Hypnosis (Part 1) Rhythmic Breathing

In the hypnotic process that I facilitate with a client who wants to change a specific behavior, or target a specific goal they want to accomplish, I turn to three components of hypnosis to help them change: 1) rhythymic breathing; 2) progress muscle group relaxation; 3) guided imagery. Rhythmic breathing allows a person to focus on themselves in an inward directed manner, and it is associated with a phenomenally high level of mental concentration. I’m going to discuss in this part some of the ways that I use rhythmic breathing as an integral part of my hypnotic sessions. When the client is relaxed, sitting in an upright position, legs uncrossed, hands to the side, and any variation they want to make of that, I invite them to breathe in and out a couple of times, just to set the pace, and count in and out. I let them know that when I count, they are not to be concerned about following me exactly. I can actually see their chest moving in and out, and it’s my job to pace my counting with their pattern of breathing. I ask them to breathe in through their nostrils if they like, and to breathe out through their mouth. I don’t know why that works preferably to the reverse, but the collective wisdom with which I’m familiar says so, so I run with it. The client seems to be okay with it. As they breath into the third and fourth breath, I ask them to “breath in…one…two…three…and hold…one…two…three…and release…noticing the calming effect the release has on your body. You can almost feel your heart slow down instantly as you release the air.” They are of course continuing to breath without my cue, but I say, “now breathe in again…one…two…and hold…one…two…and release.” Soon I will be incorporating cognitive imagery with the breathing, breathing in positive images that the client wants to instil, and out the images that the client wants to be rid of. An example would be, beginning with natural elements of “fresh, cool air like that blowing off from of a mountain top capped with fresh snow.” As the subject gets comfortable breathing in and breathing out in synch with the counting suggestions, I begin suggesting qualities of their personalities that they would like to achieve, suggesting words such as “breathing in confidence, calm, and serenity, breathing out anxiety, (eg.), lack of resolve, and temptation to fall back into (habit they wanted to change–smoking, eg.), breathing in resolve, fixed focus, calm, peace, and serenity). breathing out any associations related (habit or undesireable trait). At this point the pmr will be woven into the suggestions of the rhythmic breathing, alternating with the breathing in, etc. At the time the pmr will be interwoven with the breathing. As I talked only about the rhythmic breathing in this part of the discussion on hypnosis, it is important to know that the pmr was taking place simultaneously with the rhythmic breathing. As these three processes take place, over time they will occurr with varying frequency.