This is page 5 of a detailed tutorial. I recommend you start with page 1. Every page contains tons of practical information & no fluff. It’s thoroughly linked: You can master one tiny piece at a time—easy peasy—even though it’s almost book length. Every time you master a tiny piece, you’ll be more effective in life. I promise.
The Self-Exploration Trance
Is there a really great location in a favorite novel that you’ve always wished you could visit? Have you wanted to visit the Dalai Lama for advice high in the Himalayas? Is there a location pictured in a Tarot Card that fascinates you? Are you haunted by a beautiful image from a night-time dream you’ve had? You can use any of these places as a starting location for a Self-Exploration Trance.
Disclaimer: The Dalai Lama you meet in this kind of trance is not the same as the real Dalai Lama. You may still have to book that ticket.
PHSST Step 2: Analyze the problem or goal by asking these questions.
In your journal, write a question that you need to answer. If you have some initial ideas about how to explore this specific question in trance, jot them down, but don’t expect to follow your plans. Even if you use these initial ideas as a jumping off place, the answers you receive to your question will be richer and more appropriate if you allow your subconscious mind complete freedom in finding the best way to answer your question. tk
Using places from metaphor, people from clairvoyance, conversation, and empathy. tuning in on question. What comes, focus until it fades, focus again until it fades, focus again until it fades In this same vein, you don’t need a question for every Self-Exploration Trance. Sometimes, you might simply want to go inside and see what emerges. For the Self-Exploration Trance, use a trance induction that takes you into a virtual world that you can build on. Some future trance inductions that I’ve planned will take you into a beautiful inner garden, to a beach area or mountain top area, into the clouds, or into a cave. For the time being, use any of the current trance inductions, but in the end, get up from the chair you’re imagining, and walk out a door into that scene from your favorite novel, the hermitage of the Dalai Lama high in the Himalayas, the scene from the Tarot Card, your night-time dream, a beautiful inner garden, a favorite vacation spot, a cave, an unknown planet or continent, an unfamiliar city, a trail through the wilderness, or any other location that suits your fancy. Once you begin to imagine the location, describe it verbally, following the instructions in Step 5: Guide Yourself Verbally. This means you whisper or say what’s next and then pause for a couple of slow breaths to imagine it more clearly before verbally describing what’s next again. As described in step 5, don’t turn this into a creative writing exercise. Think of yourself as mostly a mirror—who occasionally also makes choices. Sometimes it makes sense to make choices, but frequently, staying with what comes to you spontaneously will take you deeper and give you greater insight. Focus repeatedly on what you see, and describe it. Then pause to imagine it again. Notice and mention anything new that just shows up without any effort on your own. Then describe the scene again, but include or even focus on this new element. Imagine the whole thing again, and watch for anything else that just shows up on its own. Following this procedure will take you in deeper and deeper and enhance the results that you get. After you’ve first visited any location in your trance world, it will be available for you to return to. This is one of the choices that help to build your trance experience. As you repeatedly practice the Self-Exploration Trance, you’ll eventually develop a trance world with many different locations, such as a Quan Yin pool, an isolated retreat center—deep in the jungle, an area covered with the stations of the major Tarot Arcana cards, an area with the stations of the Cross, a mountaintop with a giant eagle’s nest on it, and a council room where you can meet with all your inner guides at one time. The Self-Exploration Trance is an ongoing practice. Any planning you do to create this world is merely a place to start. The world you invent will grow, evolve, change, and live a life of its own. Have a great adventure!
ADVANCED LEVELS: Getting the Most from the Conversation Trance
(Go to Beginning, to Trance Recipe Overview,
to Fourteen Types of Trance to Master.)
For personal guidance in learning these skills, find my coaching profile at Cougar Brenneman Coaching. Contact me directly on the contacts page of this site. (This boring 😐 paragraph appears throughout this document to accommodate people who use our links exactly as they were intended to be used.)
(Go to Beginning, to Trance Recipe Overview,
to Fourteen Types of Trance to Master.)
