Time distortion? I’ll explain… Recently, I was talking about a night out where we had lots of fun… You know the kinds of nights out I mean, don’t you?
I know that in years gone by, there are events where I have done so much in a night; like a ball I went to last Christmas… We had a formal dinner, danced the night away, got holes in my tuxedo trousers from knee skidding on the dance floor, had many laughs, yet the night seemed to zip by in an instant.
When I think about those long, lazy Summers when I was at school, those halcyon days that seemed to last so long at the time, yet in hindsight have seemed to breeze past so quickly.
When I was at secondary school, I can remember being sat in my history class and being thoroughly uninspired and bored and watching the clock on the wall behind my teacher. Now, I swear to this day that as I yearned for the time to go past quicker, the second hands on that clock went by slower and slower. One hour felt as if it was ten hours. My experience of time during those lessons was painful. I often struggled to keep awake.
I am sure that you have had varying experiences of time. Whereby time seemed to fly by or drag, depending on what you were doing. That is what today’s article is all about – Time Distortion and using self-hypnosis to harness this natural phenomenon.
There are people out there who can calculate mathematics in an “instant” mentally. There are fantastically successful baseball players who, when focused, seem to experience the ball coming toward them much slower than others seem to. There are also high-speed readers, who can read over 2,000 words per minute and they all experience a sense of time distortion as information flashes through their mind in only seconds. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do that stuff too?
You know what I am going to say, don’t you?
You can do those things. For some people it just happens, for others, we may need the helping hand of self-hypnosis to do this on purpose.
Very often, my hypnotherapy clients tell me that the hypnosis session they just experienced seemed like it was 5 minutes when actually it was 45 minutes. We often experience time differently in hypnosis.
As Einstein pointed out, time flows at different rates for each person. Some people have experienced their entire life flash before their eyes in a matter of seconds just prior to a sudden life-threatening event. Also, dream researchers have discovered that a one-minute dream sometimes feels like hours to a dreamer. In one experiment, hypnotised subjects were given imaginary tasks to perform in their minds – like designing a dress and preparing a complicated meal.
They were tricked into thinking they had an hour to accomplish their tasks, but they really had only 10 seconds. After 10 seconds had elapsed in world time, the hypnotised subjects experienced intricate and accurate detail in their inner perception that seemed to them to be a complete hour! Given the same tasks in the waking state often worried them and limited them so much that they could not think of a single dress design and actually prepared a meal in a very disorganised fashion.
In interviews after the hypnosis sessions, it was revealed that the subjects experienced no difference in their “thinking” and that at no time did they feel hurried or speeded up. Time distorted thought thus seems to have superior clarity to usual conscious thought with all it’s distractions.
An experiment was achieved whereby a metronome was started at 60 beats per minute while the hypnotist stated that he was slowing it down gradually. The subject was to listen carefully as he did so and when in the subject’s opinion the metronome had been slowed down to the rate of one stroke per minute, the subject would acknowledge by saying, “Now.” The metronome’s beating always remained the same, but the hypnotist progressively encouraged the state of suggestibility in the subject by saying that the metronome was going still slower.
So today, let me run through a self-hypnosis process that allows you to distort your perception of time. Remember, you are only distorting your perception of time and not time itself – that is the territory of our sci-fi heroes!
Step One: Get yourself in a place where you are going to be undisturbed for a period of time. Have an audible second-ticking clock in the place you are in. Assume a comfortable position with your arms and legs uncrossed.
Induce Hypnosis.
You can do so by any means you desire or know of. You can use the process in my Science of self-hypnosis book, use the free audio we give away on this website to practice or have a look at the following articles as and when you need them; they are basic processes to help you simply open the door of your mind:
Heavy Arm Self-Hypnosis Induction Method
Using Eye Fixation for Self-Hypnosis
The Chiasson Self-Hypnosis Method
Hand to Face Self-Hypnosis Induction
Using Magnetic Hands for Self-Hypnosis
The Coin Drop Self-Hypnosis Induction
However, with this process, an induction is potentially too much activity, so I teach my clients how to adopt a hypnotic mindset and simply have a mindset that is positive and expectant. Again, to really understand the cognitive set of the hypnotic mindset, go grab a copy of my Science of self-hypnosis book where it is explained in simple but comprehensive terms.
