SELF HYPNOSIS LESSON 11
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TUNING OUT I

A fairly deep trance state is desirable, and it takes practice to self-induce
it reliably.  Begin the induction using whatever technique has proved most
effective for you.  Close your eyes and induce progressively greater 
relaxation, then deepen the state further by counting slowly from ten to zero.

At the zero point, test your depth by means of ideomotor activity, e.g., 
raising and lowering your hand and arm through suggestion as explained in
earlier exercises.  When you have reached and verified an effective level, you
are ready to begin.

THE EXERCISE

Since your attention is already focused on one of your hands, keep it there.
But, now instead of the tingling sensation, suggest to yourself that you are
about to feel a slight pain in the space between your index and middle fingers.
In a moment or two allow it to travel upward, along the inner sides of both
fingers, up to the tips, then around and back.  From there it will spread
throughout both fingers, until they are completely enveloped in this slight, 
but quite noticeable pain.

Allow the condition to remain for a while, concentrating on the sensation as
vividly as you can.  Then shift your attention to the index and middle fingers
of your other hand, and reflect on how they would feel if they were afflicted 
by this pain.  Concentrate deeply trying to feel how the pain would actually
feel there. They longer you think about it, the more acutely you imagine it. 
Now it actually seems as if there were a mirror-image pain there - as if those
two fingers were trying to assume some of the pain, and it is now shared 
equally between the two pairs of fingers.

Now allow the balance to shift decidedly toward the second pair: the pain there
intensifies markedly, while in the fingers of the first hand it diminishes
steadily until it is hardly noticeable there.  And now it is gone - you no
longer feel any pain at all in the fingers where the pain began.  It has been
completely transferred from the first hand to the second hand.

Allow this fact to sink deeply into your mind:  A painful stimulus has been
transferred from one part of your body to another.

Now remind yourself that, no matter where the pain is located, it is still the
same pain that you yourself induced.  It will vanish at your bidding, just as
it arose at your bidding.

Now tell yourself that the pain is about to retreat, as a moving point of light
from within the center of the fingers outward to the skin, and from there down
to the space between the fingers, leaving a trail of extinguished pain behind
it.

Now you feel the point of pain only in that little space between the fingers,
and even there it becomes less and less acute.  It recedes, like a dim light,
into the distance.  You have to make an effort to feel it at all.  And now it
is completely gone, completely extinguished.

Remain still for a moment, savoring the total absence of pain.  Then, before
starting your wake-up count - one, two, three - tell yourself that the next
time you practice this exercise both the appearance and the disappearance of
the pain will proceed much more rapidly and easily.