The Post-Hypnotic Self-Suggestion Trance (PHSST): One way of using Post-Hypnotic Self-Suggestions is like an angry adult, ordering your rebellious inner child to cooperate with what’s reasonable, dammit! Just wait till your mother or father gets home! But that bad way of using trance for suggestions doesn’t work. A much more productive way of using suggestions is to be like a Tibetan monk or nun, chanting with your friends, saying words that have the intention of creating unity within yourself. When you give yourself post-hypnotic suggestions, seek to express your will in a manner that creates inner harmony among all your inner selves. The reason there’s a danger of making unreasonable and emotionally violent demands on ourselves is the standard way that most of us have been raised. Most parents and other authorities that children have to contend with believe that children need to be punished to learn. For the most part, we’re trained to use manipulation—and even coercion—on ourselves, our children, our friends, our employees, our other family members, and any other members of our personal social circles. When we try to write post-hypnotic suggestions for ourselves or others, we continue to think in manipulative and coercive terms.
Disclaimer: All I can say about that is “Stop It! Just Bloody Well Stop It!” Autosuggestions work best when you are kind, gentle, and cooperative with yourself.
When planning your own suggestions, avoid expectations that are unreasonable or emotionally violent toward yourself. Avoid trying to “kill” a habit or tendency, stop yourself from doing things you don’t like, prevent your desires from expressing themselves, and other goals that are inherently negative. Avoid words like “not,” “never,” “always,” “should,” “can’t,” “stop,” “waste,” and “wrong.” (These are examples to give you the idea, not an exhaustive list.) Focus instead on positive accomplishments, positive feelings, positive motivations, positive goals, and positive strategies. Think “additive,” rather than “subtractive.” This is difficult when you want to quit an addiction, which inherently requires a negative: the removal of a habit. You may need to consult a professional for something like this. A good hypnotherapist, EFT coach, or other professional will know instinctively the right balance of positive and negative suggestions and inputs. But don’t attempt it yourself—especially while you’re learning. We’re too well trained to bully ourselves. When working with yourself, be creative and positive. Use suggestions that focus on health, on better social opportunities, and on spending money on other things that you crave. You can also write suggestions about your personal power to make positive choices about such things as your addiction and your ability to set up your environment to support your choices. Follow these steps and guidelines in planning and using a Post-Hypnotic Self-Suggestion Trance:
PHSST Step 1: Read the standards suggested in step #5 before beginning.
If you want your suggestions to be effective, consider these standards to be essential.
PHSST Step 2: Analyze the problem or goal by asking these questions.
Ask: “When?”, “Where?”, and “Why?” For example, “When do I eat too much?” “Where does this problem eating occur?” “Why am I doing it?” Or “When do I want to work harder on my project?” “Where should I be to work on it effectively?” “Why is it so important?”
The purpose of writing out the answers to questions that may seem obvious to you is to help you think more specifically. Writing these answers is a means to an end. Write your answers as an exercise in brainstorming more specific details and defining a clearer articulation of intent. Review and revise them to make them even more specific and pointed.
PHSST Step 3: Write the best suggestion that you can, and then rewrite it.
Rephrase the suggestion in different words. Then rephrase it again, and then paraphrase it again. Keep going until you have at least six alternative versions of the same suggestion. The point of this is to be prepared to improvise.
PHSST Step 4: Ask yourself: “Do my suggestions handle the entire goal?”
If something is missing, write six more suggestions that focus on a second aspect of your goal. Continue until you have covered every important aspect of the goal that you’re seeking to accomplish.
At the same time, make sure that you focus on only one goal per trance. If you’re trying to be more deeply immersed in your art, don’t throw in ideas about your eating patterns—unless they have a direct effect on your artistic skills. (Even so, you might want to use a different trance session for this aspect of your life.)
PHSST Step 5: Evaluate each suggestion with this checklist.
- Is it written in the present tense? Don’t say that you “will” do something. If you can’t truthfully say you’re doing it ever or in any way, say you’re “starting to do it.” Don’t lie to yourself.
- Is it progressive? Write “I’m become more ___,” or “I’m growing to be more ___,” instead of “I am ____,” followed by something that is currently untrue. Writing a progressive statement keeps you aligned with truth.
- Do you focus on trends, movement, and growth, instead of on specific events? If your suggestions target a specific event and you fail, you’ll lose credibility with your own self for future suggestions. Don’t set yourself up for failure.