Allow yourself a couple of minutes to recall and remember an occasion when time seemed to be dragging. Become aware of how you felt about it, where he feelings were in your body and start to be in that state again as much as you can – access that state and frame of mind.
Step Two: After getting into a deeply relaxed, receptive state, your heartbeat tends to start matching the slow rhythm of 60 beats per minute in line with the clock. Listen closely to the ticking and concentrate on deep rhythmic breathing.
You may want to use your internal dialogue to deliver some suggestions to your mind at this stage to enhance the notion of allowing your brain to slow down. when suggesting to your mind to do such things, remember to use the words “as if” Instead of “is.” By that, I mean you can deliver a suggestion to say to yourself that time feels as if it is going slower and slower rather than time is going slower.This is because you are not actually altering time. You are altering your perception of it.
Bear that in mind. If you start suggesting to yourself that time itself is slowing down, you may just respond by thinking “no it isn’t” and ignore the suggestion rendering it impotent. Be aware of using the most progressive and precise language and deliver suggestions to help slow your perception of time right down.
Step Three: Begin to start saying something along the lines of this to yourself:
The time between each beat seems longer and longer.
I am more and more relaxed and I have lots and lots of time. All the time in the world.
Time is only relative to what I want it to be.
Each ticking sound is further and further apart now.
There is lots of time.
I feel so relaxed and at peace with myself.
Time feels as if it is slowing down.
Each beat of the clock feels more and more distantly separated and sounds as if it is too.
Then continue to repeat the above suggestions or similar ones over and over to yourself until you “feel” that each click of the clock is spaced much longer (perhaps even minutes) apart.
Step Four: Then, when you have practised this and learned to be really good at it, whilst in your slowed down, self-hypnosis state and having a suggestive state of mind, you can review any material you wish in a matter of seconds over and over again. By being relaxed and saying to yourself that you have lots of time, your mind does indeed ‘create’ lots of time.
Of course, the more you practice this exercise, the easier and more effective it does become.
Step Five: When you have spent enough time in this slowed-down perception, open your eyes, wiggle your toes and take some deep breaths and get everything into its correct and proper time zone.
Do your best to remember as often as you can to give yourself a post-hypnotic suggestion that the next time that you want to experience self-hypnosis time distortion, it is so much easier and more effective.
Once you have mastered doing this one way, you can begin to use it and apply it to many other things. I have worked with men and women who have learned to heighten their enjoyment of sex by slowing down their experience of their orgasms. I have also used these techniques to allow plane journeys to fly by, so that you step off the plane feeling fresh and free from jetlag. I tend to find that however comfortable they make planes these days, it is really difficult to do much that is constructive whilst on board, so I just get it to seem like it flew by.
You will be amazed how well your mind’s clock can and does work, and how your perception of time can be effected using self-hypnosis. Have some fun and enjoy slowing time down or up if need be… Have a wonderful day 🙂
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Have some of themes here resonated with you? Then have a read of these pages:
1. Do you need help or support in a particular area of your life?
Coaching with Adam Eason Or Hypnotherapy with Adam Eason
2. Would you like a satisfying and meaningful career as a hypnotherapist helping others? Are you a hypnotherapist looking for stimulating and career enhancing continued professional development and advanced studies?
Adam Eason’s Anglo European training college.
3. Are you a hypnotherapist looking to fulfil your ambitions or advance your career?
Hypnotherapist Mentoring with Adam Eason.
Likewise, if you’d like to learn more about self-hypnosis, understand the evidence based principles of it from a scientific perspective and learn how to apply it to many areas of your life while having fun and in a safe environment and have the opportunity to test everything you learn, then come and join me for my one day seminar which does all that and more, have a read here: The Science of Self-Hypnosis Seminar.Alternatively, go grab a copy of my Science of self-hypnosis book.
