Autoquestioning

Charles E. Henderson, Ph.D.

Getting at Subconscious Secrets

One of the greatest, most mysterious entities in the known universe is aware that you are reading this. This entity is simultaneously dangerous and protective, stupid and brilliant, evil and saintly, guilty and innocent, worldly and naïve. It is your subconscious mind.

Sorry to be so melodramatic, but this really is a Big Deal.

Anything as important to you as your subconscious mind deserves knowing. This is a perversely reflexive statement because it says that one part of your mind deserves to be known about by another part. The “another part” is of course your conscious mind, that part of the mind you think you think with. But unfortunately direct communication between the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind is generally not possible. At least, not for the mentally sane.

There are, however, indirect or “mediated” methods of communication. One of the easiest—though not easy in any absolute sense—is ideomotor questioning. Ideomotor questioning is just one of the techniques that can be used to question the subconscious mind. Taken together, these techniques form the broader category of autoquestioning. In other words, “autoquestioning” broadly refers to all the methods of getting information from the subconscious. Some of the methods of ideomotor questioning are the Chevreul pendulum, automatic writing, the Ouija Board, and the finger response method.

Ideomotor questioning can be fun, exciting, even exhilarating at times. It is not always easy, but it almost always yields valuable information about oneself.

Autoquestioning is something you do yourself.

For more on questioning methods and strategies, see the books, CDs and tapes available from the catalog.

It should be done in solitude, with no other input. Just like an autobiography is written by a person about himself, so too is ideomotor questioning done by oneself, for oneself, and about oneself. As long as you stick to this you will be in no danger from ideomotor questioning. You will always be safe because your subconscious mind will not divulge anything that would create a problem for you. In fact, the subconscious mind generally tends to be over protective and errs on the side of being too conservative.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you will never make yourself uncomfortable with ideomotor questioning. That does sometimes happen. When it does, it's not serious and it's not permanent.

I can't overemphasize the value of autoquestioning. I've had reports from people who's efforts at self-control or improvement had been frustrated by years of failure. But with autoquestioning they were able to discover, and subsequently remove, their subconscious blockages and move forward. Needless to say, they were pretty happy about it and recommend autoquestioning to everyone they know.

If there is something you have been prevented from doing, some achievement that has eluded you, I strongly urge you to do some autoquestioning. Whether you use the Chevreul pendulum, the Ouija board, automatic writing, or one of the other methods, probably makes no difference—it is what works for you that counts.

Be sure to use good questioning strategies to get information that you can use to formulate self-hypnotic suggestions.

As already mentioned, complete, easy-to-follow instructions are available in several formats found in the catalog.

Keep a Record

There are several good reasons for keeping a written record of your autoquestioning sessions. For one thing, and perhaps most important, your questions will be much more specific and appropriate if you write them before you ask them. So write down a question before you ask it. You will have to write and ask one question at a time because subsequent questions are usually dependent upon the answers to prior questions.

Another reason is to avoid repeating yourself and asking the same questions again. Ideomotor questioning takes enough time without wasting it.

A third reason is for future reference. You will cover a lot of ground in a typical ideomotor questioning session with questions and answers that will be valuable to you later. And believe me you won't remember them if you don't write them down.

In addition, keeping a written record of your questioning has a good effect on the subconscious mind. Maybe this is because the additional effort shows you are serious, or maybe it's because the subconscious mind is a firm believer in the "no free lunch" philosophy. If you are interested, you might conduct a questioning session to find out why your subconscious mind responds better when you keep a written record. But be prepared to ask a lot of questions. The subconscious mind gets pretty shy when it comes to divulging its own dynamics.

PLEASE NOTE: My latest book is a complete manual of self-hypnosis and includes a much more in-depth treatment of autoquestioning, including more sophisticated strategies and techniques for questioning. The book is Self Hypnosis: for the Life you Want.

For more information, see:
Concentration & Memory CD
Concentration & Memory Audio Cassette Tape
Autoquestioning & Suggestion CD
Suggestion Audio Cassette Tape
Book: Self Hypnosis for the Life You Want
Book (PDF on CD): You Can Do It With Self Hypnosis

faq | hypnosis facts | home | catalogue | about ceh | shopping cart