How to do self-hypnosis: a step-by-step guide

Self-hypnosis is hypnosis you guide yourself. You narrow your attention, relax, repeat a few suggestions you prepared in advance, and then bring yourself back. A basic session takes 10 to 20 minutes and has six steps: set one specific goal, choose a time and position, do an induction, deepen with a countdown, give yourself the suggestions, and count yourself back up. The steps are below, with a short script you can use tonight.

Does self-hypnosis actually work?

It depends on the problem. Several trials have taught people self-hypnosis, or given them recordings to use at home, and some found clear benefits.

• Chronic pain. Thirty-seven adults with spinal-cord injury and chronic pain were randomized to 10 sessions of self-hypnosis training or EMG biofeedback relaxation. Both groups reported similar drops in pain from before to after sessions, but only the self-hypnosis group had a significant drop in daily average pain, and it held at three months.^[1]
• Hot flashes. In a trial of 250 postmenopausal women, those who listened to daily 20-minute self-hypnosis recordings for six weeks saw their hot flash scores fall by 53.4%. Women who listened to white noise labeled as hypnosis saw a 40.9% fall. The difference was significant, but the sham group improved a lot too.^[2]
• Children with IBS or abdominal pain. 260 children were asked to do home exercises from a CD at least five times a week for three months, or had six sessions with a therapist. One year later, pain frequency and intensity had fallen by at least half in 62.1% of the home group and 71.0% of the therapist group, and the home version was judged noninferior.^[3]

Not every trial is positive. Two large trials taught pregnant women self-hypnosis for labor. Neither found a difference in epidural use compared with usual care, one with 680 women and one with 1,222.^[4][5] So self-hypnosis is a skill with good results for some problems, not a fix for everything.

How to do self-hypnosis in six steps

1. Set one specific goal. "Fall asleep more calmly" works better than "sort my life out." Write the goal down, then turn it into two or three short suggestions (see the rules below).
2. Choose a time and position. Pick a time you won't be interrupted, ideally the same time each day. Sit upright with your feet flat if you want to stay awake. Lie down in bed if the goal is sleep. If you have somewhere to be afterwards, set a gentle alarm.
3. Induction (2–3 minutes). Use one of these to narrow your attention.
   • Eye fixation: stare at a spot slightly above eye level while you breathe slowly. Tell yourself your eyelids are getting heavy. When they want to close, let them.
   • Breathing: breathe in for a count of four and out for a count of six, for about ten breaths.
   • Progressive relaxation: move your attention from your feet up to your face, letting each area go loose before moving on.
4. Deepening (2–3 minutes). Count down slowly from ten to one. With each number, picture yourself one step further down a staircase and tell yourself you are going a little deeper. You don't need to feel anything dramatic.
5. Suggestions (5–10 minutes). Repeat your sentences slowly, several times. Spend most of this time on the image: picture the situation going the way you want, in as much detail as you can.
6. Emergence (1 minute). Tell yourself that you will feel alert and clear-headed at five. Count up from one to five and open your eyes. Sit for a moment before you stand. If the goal is sleep, skip this step and let yourself drift off.

How to write suggestions that fit

• Present tense. "I am calm when I sit down" rather than "I will be calm."
• Positive. Say what you want, not what you want to avoid. "My breathing is slow and easy" rather than "I am not anxious."
• Specific. Name the situation. "When I stand up to speak, my voice is steady" gives your attention somewhere to go.
• Imagery. Add a picture or a physical sensation: warm heavy arms, a cool breeze, the room you will be in. An image is often easier to hold on to than a sentence.

Keep it short. Two or three sentences you can remember with your eyes closed work better than a paragraph you have to reach for.

A short script: calm before sleep

Read this through slowly a few times before bed, or record it on your phone in your own voice and play it back. Pause at each line break.

What if it doesn't feel like anything?

That is common, especially at first. Your mind will wander. When you notice, go back to your breathing or your count without starting over. If you fall asleep during a daytime session, sit upright next time. How a session feels is a poor guide to whether it helps. Judge it by the goal you set, over a few weeks. Our guide on how often to practice hypnosis covers what schedules the trials used.

Some people find it hard to guide themselves. They lose track of the count or can't remember the words. A recording solves that. The research gives mixed signals on live versus recorded delivery. One overview of 49 meta-analyses found that one review reported larger effects for live sessions than recordings, while two others did not. The same overview reported that, in one meta-analysis, hypnosis worked better when a therapist's sessions were combined with self-hypnosis than when people used self-hypnosis alone.^[6]

So a guided start can help. You can record your own script, work with a trained hypnotherapist, or use an app. Our comparison of hypnosis apps covers the options, and if sleep is the goal, see hypnosis for sleep. If you are wondering how this differs from a meditation habit, read hypnotherapy vs meditation.

Serious side effects appear rare in research settings. An analysis of hypnosis trials on ClinicalTrials.gov found no serious adverse events likely caused by hypnosis and a 0.47% rate of other adverse events, though several trials did not report adverse event data at all.^[7]

Frequently asked questions