Can we hypnotize ourselves?
Many of you (including my past self), perhaps think of the entertainers on TV when you think of hypnosis. Not of something that you can use yourself daily. Have you ever experienced that feeling where you are so immersed in something that you are not aware of your surroundings any longer? People can stand right next to you, talking to you, and you don’t hear a single word of what they say. As a musician, I have had this experience several times, however I never chose to enter that state of trance by willpower. It was something that just happened. The idea of hypnotising myself came from a podcast I have started to follow called “Your mind is trying to kill you”, hosted by Alexandros Megas and Vincent Byrne. I was captivated by the thought of entering trance by willpower alone and have been experimenting with it for some weeks now. It turns out it works wonders!
If you have followed me on social media for a while, you might have noticed in my daily Vlogs that I have a lot of projects going on: painting, learning a new language, blogging and music. I am in my seventh year of learning new musical instruments by unconditionally practising 15 minutes every single day. Learning to play Bleed by Meshuggah on the drums is the latest of them and I started in july 2019. This is arguably one of the most difficult songs there is to play on the drums. And that’s why I chose it. In these seven years of daily practice, I have noticed that my progress is faster the more extreme goals I set. The difficulty of Bleed is so high, that you cannot lose concentration or let your thoughts drift even for a second. If you do, you might lose track of where you are in the song with its very long polyrhythmic bass drum patterns. It is my hyper-focused practice sessions for the past seven years that has laid the foundation for self-hypnosis.
I am by no means a master, but I have managed to enter the state of trance a couple of times by now. Even if it currently is only for a moment, with practice I will be able to extend it. When you get it right, you will feel it. It is a physical feeling, a bit like levitating in the air with “bullet-time” from the Matrix. What happens is that your conscious and subconscious mind become aligned and every other program in your mind shuts down temporarily to devote maximum computing power to the task at hand. In this state of trance, you will at least 10X your abilities. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it “Flow”, and I can highly recommend his book on the topic. To enter “trance” or “flow”, being “in the zone” or whatever you choose to call it, a ritual can help. Last night I tried out an exercise where you take deep breaths and every time you exhale, you become more relaxed. I did that for 15 times and then I started beating the drums. It felt great. When I get up extremely early on Saturdays to write my weekly blog post, I pour a glass of water. That is another example of a ritual.
In the podcast Your mind is trying to kill you, Alexandros tells a story about a woman with limited experience as an artist, who started to paint fantastic images that should have been way out of her league, using hypnosis. That was what captured my attention. I wanted to know if it is possible to do the same thing with music. I reckon that learning to play Bleed on the drums in twelve months, as a beginner drummer, would be the musical equivalent. The latest episode of the podcast has the same title as this blog post and I feel honoured and grateful to have inspired them to talk about it with my Vlogs. But it was them who inspired me first. It’s just another beautiful example of how the world has opened up to an unlimited pool of ideas, when borderless communication is facilitated. Ideas are spread, implemented and refined as a cooperative international effort.
It is truly a great time to be alive!