Meditation Tool

  Basic Relaxation

One of the many reasons that hypnotherapy can be so effective, so quickly, when it comes to dealing with issues, is that it circumvents your traditional defences by relaxing you completely so that the therapist can interact directly with your subconscious mind.

That's why basically every meditation or longer process starts with the instruction to do a relaxation exercise.

When you work directly with the deeper levels of consciousness, or at different brainwave levels, the changes that you are able to make take more quickly, last more effectively and can help you create dramatic changes that you never thought possible - largely because you were busy limiting yourself with your conscious thought patterns.

The time you spend relaxing yourself will never go to waste - although it does tend to feel like it is a bit of waste, often because you don't see immediate results.

Also, for the process hungry... why do a relaxation exercise when you can fit another three processes hey?

Even if you do feel that way, spend time doing proper relaxation exercises in the beginning anyway, especially if you are first setting out with these processes.

Once you've had a bit of practice and are able to relax yourself very effectively, then start using the same movement everytime you do it to put you into a deeper level of relaxation.

If, for example, you lie flat on your back, you could try steepling your hands for the duration of the meditation.

Not only will this anchor the meditative and relaxed state to the movement, but it will deepen your relaxation every time you make the movement, while keeping your hands in that position will charge the anchor more and more. Eventually you will be able to trigger the relaxation and meditative state simply by making the hand movement.

For that reason, it's also important that your anchor is tied to a specific body position, like lying flat with your knees propped up. You don't accidentally want to trigger an anchor like that while you are driving.

Different variations of the relaxation exercise are going to work better for various people - if one doesn't do it for you, then toss it and move on. But find one or two that do work please - you will need to call on them often in the beginning.

Don't be afraid to vary the technique up, using visualization, sound, feelings, temperature, texture weight - whatever feels comfortable for you is right.

It's only important that you work thoroughly from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, relaxing the entire body, part by part.

So for one person, that may mean physicallly clenching and releasing the muscles, for another it may mean imagining a spreading warm golden light. For yet another, it may mean imagining cool water runing into and filling up the area. Yet someone else may just like to see a color or light spreading.

You're not here to judge - just find the thing that is right for you :) And if you have it already, then try something else - like pineapple milkshake - as a medium, just to see what that does :)

  Basic Relaxation Instructions

The point of the basic relaxation exercise is to relax each part of your body, part by part, until you have relaxed your entire body.

In this example, I'm using a cooling water flow, but you can use any medium you prefer, including physical movement such as clenching and releasing each muscle in turn.

Starting with your toes, feel a cooling trickle of water begin to flow into your toes, cooling your toes as the fluid begins to seep out past your toes into your feet, soothing your feet the way a menthol gel would.

Become aware that the cool liquid is now flowing up your ankles, into your calves and knees, pooling a little before it flows over into your thighs, almost crashing like a wave into your hips and buttocks.

Feel the cooling liquid bubbling its way up your torso, flowing over into your arms, rushing past your elbows to fill your forearms and hands.

Feel the surge as the water surges up past your neck, flooding your head and face with cool, peaceful, flowing water, until eventually it reaches and relaxes your scalp. Relax your scalp.

Now enjoy the feeling of being totally relaxed and just allow your body to enjoy the relaxed, spacy feeling of being completely at ease.

Don't worry about thinking or focusing on anything if you don't have to.