“It’s a real practice just like meditation,” she says. “You can learn it and practice; you can read a book; you can try on your own or work with audio-hypnosis tracks.” When you’re first getting started, though, she adds that it never hurts to have a session with a professional hypnotist first. You can apply the principles of self-hypnosis to a number of goals, including but not limited to: “When you really have that strong desire but you’re getting stuck in your behaviors,” Cummins says, “hypnosis is a great way to come into alignment and to really sink into an internal source of motivation to make the change you want to make.” Once you identify those emotions, you can start to work through them using some of the tools outlined in this primer on shadow work.
