The Power of meditation and self-hypnosis

2011. 8.21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyxuk7NNjh0

The Power of meditation and self-hypnosis

Today, I would like to share my understandings, reflections, experience and practical method on meditation and hypnosis learning.

I have been fascinated by meditation and hypnosis for a long time. Among all of the self-development courses I have taken, yoga and plate classes  or well-being seminars I have attended, I was surprised to find that none of them doesn’t consider meditation and self-hypnosis as one of the most essential topics for improvement of mental and physical health.

One of the most important courses in my life were Mr. Chris Harvard’ 2 staged NLP Certificates, recently “Money and You”, some similar like the three night seminars called the Encounter Happiness by the Great Buddhism master Rinpoche and Happy Science by Master Ryuho Okawa. I also read these masters’ books and other great philosophers’ articles, studying different theories and skills on meditation and hypnosis. Through above learning, I have been trying to grasp the essence from all of the great practitioners, applying the skills to our daily life, my family life and career.  Combining with my reflection on the learning from all sources and my personal self-hypnosis and meditation experience, plus my prospective to life and value system, I have gradually created a systematical approach to practice meditation and self-hypnosis in an easy and relaxed, confortable way. That is to practice meditation and self-hypnosis anywhere, anytime and for many purposes. This system gives me a sense of security and a peace of mind, guiding me to live each day with meaning, with fulfillment and progress.

Relaxation Through Meditation

My preference would be to call meditation relaxation – conscious relaxation, chosen relaxation. These are words that are more universally understood, more comfortable. Constantly working toward the goal of discovering my own ability to reach a state of serenity, I have learned to meditate.

Meditating is actually easier than you might imagine. Most of us have dabbled in meditation by participating in conscious relaxation. Maybe during an exercise class or to manage pain at the dentist or anxiety before a test. We start by paying attention to our breathing. The practical effort to focus completely on our breathing takes our minds away from the "mind clutter" that constantly tries to invade our mind and eliminate feelings that will lead to a time of calm. With repeated effort the goal of clearing your mind – to think of nothing, does occur and the process of meditation takes on its own energy. The result is, and I guarantee this, peace, serenity, calmness, eventually opening yourself to new insights.

I hope this approach unveil the fact that meditation and self-hypnosis is not as mysterious as you expected but easier than you might imagine. I learn meditation and self-hypnosis to I discovery my inner ability reach a state of serenity. I would like to dedicate my method to people who want to improve their health, wealth and relationship and ultimately find the life key for unconditional happiness.

First, what is meditation and self-hypnosis about?

What are the differences and similarity between the two? Why is the practice so fundamental to our quality of life and what wonders it does to our life?

Meditation is to focus completely on our breathing, and eventually lead to a time of calm or relaxation or reach to any other purpose like to release anxiety, pain or improve concentration or energy. Usually we need to have a quiet place, sit down. Self-hypnosis can be much freely carried out, no matter we are standing, walking, bathing, lie down or typing. etc.

Meditation can be initiated internally just with purely smoothly breathing and externally by listening to music or watching movie or pictures, but self-hypnosis is purely a mind activity like self-talk with music or without. A soothing music is always more effective to bring a refreshment and lifting up.

The functions of meditation and self-hypnosis can be divided into three categories:

One: M and SH for healing and long term health

1)     For sleep, relaxation and muscle pain

2)     For weight control and fitness

3)     For habits kicking off  (e.g. swearing, sleep and smoking)

Two: M and SH for mental health and self-development

1)     For creating good habit

2)     For release of fears (death, speaking to people or stage freight)

3)     For compassion

4)     For love and marriage

5)     For happiness

6)     For dealing with bad tempered people

7)     For relationship

8)      

Three: M And SH for others

1)     For concentration and focus before a big event

2)     For stage freight and public speaking

3)     For brainstorming of an articles or any writing

Now let’s discuss in detail about this system:

1)     For relaxation psychologically and physically

a.     deep breathing skill or abdomen breathing –

This is my favorite relaxation method esp. during Yuga or Plate practice or before sleep. I use this method to send me to my dreamland within 10 counters of deep breathings every night. After this practice, our lungs are filled with more oxygen, and cleaned up much more effectively. Our nerve-system sends message to our brain to left relax and to our hearts to jump or pump more smoothly and to have a relaxation safely.

