I can remember being on one of my first ever NLP training courses many, many years ago and Richard Bandler was talking about going into a trance and imagining you had a barman in your brain that delivered up to you a shot of beta-endorphins… Or serotonin… I loved that idea…

I can also remember one of his audio tapes that showed him anchoring his “six martinis” state… I loved the idea of getting into a tipsy state using only my mind and of course in theory, it is totally possible to do so, I mean we get happy with certain emotions, so why not replicate emotions, states, deliver thoughts and get those neuro-chemicals coarsing through your system, right?

I spent plenty of time practicing doing this as a younger man — heck, I even ran a tent at the Glastonbury festival teaching people to get ‘naturally’ high, be silly, have fun and have less inhibitions — we even snorted imaginary, hypnotic recreational drugs… We called the entire affair ‘tripnosis’ hahahaha.

So I find it interesting how few people actually know how to get more from their brain in the way of good feelings. Maybe one reason is that our culture for popping pills to help us feel good or having a glass of wine, or eating refined sugar products all seem to dominate our repertoire of how we alter our state.

It was with some interest earlier in January that I read this hypnosis article in the Times. The author used hypnosis to stop drinking — even though she rather irritatingly advocates “one or two glasses of wine for overcoming writers block” — What? What? What?

Come on lady… You saw that hypnosis can help you stop drinking… You understood and had it explained to you, how the entire process works … Yet you still thought you needed to use wine for your creative process?! What a contradiction to the entire article.

(wipes foam from mouth…)

That aside, the article gives great insight to modern hypnosis and how effective it is — you know what though, it is not about having something ‘done to you’ — it is all about learning that you have a far, far greater capacity for doing amazing things with your mind and brain — and hypnosis helps to amplify that.

Now if I can a bunch of inhibited hippy’s at a music festival, jumping up and down on the spot, laughing like giddy school kids and dancing incredibly expressively — before they have even lit up their first joint, then learning how to feel good using you own brain in the safe parameters of your own life should be a doddle…

Yet why are so many finding it difficult? We have social anxieties, we have lifetimes of being taught how to put something down your throat to make you feel different, we have drug companies ruling the world, and huge advertising budgets hypnotising and influencing about foods and drinks making you feel good, sexy and like a valuable human being.

Yet so many of the answers are right under your nose… Well, actually, slightly above it and behind it… Just inside your head. And hypnosis is one very good way of accessing it…

I can’t exhaust this discussion in one simple early morning blog… However, over coming weeks, months and years, I’ll be tapping into much more of that here and I continue my own pathway of discovery daily… Before I wrote my first book on Self-hypnosis and taught people how to use self-hypnosis for themselves… Just after my first self-hypnosis seminar, I took myself into hypnosis wearing a huge pair of headphones blasting out the soundtrack of ‘War of the Worlds’ — I asked my brain to provide me with illuminations of all kinds inside my mind and boy oh boy was it an immensely pleasurable and amazing experience.

If I attempted to explain the kinds of experiences I have had purely using my self-hypnosis, people would think I was cray-zeeee… So I shan’t do that today 🙂

Useful resources:
Learn Self-Hypnosis seminars.
Self-hypnosis masterclass audio programme.