Book Report: Self Hypnosis: Creating Your Own Destiny by Henry Leo Bolduc (c)1992

Self Hypnosis: Creating Your Own Destiny by Henry Leo Bolduc (c)1992

I've been doing hypnosis for a fairly long time, to the point that I have my own particular understandings, approaches and explanations for all the elements of it. But it's precisely for that reason that I love reading books like this -- to get different perspectives and see the things I think I know, but from different angles. Henry Leo Bolduc has his own perspective on hypnosis and self hypnosis, and he explains it very lucidly. 

Self-hypnosis is often a much more difficult thing to achieve than regular hypnosis, because with regular hypnosis, one person, the hypnotist, is leading and the other follows. But with self-hypnosis, there;s only one person to both lead and follow. 

Bolduc starts with a bit of hypnotic history, and he uses very neat ways to describe the self hypnosis and the hypnotic experience in a way that will make sense to anyone trying it for themselves. For example, he cleverly describes hypnosis as a "waking dream" and a "working dream," and presents a model of the self-hypnotic experience as a train driven by relaxation, carrying suggestions and visualizations, on a tack of ideas. As many authors writing these kinds of books do, he warns of hypnotic influences in everyday life, like advertising, friends and family, and the practice of prayer and and encourages the reader to be more aware of them and filter out the negative ones. 

The author seems to be very influenced by Edgar Cayce and quotes him. There are also distinct Ericksonian bits, as well as some NLP. Interestingly, he always includes both direct suggestion, which he feels appeals to the left, rational brain, and visualizations to appeal to the creative right brain. 

The book includes two basic inductions, one more permissive and one more authoritarian, and then adds a series of 23 useful scripts, which he calls cycles, for various self-help purposes, including self-confidence, sports achievement, public speaking, creativity, ending a relationship, health, and other things. They are intended to be recorded and played back as needed. 

There's a second series of 8 cycles, both by the author and by his students, "for higher consciousness," which include cycles for developing psychic abilities, balancing chakras, etc. Some of the scripts are enticingly abstract, like the "Song of Life" cycle which encourages the listener to tune into sounds around him and then into sounds and vibrations inside himself and find the inner music and harmonies. Another was a cycle written by a woman who wanted to be more aware of the kinds of people coming into her life and takes the listener on walk through one's memories of different people. 

Sadly, the author passed away on 2011, but there's a website with interesting articles, and a link where you can download a free PDF of this book. http://henrybolduc.com/