- Do you believe that you can accomplish this goal realistically? Suggestions that use words like “always” and “never” are destined to eventually fail. Avoid them. Be kind in what you expect of yourself.
- Be gently convincing in your tone. Seek to sell yourself on your goals.
- Does it use positive language? Don’t say “don’t,” “I no longer,” “I’m stopping.” Rephrase all negative suggestions with positive alternatives.
- Avoid suggestions that address other people’s actions. You’re in charge of you, and no one else but you.
- Do you use emotions and physical sensations as part of your suggestions? Sensations and emotions move your suggestions away from the abstract and into a sense of actual experience. That is the goal.
PHSST Step 6: Make sure you’re deep enough before giving yourself suggestions.
This is great time to check your trance meter before progressing. If you’re almost deep enough, turn the knob on the front of the meter to see if you can take yourself deeper by doing so.
(I introduced a trance meter in the medium-length trance induction “Swing Chair_Trance Writing & Meter Induction8_22.mp3” and in the short trance induction “Deepen Trance Invoking Depth You Seek5_18.mp3,” both at the download site Joyful Wisdom Journey Free Trance Downloads.)
PHSST Step 7: Whisper or speak your suggestion aloud. Don’t just think it.
The reasons for this suggestion are more fully defined in Step 5: Guide Yourself Verbally (of the Trance Recipe Overview).
PHSST Step 8: Be inwardly silent for three or four slow breaths.
After giving yourself you first suggestion, make your mind entirely empty for several breaths to allow the suggestion to sink in. If you can’t remember precisely what your previous suggestion was, you’ve succeeded in emptying your mind in inner silence. That’s the goal.
PHSST Step 9: Rephrase your suggestion creatively.
Say the next suggestion that comes to mind, which will be related to the first, but not the same, since you ideally won’t even remember it exactly. Vary the suggestions, and let them flow like a new story for your future.
If your trance is interrupted by a dream image, that’s a great sign that you’re really deep! Take that dream image, and turn it into a metaphor for the next few suggestions. (Even when doing this, stay on topic.)
A Post-Hypnotic Self-Suggestion Trance is customized and unique. It’s impossible for someone else to make a recording that matches your needs exactly. The examples of post-hypnotic suggestions in our downloads are useful, but they’re not examples of a Post-Hypnotic Self-Suggestion Trance that you can copy. (For these examples, listen to the “Tune In to an Important Person in Trance by Shape-Shifting” trance program and the long induction “Shape Shifting 4 Stability Agility Intuition16_16.mp3.”) Both of these recordings provide examples of self-hypnotic suggestions you might use, but neither is customized or specific. They do not directly follow the suggestions in this section, because they are simply a brief addition to other trance processes. For the best post-hypnotic suggestions that you can give to yourself, follow the directions in this section.
ADVANCED LEVELS: Getting the Most from the Conversation Trance
(Go to Beginning, to Trance Recipe Overview,
to Fourteen Types of Trance to Master.)
For personal guidance in learning these skills, find my coaching profile at Cougar Brenneman Coaching. Contact me directly on the contacts page of this site. (This boring 😐 paragraph appears throughout this document to accommodate people who use our links exactly as they were intended to be used.)
(Go to Beginning, to Trance Recipe Overview,
to Fourteen Types of Trance to Master.)
The Metaphor Trance
A Metaphor Trance is a doorway into a new way of perceiving your world. It allows you to put on a new set of glasses and see everything in your life with greater clarity. Perhaps the signposts along your path were blurry and hard to read. With these new glasses, you can read them just fine. Now you realize these signposts are your teachers and that they will lead you to the light. The doorway, glasses, signposts, teachers, and the light are all metaphors. Put them in a blender, press the button, and into your mug, you can pour the Metaphor Trance, an elixir that can transform your life by communicating directly with your subconscious mind. The Disclaimer for this type of trance is a house of mirrors in which you can’t tell which image is the real one and which are mere reflections of reflections of reflections. To avoid bad luck, don’t break any of them! You can’t really plan for this trance in your journal—except for the setup steps. Use your journal as a learning aid when you’re first setting up the experience for yourself, and stop using it until after you come out of trance. But do use it at the beginning.
Metaphor Step 1: In your journal, write a title that summarizes the goal.
