Affirmation · “The Subconscious Says Yes”
Self-Hypnosis for Change
Drop into a relaxed, eyes-closed trance and feed the subconscious targeted positive suggestions and imagery for a chosen goal (confidence, calm, sleep, weight).
McKenna’s self-hypnosis in 5 lines: Quiet room, eyes closed, limbs uncrossed. Relax the body head to toe with slow breathing. Deepen by counting down / drifting down. At the relaxed level, give yourself vivid positive suggestions and imagery of the goal already achieved. Return refreshed (or drift to sleep). Repeat daily. Never while driving.
What it is
The engine under Paul McKenna’s entire “I Can Make You.” franchise: a self-administered light-hypnosis routine in which you relax, close your eyes, deepen the relaxation, and then receive a stream of positive suggestions and imagery aimed at one goal — supreme confidence, calm, easy sleep, or eating less.
In his books the trance is delivered as an audio recording (typically 20–28 minutes) you listen to daily; the printed chapters set up the goal and beliefs, and the recording does the conditioning. McKenna calls this “reprogramming your mind,” but mechanically it is a standard relaxation induction carrying targeted autosuggestion.
This file isolates McKenna’s own accessible, mass-market form of self-hypnosis — short, comforting, repeated daily, with everyday language rather than clinical scripting. It is not a new induction method; it is the Ericksonian/NLP-flavoured induction popularised for a general reader.
The Method
McKenna has the listener practise once a day (often at night, or before a challenge), in a quiet place where they won’t be disturbed.
- Settle and close the eyes. Sit or lie comfortably, uncross the limbs, and let the eyes close. Permission to relax is given explicitly — “you don’t have to do anything, just listen.”
- Progressive relaxation. Attention is walked through the body, releasing tension from the scalp and face down through the shoulders, arms, torso, and legs. Slow breathing is encouraged.
- Deepen. A deepening device follows — commonly counting down, or imagining drifting down (e.g. descending a staircase) — pairing each step with “going deeper, more relaxed.”
- Targeted suggestion + imagery. At the relaxed level, McKenna delivers the goal-specific content: suggestions of confidence/calm/sleep, and vivid imagery of the listener already being that way. This is where the technique borrows from mental rehearsal (see cross-links).
- Anchor / carry-over. Many of his trances install a physical cue or a “this feeling stays with you” suggestion so the state can be recalled later.
- Return. A count-up or “in a moment you’ll open your eyes feeling refreshed” brings the listener back — except in the sleep version, which is designed to let them drift off. (The relax → deepen → suggest → return arc and the daily-listening schedule are how McKenna packages it across his titles. The specific imagery changes per book.)
Source & Lineage
Paul McKenna (b. 1963) trained in NLP with Richard Bandler and absorbed the Milton Erickson lineage of permissive, conversational hypnosis that sits behind NLP.
His self-hypnosis routine is the stage-and-clinical hypnotic induction stripped down and made friendly for a bookshop audience. The deeper lineage runs back through Erickson and, further still, the mesmeric tradition (Mesmer, Braid, Bernheim).
Common refinements
Listening once and expecting magic. The method is built on daily repetition; one session is a primer, not a fix.
- Trying too hard to “be hypnotised.” Trance here just means relaxed and inwardly focused; straining for a special state defeats it.
- Running it while driving. The recordings explicitly must not be used at the wheel — a non-negotiable safety point.
- Using it as a substitute for treatment. For clinical insomnia, anxiety disorders, or eating disorders, this is at best an adjunct.