress or tension. Take another deep breath in, and
exhale once again. Let a peaceful wave of energy wash over your body and your
mind. Take one more deep breath in and exhale once again, and go deeper and
deeper now into a wonderful state of relaxing peace. You feel very comfortable
now, very relaxed. Your body is becoming so relaxed that you don’t even want
to move. You are releasing and relaxing, drifting down deeper and deeper. It’s
like drifting off to sleep; yet you remain aware. As I count from five to one, you
go even more deeply. Five: Feel yourself sinking deeper and deeper into a state
of relaxation, further and further away from all outside concerns. Four: Each
number carries you deeper, drifting down deeper and deeper. Three: Going so
deeply that every part of your body relaxes. Your mind relaxes. Nothing else
concerns you at all. One the next count, you feel how much more deeply relaxed
you are. One: Deep, deeply relaxed.
These feelings of relaxation bring you greater and greater comfort, as you feel
yourself relaxing, going deeper and deeper. You feel as if you are surrounded by
a blanket of peace. Your body is relaxing with wonderful feelings of pleasant
heaviness. You feel so comfortable, going deeper and deeper within.”
Write
If you’d like to get in touch with your inner guidance, you can do hypnotic
writing. You may have a specific life question, or you may simply want to get in
touch with your guidance. Have a paper and pencil ready.
First relax deeply by inducing a relaxed state. This can be mild, medium, or
deep. As you are relaxing, tell yourself, “I am now becoming a vehicle for
wisdom and guidance to come through me. I am opening to receive any
information that my higher self would like to bring through me. I am a channel
for wisdom and guidance.” Then open your eyes, but remain very relaxed. Take
your pencil in your hand, and begin to write. You may want to write a question,
or you may simply begin writing and let your higher self decide what topic to
address.
If nothing comes to you, open up the flow of words by writing anything, even if
at first it sounds like nonsense. Re-affirm that you are bringing forth wisdom and
guidance, and you will no doubt find that something of value ultimately comes
through you. It might help you to have a trigger device. One of these is to ask the
name of your guide and then write your guide’s name at the top of your paper.
To get this name, just close your eyes, ask for the name, and take the first name
that comes up to your mind. Another trigger device is to begin writing a letter to
yourself (“Dear….”) and know that this letter is from your inner guidance.
As you write, stay relaxed, and just let the words flow as easily as possible. You
may receive very specific information (“You are to leave your job next month
and move to Arizona.”) or it may be very general (“You are on the right path.
Keep up the good work.”)
You will be amazed at the quality of guidance and information that you can
receive from this process. Trust that you can have access to your own channels
of wisdom, and allow it to come through you whenever you’d like to experience
your own truth.
Meditate
It is always helpful to quiet yourself and to sit and meditate. The main difference
between meditation and self-hypnosis is that in meditation, you quiet your mind
enough to be responsive to your essence, and you simply allow it to come
through you. In self hypnosis you may do visualizations or affirmations, or you
may create posthypnotic suggestions; still the experience of relaxation and of
essence is the same.
One way of meditating is to find a comfortable place to be, a place where you
won’t be disturbed. If you like, you can use a mantra. You can choose “I AM” as
your mantra. First say “I” to yourself as you breathe in, and say “AM” as you
exhale. You keep your focus on the mantra as you breathe naturally. If thoughts
come to you, just let them come, and then let them go, like birds flying across
the sky. You can meditate for as long as you like to, anywhere from ten minutes
to one hour. Meditation is a beautiful way to experience your essence.
Breathe
During the course of your day, focus your awareness on your breathing. If you
feel anxiety or anger or tension, your breathing will be high up in your chest, and
the breaths will be shallow and rapid. As you notice this, you will be able to
slow down your breathing; then you can breathe in and out very deeply. This
will help to transform the emotions and experiences you are going through. A
good exercise to help your breathing is to breathe rhythmically. Breathe in for
six counts; then hold for six. Breathe out for six, and hold for six again. Breathe
deeply, and you will find an amazing change in the way you’re feeling and
behaving.
More Healing Techniques
1. Visualize yourself as a child, at any age that your inner mind would like to
show you. Go inside and bring love to this child.
2. Find a subpersonality that you often experience as a part of your behavior.
Look at some of your responses or inner dialogue. Exaggerate this
subpersonality and act it out—either on paper or verbally. See how you
might give this subpersonality what it needs in a new way, a creative
instead of a destructive new behavior.
3. Imagine healing yourself with light or water. You can use the Ball of Light
visualization or the light and water healings as explained in the “How It’s
Done” section.
4. Keep a log of your most predominant thoughts. If you find them
consistently negative, see how you might speak to these thoughts. Tell them
that their self-defeating approach is not the only alternative, and show them
new ways of perceiving by offering realities that are more life-affirming.
(See “Healing Feelings of Unworthiness” for more examples).
5. Find a symbol of your essence that feels comfortable to you, and focus on it
throughout the day. This symbol might have to do with music, gems, water,
light, great beings, or whatever your creative imagination brings through
you. In trance, you may be able to find this symbol by asking to have it
shown to you while you are very relaxed.
6. Write down all the blessings that you’ve been given. Make a list of all the
advantages you’ve had in life, all the good fortune, all the gifts you’ve been
given. Remember, even the disadvantages might be in your favor. I’ve
already spoken about the woman who thanked her parents for never being
there when she really needed them, for it made her realize that all she really
needed was herself.
7. Examine your parents, friends, siblings, or children from a detached state,
seeing them as human beings who are working out their problems and
challenges just as you are working out yours. Look at their past, their paths,
their predominant thought patterns and look at the possibility of
maintaining some of that objectivity in your daily life with them.
8. Practice deep relaxation and self-hypnosis by making a recording for
yourself or doing a relaxation induction.
9. Find a habit that you’d like to transform, and do it through self-hypnosis,
posthypnotic suggestion, and your connection with your essence. You may
want to make a recording for yourself, and you may want to include the
following:
· Reasons for wanting to change (what you don’t like about the habit)
· What you might do instead of the habit (for example, eating fruit
instead of candy or doing deep breathing and self-hypnosis instead of
smoking)
· How your life would improve with the habit gone
· Affirmative statements about your ability to change
· Visualizations of yourself without the habit
· Reminders from your essence of your real nature: strength, wisdom,
and love.
10. Do a “trance rehearsal” for a life that is creative and fulfilling. See yourself
as you’d like to look and feel and be. See as many details as possible, and
accept that the transformation is happening in you now.
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