SELF HYPNOSIS LESSON 11
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TUNING OUT II

To perform this exercise you must wait until you are actually in pain;  but 
the purpose of acquainting yourself with the technique, assume that you have
caught your fingers in a closing door.  They are swollen and discolored; the
slightest touch is exquisitely painful, and you are doubly handicapped because
it is the hand you use most that is hurt.

PREPARATION

You may not yet have delved deeply enough not your altered states of
consciousness to disassociate yourself from pain; but you have learned to
transfer it from one part of your body to another, and it would obviously be
useful to transfer tis throbbing agony to the other hand, which is less
indispensable in every day activities.

THE EXERCISE

Use the same trance induction as for Exercise 1.  When you have reached
sufficient depth, concentrate very intensely on the pain, experiencing it as
consciously as you can, first as a whole, then in segments, finger by finger.

Gradually focus your concentration on one particular finger.  Feel the pain slowly flowing out of that finger and into the same finger on your other hand, as if they were connected by a pain-conducting tube.

Be very patient, and do not try to rush this process.  When you have succeeded in draining the pain out of one finger, begin on the next one, and then the next, until all pain has been shifted from one hand to the other.

End the practice session with a self-suggestion that this transferred state 
continue after you wake up, and will be in effect  for the remainder of that
day.  Then awaken yourself by the one-two-three count.

The next day, while repeating the exercise, try adding a self-suggestion to the
effect that the pain will be much less than the day before.

WARNING

Pain is the body's signal that something is wrong.  In cases where medical
treatment is necessary, this exercise is not to be used in lieu of a doctor's
care.