Continue to breathe normally and deeply. If you should start to feel fidgety, once again take three deep breaths, counting to yourself as you inhale and exhale.

Special Instructions for the One Reader in Ten Who Cannot Achieve Easy Relaxation

Give yourself the instructions in a slow, deliberate manner. It is well to time them in short phrases to coincide with the rhythm of your breathing. It helps to establish the rhythm of deep breathing.

Try not to be distracted by outside sounds or stray thoughts. Your complete attention should be on that part of the body you wish to relax. It helps to "see" it in your mind's eye, if you are one of those persons who can visualize.

Bring your attention up to the calf of the leg. Say to yourself, "relaxed . . . growing heavy . . . becoming limp ... more limp .. . more heavy .. . more relaxed." Continue to concentrate upon the calf of your leg until it feels so limp and heavy that you would be unable to move it. When this takes place, shift your attention to the knee and the thigh. Then, on up through the trunk of the body, concentrating on the muscles in the back and finally up to the neck.

There isn't anything to prevent you from accomplishing this real relaxation. Even as you read this page, you can let one hand "go" completely, and let it hang limp. All you need do is concentrate your attention upon it and give yourself the suggestion that it is going limp and relaxed.

If you experience difficulty in relaxing your body, as a preliminary to self-hypnosis, it is because your mind is on something other than relaxation. Maybe you are concerned with another problem. Sometimes we have problems so pressing that they can't be ignored. If that's the case, put off attempting self-hypnosis until you can devote your entire attention to it.

If you haven't any particular problems, and you really want to lick the cigarette habit the easy and painless way with self-hypnosis—and yet you still find that you can't relax, it is because you are looking for something more in hypnosis than is there. You are ex-expecting something to happen and are holding yourself tense waiting for it to happen.

What it boils down to is this: you are countermanding your own suggestions. On the face of it, what could be sillier? You know there can only be benefits from relaxing. You believe you will be healthier and happier, once you have broken the cigarette habit permanently. Why challenge it? Why fight it? What are you going to prove by resisting your own suggestions? Why do it the hard way, when there's an easy way?

You have already learned that hypnosis is suggestion. The definition of hypnotism is "increased suggestibility." You cannot will yourself to relax. You've already tried and know that you can't will yourself to break the cigarette habit. You must use the method of suggestion and accept the suggestions uncritically, so that they become a powerful influence upon the subconscious.

The method of suggestion is to tell yourself "I am," rather than "I will." By suggesting to yourself "I am," each time you gain additional relaxation, you are re-enforcing the power of suggestion. Each time you tell Special Instructions for the One Reader in Ten Who Cannot Achieve Easy Relaxation yourself "I can't" or "I doubt it," you throw difficulties in your path, and make your efforts ineffective.

Now I am going to outline two tests you may make, if you insist upon proof that relaxing the body is all that is needed to make self-suggestion effective. They need be taken only once. There is no danger in them, but don't become so involved in the test reactions that you lose the power of suggestion for relaxation.

The first test is known as "eye closure." What is sought is a conditioned response to a specific count. A count, let us say, from ten to zero. You want that counting process to be a stimulus for an automatic behavior pattern. In other words, it is proof of the subconscious response to a conscious suggestion.