Tony Gaschler - MODERN HYPNOSIS TECHNIQUES. Advanced Hypnosis and Self Hypnosis

Before you start an exercise, think carefully about every specific detail. Only start the exercise itself when you are completely clear on all the details. This applies to all the exercises in this book.

You can prepare yourself to carry out the suggestion exercises using the imagination exercises. These consist, first of all, of carrying out the entire exercise in your head with an imaginary test person. Form a vivid mental picture in your head of a test person standing in front of you. Act and talk to this person, and do everything that you need to do to carry out the exercise. This will help you to become familiar with the specific details and, when you have a real test person in front of you, it will then seem completely normal and will not be new to you. For exercises that appear difficult to you, repeat the exercise with your imaginary person as often as necessary until you feel more confident.

As early as 1874, the English doctor, W.B. Carpenter, had already identified the “ideomotor principle”. This principle states that simply the mental image alone of a movement will cause the movement to happen to a lesser extent. This phenomenon, which we can see in the pendulum exercises, is also known as the “Carpenter effect”. When awake, and when the entire consciousness of SELF is alert, the mental picture of a movement causes only a slight, often scarcely discernible, duplicate of this movement. In a hypnotic state, when the SELF-conscious state has been entirely or partly deactivated, a mental picture which is created by suggestion (emotional influence) can trigger the corresponding movement in its entirety.

It is important for us to know that the mental picture of a movement can be enough to trigger it. Mental pictures therefore have a tendency to become reality.

Ideomotor actions are those actions (activities, undertakings, movements, effects etc.) that are triggered by ideas. At this point I would like to emphasize that these ideas must be vivid and dynamically (vitally) animated. In no way should they be considered to be simply thoughts or imaginary words. The more vivid and animated (dynamic) an idea is, the clearer and more perceptible the action. You must bear this in mind in all the following suggestion and hypnosis experiments. The distinction between thoughts and dynamic ideas will be made clear to you by the fourth basic exercise, which now follows. Repeat the exercise until the difference is clear to you.

Sit at a table with the pendulum and the pendulum board ( ill. 2) and bring the pendulum to a standstill. Then, as in the first basic exercise, picture in your mind very vividly how the pendulum starts to move in a circle in a clockwise direction. You must make sure that you make it very, very vivid. You can also use your eyes in this exercise by following the pendulum’s imagined movement to the right with your eyes. Let your eyes follow the circle around. This will strengthen the mental picture and make it more animated. At the same time, you should start to repeat the following phrase in your head: “The pendulum circles to the left in an anticlockwise direction!” --- The pendulum …” etc.

This creates a conflict between visualization and thought. That is to say, it creates an internal conflict between dynamic ideas and thoughts. You will see that visualization triumphs over thoughts and the pendulum really does turn to the right, exactly as you pictured it.

This fourth basic exercise shows us that:

1.both mental pictures (dynamic ideas) and thoughts can be at the center of our consciousness at the same time.

2.both can be contradictory at the same time.

3.in a contest or conflict between thoughts and visualization, visualization will always win.

4.there is a clear difference between thoughts and visualization.

In all the literature on hypnosis, and even more so in all the psychology literature, you can read a lot about a so-called “subconscious”. In the subconscious, suggestions and autosuggestions are supposed to materialize. Well then, just who can picture this dubious subconscious? In this self-study method, I use the term “ideomotor system” for this subconscious. This allows you to picture something beyond this term, and this is important if you want to achieve success and not just accumulate factual knowledge.

The word “ideomotor” is made up of “idea” and “motor”. In this combination it means: “cause movement to happen through ideas”. “System” is understood to mean that part of our entire nervous system that makes it possible for ideomotor actions to take place. You can picture the human ideomotor system as the part of the nervous system that plays a role in the perception of vivid ideas and in triggering ideomotor actions. You have to admit that this description is much clearer than the word “subconscious”, for which it is much more difficult to picture the meaning in practice.

When mastering suggestion and hypnosis, a lot depends upon your own experience. This is why I would advise you to carry out more exercises with the pendulum yourself. Here are some suggestions:

1.Lengthen the pendulum and try the exercises when standing up.

2.Use the pendulum when you are in different moods. If you are agitated, concentrating actively on a mental picture will calm and distract you.

3.Try to devise other pendulum exercises yourself.

The pendulum, as it is used here, is a material, scientific instrument.

Please do not use it for superstitious games and fooling around, such as for fortune-telling, divining lottery numbers etc. As a future hypnotist, you should think clearly and objectively, for it is only from this that success can grow.

Those people who are involved in superstition and mysticism do not enjoy success in life, for their thinking is not focused on the essential, or on the reality to be found in and around them. If you do not search for truth where it really is to be found, namely in life and in being active, then you place yourself outside of life, and should not be surprised when success avoids you like a leper in every aspect of life.

Before we carry on to the next set of exercises with test people, I would like to try and explain some basic terms to you.

1. Idea:By idea we mean a mental prototype, a fundamental term. We have to differentiate between normal ideas that do not trigger ideomotor actions and vivid ideas. For this reason, from now on we will use a new word: v i d e e(formed from vital and idea). By this we mean vivid (vital) ideas that have an effect on the ideomotor system and trigger actions there.

2. Imagine - visualize:By this we mean activities that consist of imagining or visualizing an idea or videe. Imagine = to form or have a mental picture (an idea or videe). Visualize = to form a picture of something in your conscious mind.

3. Suggestion - autosuggestion:By suggestion we generally mean any type of mental influence. This includes everything that contains videes, including: words, gestures, actions, images, symbols, written words etc. Suggestion is the act of placing videes through words, gestures, acts, images, symbols, the written word etc. in the ideomotor system of a person. Autosuggestion = suggestion made to oneself, influencing oneself, placing videes in one’s own ideomotor system through talking oneself into believing something or by visualization etc.