How can hypnosis help meditators
Self-hypnosis or meditation … are they so different?
I’m not an expert in meditation (in the sense that I haven’t spent 20 years as a Buddhist Monk in a monastery or anything). I did learned a bit of meditation when I trained in Martial Arts in my earlier years and I’ve worked on my own with ‘following my breath’ sorts of routines over the years. I’ve also ‘played’ with Shamanistic meditations; not the sort that the local healing center offers but the genuine kind led by a real live Shaman!
You could consider me to have some expertise in hypnosis however … and I have noticed some similarities between hypnosis and meditation in the sense that some of the hypnotic ’states’ I’ve experimented with appear to be very similar to certain meditative states.
I’ve been asked on a number of occasions to assist people in getting into meditative states. I’ve picked up a number of ‘tricks’ over the years that may help you ‘jump ahead’ in the task of achieving a ‘quiet mind’ … so see what happens when you include some of the following secrets into your meditation practice.
I’m assuming that the goal (at this point) is to ‘turn off that inner voice’. When you first learn to hypnotise you notice that sometimes this effect occurs and other times it doesn’t. The secrets below are all about achieving ‘inner silence’ faster than you may have thought possible (something that every beginning meditator struggles with). If you want to try all five insights it is best to try them in the order below.
- Before you start a session – close your eyes briefly and ‘look-up’ in your head as far as your eyes will go (don’t overdo this for goodness sake) for a few seconds and then bring them forward. Do this two more times and then open your eyes. (Turning your eyes up in your head like this releases certain neurotransmitters that alter your brainwaves and your internal state.)
- Visual flooding is a way of shutting down your internal voice. This is about focusing on nothing and everything at the same time. Imagine there is a surface in front of you (with your eyes open) and that you drop a pebble into it. Let your ‘awareness’ follow the ripples outwards in a circle right to the periphery of your vision while keeping the whole surface in view. You’re eyes should be ‘de-focussed’ but not crossed …
- This next tip is premised on some research from a few years back where scientists discovered that ‘internal dialogue’ is linked directly to the motor cortex in the sense that nerve impulses travel to your tongue when you are talking to yourself in your head. When they ‘paralyzed’ the tongue a remarkable thing happened – peoples internal dialogue shut down quite markably. You don’t need to go about paralyzing your tongue … but you can get an effect closer to this by gently ‘pulling’ your tongue backwards in your mouth (be sensible people, you aren’t trying to choke off your breathing or anything). This seems to ‘close down’ the language center in your brain and your internal dialogue slows down.
- Let your internal focus slowly drift down from your ‘head’ to your navel. Imagine that your mind is in your navel. This will also tend to shut down your internal thought patterns. All martial arts and a lot of ‘teaching’ from Eastern traditions are based on the idea that the Navel is your center of energy. It is also your center of gravity and keeping your awareness there really does ‘ground’ you and keeps you balanced.
- If you are not already in a profoundly altered state after doing the above then carry on with your normal meditation routine. Some people may feel like they’ve slightly disassociated … like they’ve floated out the back of there head or something. Play gently with this sensation; imagine you are focusing your attention on a small area just above the back of your head.
DO NOT underestimate the power of this sequence of tips. Be gentle with your practice. Don’t go into it with ‘expectations’. Be curious – be aware … and if you feel you’ve gone too far then snap your eyes open and shake yourself a bit. If I was a betting person I’d bet that as you practice this a few minutes every day you’ll soon be able to achieve a profound reduction of your internal dialogue.
You’ve just saved yourself perhaps years of meditation practice!
Pleasant journey.