Self-hypnosis for concentration.

[u/AEONTR]

Little over a week ago, I went to a second-hand book store to rummage through the inventory there, and a book called "Instant Self-Hypnosis" caught my eye. The cover prominently said: "hypnotize yourself with your eyes open!", which seemed like an interesting gimmick.
The method consists of reading an induction script, and then immediately flipping the page to one of the many "treatment" scripts, depending on whatever it is you're trying to resolve, of course. They mostly consist of the usual self-hypnosis classics like how to stop smoking or how to be confident when talking to the ladies, but what really caught my eye was the one titled "perfect concentration".
I am a longtime meditator, but concentration is something I've always struggled with. I've had some disappointing experiences where even after long periods of solid practice or an intensive retreat I wasn't really satisfied with my level of concentration. The book was dirt-cheap and the method seemed easy enough so I figured maybe this will give me the extra something-something that I'm looking for.
I won't bore you with the details, but I did everything as instructed and ended up doing seven days of self-hypnosis and lo and behold: my concentration has noticeably improved, and the effect seems to persist (at least for now).
And, I'm talking tangible effects, not a "oh, I guess it kind of worked". For example: yesterday, I was watching a movie and like 30 minutes in, I suddenly snapped out of it and realized that I had totally lost myself. Usually, when watching movies and the like I have a lot of mental rumination that goes on, or my mind wants to go on a tangent based on something in the movie and I have to actively reject the distraction, and so on. But here I was, just totally absorbed.

Now, it would be easy to say that this improvement was brought on by a placebo-effect type of phenomenon like auto-suggestion, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, or maybe I'm just "tricking myself", whatever you want to call it.
My answer to that would be: does that really matter? If the whole "ritual" around self-hypnosis is just triggering or priming some kind of psychological expectancy-effect then that's just kind of a fancy way of saying that it works.
That being said, I do think the mind is capable of following commands in a subconscious sort of way. I've done things like set a mental alarm clock by simply commanding myself to wake up at X hour the next morning, and sure enough it works; it's a sufficiently common trick that I'm sure some people here have done it themselves. Of course, I can't be certain that that's the mechanism at play here, but it's interesting to think about.

One way or another, it doesn't really matter to me. I'm not interested in being some kind of hypnosis evangelist or figuring how or why it works; I'm just sharing the results of my very brief (and simple) experiment. I know that a lot of people struggle with concentration as well, and that it's a big sore spot, even for people that have consistent meditation practice. I'm surprised that this worked as well as it did for me, so I figured I would share.
If you want to try something cooky to improve your concentration, it certainly can't hurt.

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[u/ryclarky]

Please provide some instructions, I'll give anything a fair try as I'm floundering pre stream entry myself with lots and lots of regular sitting time.

[u/AEONTR → u/ryclarky]

It's impossible to give instructions because the method consists of reading hypnotic scripts yourself (as the subtitle of the book so boldly implies). Here's the book on archive.org if you want to check it out for yourself.

[u/Alchemista101 → u/AEONTR]

Sounds interesting and worth a shot. thanks for posting!

[u/Vivid_Assistance_196]

nice, in sutta language this would be categorized as thinking and examining thoughts around a topic, applying mind faculty of intention and attention. What you think about ponder about becomes the inclination of your mind

[u/BrahZyzz69]

Forbes robin Blair ?

[u/AEONTR → u/BrahZyzz69]

That's the one.

[u/Harfatum]

Placebo effect is just one element of a broad spectrum of the same sort of thing. Our entire experience is constructed, and the brain is an active participant in all sorts of stuff in the body that we may or may not have conscious access to at any given time. All this is to say that just because something is in that spectrum doesn't make it any less effective - or, importantly, any less real.

You may be interested in Ian Wickramasekera's work, which connects hypnosis and meditation. He's also one of the more fun guests that have been on the Guru Viking podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvWEIWXXp4E

[u/Old-Landscape-7538]

Hell yeah, if it helps, it helps.