Hypnosis Lesson #14
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Goal: To control or eliminate physical pain
Time: Approximately 10 minutes at each practice session

Preparation:

You require an altered state of consciousness to learn
this exercise, but once you have mastered it, it will
work instantly in whatever state of consciousness you
find yourself when you need it.

Sit in a straight-backed chair with both hands on your
lap, palms up. Induce a trance state by closing your
eyes and silently verbalizing suggestions of relaxation.
Follow up with a slow count from ten to zero, suggesting
that your trance will have deepened by the time you
reach zero.

The Exercise:

If you do not by now feel the trance threshold-tingling
in one or both of your hands, tell yourself that you 
will now count from one to three. On reaching three you
will feel, in your weaker hand, some sensation that is
different from the normal. Do not suggest what it will
be like - wait for it to manifest itself.

It may take one of many forms: your hand may feel asleep,
or as if it were encased in a glove; it may tingle or
vibrate; it may seem to be made of wood; it may feel 
cold, or it may seem to have become a thing altogether
apart from you. Whatever the nature of the change in
feeling, once it makes its appearance you have gained
your first objective - the arousal of some feeling in 
your hand that is experiences as a non-normal state.

Your hand has begun the process of learning to turn off
sensation, including pain, and it will turn off 
sensation and pain more completely each time you
practice.

Before you end the exercise, practice transferring the
anesthetizing power of your hand to other parts of
your body, by placing the hand over the part you have
chosen. For example, you might transfer the anesthesia
from one hand to the other by this means. Tell yourself
that within a few seconds your other hand will be 
similarly anesthetized, and will remain so until you
suggest that it return to its former state. Then
practice transferring the anesthesia to various other
parts of your body, always ending with the suggestion
that the anesthetized part return to normal. 

Remove the anesthesia from your original hand before
awakening yourself by rubbing both hands together
three times, and telling yourself that this contact
with your normal hand will immediately restore the
anesthetized one to complete normalcy.

After several practice sessions, when you have 
gained some facility, suggest that a slight pain
appear in some part of your body, then eliminate it
by placing your anesthetized hand on it. During that
same session suggest to yourself that, from now on,
you will be able to achieve the same effect in your 
normal waking state, by simply suggesting the
comforting power in your weaker hand, or inducing
it by means of a key word, and then transferring its
pain-reducing effects by touch, wherever there is 
pain in your body.

The first few times you use this method on a real pain
such as, for instance, a headache, you will do better
in an altered state of consciousness; but soon you
will find yourself readily eliminating headaches
and other aches while in your normal reality state.

A NOTE OF CAUTION

Don't use your new ability indiscriminately. You
will be able to eliminate a toothache - but the
cause of the toothache will remain, and will
require professional attention as always. The same
holds true, of course, for other pains as well.