Continuing to see that image of yourself, you then shift your awareness to the very top of your head and kinesthetically sense temperature, tension, moisture, pressure, etc. — any distinction you are able to make kinesthetically. You work your way slowly down through your body, sensing each part of your body. As you look at that visual image of yourself from the outside, you're sensing what's going on in your body kinesthetically.

Next you add on auditory representation. As you see the image and sense your body kinesthetically, you describe your experience to yourself internally. "I feel a tension in my right eyebrow, and as I sense it, it begins to go away." All three systems are representing the same information. You are seeing, feeling, and hearing what your actual experience is at that moment.

After you've gone all the way through your body in this way, then you can add the same piece on at the end that I gave you for the other method. As you sense which hand and arm feels lighter, you see that hand and arm in the image beginning to lift up, feeling attracted toward your face. Then you describe it auditorily "My left hand is beginning to lift with honest, unconscious movements." Even if you don't know what honest, unconscious movements are, your unconscious does. Leave that to her. "My hand will continue to feel lighter and be attracted to my face. When it touches my face, I'll sink into a nice deep trance." You can say these things to yourself either sub–vocally or out loud if that is more convenient. If you say this out loud, shut the door, or people will think you are very weird.

Man: I have found it easier to get my hand up if I see a long handle pulling it up.

Or you can use a helium balloon. There are lots of extra things you can add to this. Use whatever else you can incorporate into your images and feelings and words that will help you accomplish each step. I'm giving you the basics. There are lots of nice artistic ways of doing it.

Man: If I'm using the internal image of myself out there and I feel my left hand lighter than my right, do I see that as a mirror image or the other way?

Try it both ways and find out which,is more effective for you.

Man: What's the purpose of having your hand touch your face?

The exact task that you pick to do is arbitrary. Most people report that their hand and arm did lift, and when it touched their face they felt a sudden, radical change, and that they had amnesia after that point.

Before you begin either one of these exercises, and any time in the future when you decide to do self–hypnosis or meditation, give your unconscious an instruction about how long to keep you there and when to arouse you. You might say to yourself before you begin either one of these exercises "I would like you, my unconscious, to arouse me in fifteen minutes, allowing me to feel refreshed and renewed by this experience." Your body is an exquisite time clock. If you measure the time it takes a person to come back out of trance, it's usually within a quarter minute of the time they had specified. The worst that would ever happen, even if you forgot that instruction, is that you might go into a nice deep physiological sleep and wake refreshed several hours later.

Try both methods until you discover which is most effective for you. For the first half–dozen times, don't attempt any specific change work other than just relaxing and refreshing and renewing yourself. Wait until you have full confidence about your ability to get in and out; in other words wait until you know that you can get yourself into a deep trance and that your unconscious will arouse you after the appropriate length of time.

As you practice these methods, you will develop confidence about being able to get in and out. You will also notice that the procedure is beginning to streamline. Instead of deliberately going through the whole sequence, when you sit down to do it, you will begin to go into a trance immediately. At that point self–hypnosis becomes available to you as a really nice tool for your own self–evolution.

To use self–hypnosis for your own development, give your unconscious an entire set of instructions before going into a trance. First, decide what dimension of your experience you would like to alter. Ask your unconscious to review with sounds, images, and feelings, those occasions when you did something particularly creatively and effectively. Ask that when your unconscious has finished making this review in all systems, it extract from the review those elements of your performance which are distinctive, and to have them naturally and spontaneously begin to occur more frequently in your everyday behavior in appropriate contexts.

Suppose you are about to make a sales presentation to a board of directors in a corporation, and you want to make the very best presentation you can. Before you drop into the trance, at the time you state how long you want to stay down, you might say "When I get into a deep trance this time, I would like you, my unconscious mind, to review with images and sounds and feelings the five times when I have been most dynamic, effective, and creative in making sales presentations.

If you want to be effective in family therapy, you ask to review the five times you were most creative, etc. in doing family therapy. If you want more general self–evolution, you can say "Review the five times in my life when I behaved most gracefully, or most assertively, or most creatively," You ask for a review of the best representations of whatever it is that you would like to be effective at. Then you drop into trance and allow that to occur. If you do this, you will discover yourself changing; you will indeed evolve yourself.

You can also ask for a conscious output of what you went through in trance, but I recommend that you don't. I recommend that you simply get in the habit of trusting your unconscious processes. You will discover new patterns in your behavior, or old patterns which are occurring more frequently in the appropriate context. When that happens, you can use your own behavior as examples from which you can then come to a conscious understanding of what changes you have made. It's more efficient to go from unconscious change to behavior and then to a conscious digitalization of it, than it is to begin with a conscious understanding which you attempt to apply to behavior. Do yourself a favor and do it the easy way.

Bob: What if you want to do something that you have never done before?

If you don't know that you've ever succeeded with a particular behavior, then use the New Behavior Generator that we taught you this morning. Think of someone else who does this behavior very well. Pick yourself a really elegant model—somebody whom you really respect and admire—who does this behavior particularly elegantly and effectively. Then use a variation of the same instructions. Ask your unconscious mind to review all the internal stored images, sounds, and feelings of this person doing that particular behavior. Do this in three phases. In the first review, you just see and hear what is going on. Watch and listen to that person do what you want to learn to do. In the second phase you ask your unconscious mind to substitute your image and your voice for the other person's. So the second time you run the movie, you will see yourself doing the things that you just observed and listened to the other person doing. In the third phase you step into the movie and experience it from the inside, feeling yourself do the behavior, as well as seeing and hearing from that new point of view.

For instance, I might use Milton Erickson. I have spent a lot of hours watching and listening to his behavior. I give myself the instruction before I go into trance "Pick out the times when he has responded to incongruency with clients when I have been present. What specifically does he do?" The first time around I would see and hear him do whatever he does. The second time around, I would put myself in his position and see and hear myself doing the same thing he did. In order to actually get that into my behavior—which is where I want it—I have to step into the movie myself and feel the muscle movements and feelings that I would have if I were actually doing it.