In details, deep breathing is important from the standpoint of both health and spiritual development. Deep breathing increases our vitality and promotes relaxation.

The bio-chem Mechanics of Deep Breathing

When we breathe fully and deeply, the diaphragm moves farther down into the abdomen, and our lungs are able to expand more completely into the chest cavity. This means that more oxygen is taken in and more carbon dioxide is released with each breath. Deep breathing takes advantage of the fact that the lungs are larger toward the bottom than the top.

In deep, abdominal breathing, the downward and upward movements of the diaphragm, combined with the outward and inward movements of the belly, ribcage, and lower back, help to massage and detoxify our inner organs, promote blood flow and peristalsis, and pump the lymph more efficiently through our lymphatic system. The lymphatic system, which is an important part of our immune system, has no pump other than muscular movements, including the movements of breathing.

 This slower, deeper breathing, combined with the rhythmical pumping of our diaphragm, abdomen, and belly, helps turn on our parasympathetic nervous system--our "relaxation response." Such breathing helps to harmonize our nervous system and reduce the amount of stress in our lives. And this, of course, has a positive impact on our overall health.

In this skill, we try to aware of our deep Breathing track from nose to check and to abdomen and backward.

1.     Lie down or sit in a comfortable chair, maintaining good posture.  Close your eyes.  Your body should be as relaxed as possible. 

2.     Now place one hand on your chest and see if it is moving in harmony with your abdomen.

3.     Inhale deeply and slowly through your nose into your abdomen.  You should feel your abdomen rise with this inhalation and your chest should move only a little.

4.     Exhale through your mouth, keeping your mouth, tongue, and jaw relaxed.

5.     Relax as you focus on the sound and feeling of long, abdomen slow, deep breaths.

Complete Natural Breathing

1.     Sit or stand with good posture.

2.     Breathe through your nose.

3.     Inhale, filling first the lower part of your lungs then the middle part, then the upper part.

4.     Hold your breath for a few seconds.

5.     Exhale slowly.  Relax your abdomen and chest.

Practice these two exercises, in whatever combination feels best for you, for ten minutes, twice a day.

(Taken from Davis, Eshelman, and McKay; The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook, 2nd edition; New Harbringer Publications, 1982.)

©Academic Skills Center, Dartmouth College 2001

Single nostril breathing

Our noses have left and right nostrils.

When having headache, try to close your right nostril and use your left nostril to do breathing for about 5 min. The headache will be gone. Or you can try inhale from right and exhale deeply and completely from left and then change the order, repeating several times.

If you feel too tired, do it the opposite way. Close your left nostril and breathe through your right nostril. After a while, you will feel refresh again.

Because the right side belongs to heat, so it gets hot easily. The left side gets cold easily.

Women breathe mainly with their left nostril, so they get calm down easily.

Men breathe mostly with their right nostril, so they get angry easily.

If the left nostril breathes not smoothly, press your left nostril and use your right nostril for breathing and you will get refresh quickly. Or vise versa.

b.     Muscle relaxation skill

You can lie down or sit in a comfortable chair. Let your muscle relaxed. You feel heavier and heavier. Tension muscle beginning with counting from 1 to 4 by clinching the toes to legs first and then to tension the muscles in hips, low back to abdomen, arms and hands until face. I, get the tension building, 2, increasing the tension, 3 and 4 and 5, your tension increased to max. Then allow the tension to release completely for 10 seconds. And then start from another muscle. Your mind eyes imagine your blood flowing in the tissues around the just tensioned muscles and your muscle become increasingly relaxed. The sudden flow of blood from the tensioned muscle will wash away lactic acid which causes the muscle fatigue. Feeling yourself totally supported by the surface.

