If you are beginning to practice self hypnosis you might find this useful. Trust yourself and it gets easier. Have confidence that you will go deep. And if you don’t just assume that is for good reason and that you will give it a go next time.

I’ve been doing self-hypnosis for sometime as a way to relax, obtain improved focus and achieve a meditative and spiritual lift.  I both listen to guided visualizations that I have recorded and ones that I have purchased.  But mostly, I prefer to now just put myself in a trance with out an audio guide. I have my own induction technique that involves imagining wires from my forehead to all parts of body. In the my forehead is a big switch.

I leave my eyes open and tell myself “you will go into a deep meditative trance for X minutes and will achieve (insert what ever goal I have for the trance here). I then count down from 5 to 1. BY the time I get to 3 or so it becomes very hard for me to keep my eyes open. When I hit 1 I imagine the switch flipping and wham, I can feel my body relax in one big drop.

The cool thing is, just before I talk to myself, I look at a clock and decide when I want to wake up.  This morning I put myself under at 5:38 for 20 minutes. I woke up at 5:57.  During the trance, sometimes it feels like I’m really deep and sometimes not so deep. But in most cases I wake up within 1 minute of the stated time or right one time.  Every once in a while, while under, I’ll ask myself if it is time? But when it is really time it just comes to me with another count 5, 4, 3, waking up, 2, normalize, 1 and I’m awake.

Even when it doesn’t seem deep, the time goes by really fast. So I know I’ve gone right brain or alpha.

Let me know how your meditation works for you.  BTW - I also meditate most mornings for 15 to 20 minutes. And some evenings in bed. In bed I usually use a guided meditation and fall asleep. But just as the voice start the count down to waking up, wham, I’m awake.  So because I wake up at the right time I know that I’m hearing the guided meditation.  I then roll over and get a great night’s sleep.

You can view all of my posts on meditation/self-hypnosis here!

I’ve completed (or nearly completed) two portraits after my Drawing on the Right Side of The Brain class concluded.  Its been hard finding the time given course curriculum development for my new gig as an Adjunct Instructor in the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Richmond.  But when I have sat down and started to draw, it just flowed. It feels really good to be able to drawn something that vaguely resembles what I’m attempting.  Now I need to learn some more technique. Practice makes perfect.

These are some of the things I have learned:

• Occasionally take a break for 10 minutes and get away from the Drawing. Come back and shift to right brain and look again at the subject or the photograph and see what I wasn’t seeing before.
• Concentrate on the darkest darks.
• Tape the drawing on the wall and look at it from a distance.
• Look again at the angle of the eyes, mouth, nose and lips.
• Hair, I’m starting to get how to draw the hair. Can’t yet put that into words.
• I get jazzed with energy when drawing and then I’m tired. Dog tired. I think that is from the left-right brain shifting that is going on. I find that at work also sometimes when I have to think critically then create a solution.
• Careful with cross hatching on a girls face. If it is too distinct it looks like facial hair. So now I can do beards better.
• I’m getting better with cross hatching and shading. These little devices help a lot -Blending Stumps.
• I like mixing pencil and charcoal sticks for the darkest darks. But there is no turning back once the charcoal goes down. See the next item.
• The eraser is my friend.

Its feeling like with practice I can get really good really quick.  So I’m going to try to get at least 2 hours in a week till my course development is complete, then hopefully 4 hours or more a week.  Also our wonderful intructor is going to teach an advanced class this summer with advanced drawing techniques, cross hatching wonders and color theory.

You can see all my posts on drawing here.