Summarize big or important feeling-problem or feeling-goal that you want to work on. You should be able to focus on it as a whole thing, not just as a bunch of related details. Get a feeling for the whole or the gestalt.
Metaphor Step 2: Take your time and go as deep as possible.
I like to start this trance by going really deep, and I recommend it for this trance. A light, short induction will give you great results; a deeper trance will improve them.
Metaphor Step 3: Think about the core feelings you have about the topic.
Try to contain the central or core feelings you have about the question you chose as if it were one thing. Ignore the details. Focus only on the gestalt or the whole.
At the beginning, you will probably find it useful to write in your journal about what those core feelings consist of. Avoid writing about the details; write only about the core feelings, the container for the details, and what it’s like.
Metaphor Step 4: Ask yourself, “What is this like?”
Focus on the whole feeling again—not the details—and ask yourself, “What is this like?” Look for something that might be your initial metaphor. It should capture as much as possible the whole feeling that’s involved in your question. It might be:
- An object.
- An animal.
- A situation.
- A person.
For the grammar sticklers among you: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m perfectly aware that asking what something is like generates a simile, not a metaphor. However, the rest of this trance experience is more metaphoric than most metaphors. Your metaphor is only like a simile for this step.
Metaphor Step 5: Focus on the metaphor to see or sense it more clearly.
When you have a metaphor, focus on it and on the feelings associated with it, and try to sense qualities like the following ones. These qualities are not necessarily literal.
- Does it have a shape and color?
- What type of this thing is it? How old is it?
- Does it have a temperature? A texture? A smell? A taste?
- What’s unusual or unexpected about it?
Metaphor Step 6: Describe what you see or sense, and imagine it.
This is the hardest step to describe, because it’s always an experiment, and it’s never predictable, and that’s the point. Suppose you were feeling overburdened because it often seems like you have to handle everyone else’s needs (instead of your own), and the weight of this responsibility sometimes gets to be to hard to handle.
It might go something like this:
- “It’s like I’m carrying the world on my shoulders.”
- (Stop talking and imagine the world literally on your shoulders. What do you notice about it?)
- “I can’t even look up. It’s pressing on the back of my neck.”
- (Imagine what it’s like to only be able to watch your feet on the ground.)
- “I can’t look up to see friends. Can’t see sky…”
- (Imagine what you’re confined to seeing and your feelings about this.)
Metaphor Step 7: When emotions or desires arise, focus on movement.
Look for movement with questions like:
- What would you like to have happen to this metaphor?
- What would you like to have happen next?
- What does the metaphor want to happen to it?
When movement happens, it usually generates either a new metaphor or a new situation. For instance, if you throw the world off your shoulders, you might see wreckage or people stranded by your actions. Or you might realize that the great weight you were carrying wasn’t actually real because the world keeps itself in orbit without your help. Or you might figure out how to attach helium balloons to it so that it just floats away.
Whatever happens during step 7, it will leave you with a new metaphoric situation.
Metaphor Step 8: Delve into this new metaphor as you did in steps 6 & 7.
Delve into this new metaphor and situation as far as you can, just as you did in metaphor steps 3, 4, and 5.
Metaphor Step 9: Periodically test your feelings to see if you’re done.
When you notice that your feelings about the original question, problem, or goal have changed significantly, try to bring your old feelings back. If you can’t, you’re probably done. There might be other facets to conquer. If you know about them, do you want to work on them now or later? If you don’t know about them now, you will soon enough.
When it feels right, count yourself out of trance and record your results in your journal.
ADVANCED LEVELS: Getting the Most from the Conversation Trance
(Go to Beginning, to Trance Recipe Overview,
to Fourteen Types of Trance to Master.)
For personal guidance in learning these skills, find my coaching profile at Cougar Brenneman Coaching. Contact me directly on the contacts page of this site. (This boring 😐 paragraph appears throughout this document to accommodate people who use our links exactly as they were intended to be used.)
ADVANCED LEVELS: Getting the Most from the Conversation Trance
(Go to Beginning, to Trance Recipe Overview,
to Fourteen Types of Trance to Master,
to Applause Trance (next page).)
Cougar
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The Joyful Wisdom Community 