 

c.      audio hypnosis

Simply breathe smoothly, peacefully and focus on the melody flow, thinking nothing or just let your mind drifting into your own imagination with the music progresses naturally.

d.     visual hypnosis

e.     Relaxation by imagination and self-hypnosis

Count from 1 to 10, each count makes you feel heavier, and increasingly relaxed. Then imagine yourself lie in the warm sun in the winter and they sky is crystal blue and the sun is getting warmer and warmer and you are getting heavier and heavier. Everything is moving slow down, the cotton clouds are drafting slowly, and you’re increasingly relaxed. The space between your shoulders are getting wider, your body is getting warmer and warmer and heavier an heavier. Telling your self your mind is at peace and I am slowing down. I am slowing down and my mind is at peace. Feel more relaxed that you’ve never felt before. You are totally supported by the ground in a meadow.

Then come back from half sleep to awakeners to by counting from 10 to 1. This practice can be taken each day, you can do this on bus, on train, in office and lie on bed. You will find this is an effective way to get relaxation in a very short time.

7) For relationship: The main reason for a relationship to be broken up is usually due to a loss control of our temper and a bad management of stress.

Here relationship can be with our parents, spouses, children and relationship with our superiors, colleagues or friends.

At family, quarrels over trivia do happen all the time especially between spouses.

If one side shouts nastily at other and other responses at the same way, a small thing can turn into a big issue.

If the spouse is a very touchy and short-tempered, blow up constantly without a reason or disproportionally, how can we calm down to avoid an open-fire?

At this moment, my practice is:

My brain starts immediately self- hypnosis by saying repeatedly:

There must be someone to retreat from the argument first if we don’t want to run into big unpleasant situation for nothing.

It’s not a big deal anyway, why do I lose temper for that trifles? I know he is mad but if I go with him, I would be mad as well. No way, I hate myself like that;

Then I advise myself that direct fighting back on small issue is not worth doing but only makes things bigger and worse. anger is damaging to health, high blood pressure, headaches, gastritis and even cancer can be the consequence of anger and resentment. If I really love myself and love my family, I should keep quiet first and let the argument fade.

Next stage is to analyses why my spouse will lose temper for this particular case and you will find two general reasons for family arguments:

a.     It is about stress and pressure from external environments but they don’t know how to release it properly. Unfortunately, their beloved ones usually become the victims because they are the only people who can trust and shout at without making a big trouble.

b.      It is about love and caring most of the time. As the love is so deep and too much that if one side ignores or not take their advice repeatedly, a serious arguments plus chucking up to too serious statements or unrelated statements will yell out from one side and this can be also very damaging and ridiculous.  

With all above self-talk lingering in my mind whenever an arguments happen, I will repeatedly to myself. Then, I can find a balance, so as to calm down a bit easier and more effectively.

In job, superiors lose temper or blow up at sub-ordinaries seem commonplace especially when pressure is there to meet deadline or an encounter of outside complaints. Their stress or anxiety has to be released but not everyone can do it in a controlled way or properly. Even we ourselves may not able to control ourselves better. In this case, better don’t directly come into confrontation by blaming or blow back. Because the consequence may be either side has to go or run way to find another job or another relationship. Then I will say to myself if I lose this relationship, I will lose another again because the problem is not from the particular event but human, esp. me myself. If I don’t adjust the way of communication and attitude, still keeping blaming others and shift off/shirk all responsibility, this event can happen anywhere and anytime again.

I apply the way of thinking – that is to try to put ourselves into others shoes and take our own responsibility, I find we can avoid many arguments in family and in society. The point is we have to be realistic, to be more rational to yourself and others. That means you can forget similar unpleasant daily event and forgive others as well.