by cardigan » January 3rd, 2008, 11:42 pm
The phrase "Avoiding other thoughts during hypnosis" indicates to me, that you might be concentrating too much consciously on the words of the hypnotist. And that is actually not a good thing. Try to get into the same state of mind as you would be in when you go to bed to sleep and right before you doze off to sleep. A sort of detached state, where sounds in the background don't even seem to bother you. Just let the words of the hypnotist enter your ears without you concentrating on them consciously at all. Your subconscious will be listening. You don't have to. Actually it's beneficial that you don't. But listening in one's sleep isn't very effective, because both the conscious and the subconscious tend to be shut down for much of the time! You need to bypass your conscious mind in a way that doesn't bypass your subconscious too.