Self-Hypnosis, an Accelerated Learning Solution

Accelerated learning is a way to learn more quickly with less effort but more enjoyment.

First of all, do yourself a favour. If it’s not fun, anything in the world, including learning, don’t do it! Your life will be much better off that way. If there is any voice in your head saying otherwise, please know that it is NOT your authentic voice. It’s probably somebody else’s voice that you have internalized. For example, we often internalize the voice of our parents, or something repeatedly said to us by other authority figures. But don’t confuse that voice from the voice from your heart, which is your authentic voice.

How do you tell which voice comes from your internalized head space and that which comes from your authentic heart space? Well, are you having fun or not?

All right, now you tell me there is something you HAVE TO learn so that you can go through the final exam or something. You don’t feel it’s a lot of fun but surely you don’t want to give it up because you’ve been on this path for a while. The good news is that you can still continue to learn it, but rather than having the attitude of “having to”, the good question to ask is “how I can have some fun learning it?”

The answer may lie in self-hypnosis.

Hypnosis has been tied to accelerated learning techniques and accelerated learning methods since the Bulgarian psychologist Georgi Lozanov developed a hypnotic method for learning called Suggestopedia. Given that all learning, all behaviour and all change occur unconsciously first, it stands to reason to begin the learning process here

There is one old friend we have to address before we can talk about hypnosis in accelerated learning: The Critical Factor of our mind.

That Critical Factor of our mind is very useful in navigating our life. If someone asks you to open your wallet, take out all your cash and hand over to him, you wouldn’t do it. Or if I ask you to check out the red sky in the middle of the day, you wouldn’t stand up and go outside and check …

However, in our modern life, the Critical Factor has been overemphasized and its territory has been over-expanded.

Although the Critical Factor keeps us safe and sane, it also maintains the status quo, and prevents us from achieving:

• Peak performance
• Optimal physical experience, including sex
• Deep relaxation, including falling into sleep
• And yes, the ability of being hypnotized

When we extend the use of the Critical Factor to ourselves, it is easy to do self-evaluation too soon and too often. For example, calling ourselves a failure and giving up too early.

This is when Self-Hypnosis comes into play. It helps us shift our focus from the distraction of the mental noise coming from this critical factor mechanism, to the enjoyment of the learning itself. The focus is the key factor for retaining any information.

When our Critical Factor is bypassed, we can then begin learning from the right state: the Flow State, so we can allow ourselves to lose ourselves in the task.

What does the flow state feel like when we learn? It’s called implicit learning, what Georgi Lozanov calls unconscious knowledge. For example, English is my second language, therefore I had to learn it from a grammar point of view. I may know more grammar than you, if you are a native speaker, but that doesn’t mean I can speak more fluently than you. Another example is that a person growing up in Cuba may not need to take a salsa dance class. They can dance salsa easily and naturally. Someone who grows up elsewhere may need to take the dance class where the steps are broken down into “quick, quick, slow” counting first.

The key for implicit learning is to learn from the grammar and take the dance class, but at the same time, have the native experience.

There are many self-hypnosis techniques that can help you bypass the Critical Factor of the mind and enter the flow state for accelerated learning. You can hire a certified clinical hypnotherapist, attend a class, or learn from the internet. There are also books about self-hypnosis. But the best way is to learn from a demonstration.

I am teaching an on-going class in the West End Community Center on “Self-Hypnosis for a Better Life”. Some of the Self-Hypnosis techniques and NLP techniques (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) we share take only a couple of minutes to do. You can do them right before you study something, and it serves the same purpose as sharpening your ax before you chop wood.