A colleague named Eldon Taylor (who also happens to have the label of NY Times best selling author) has a new book out and I have been privileged to review it. First of all, this is not actually a book, but a workbook, or so he calls it, because there are points at which you will be best served by putting the book down and using the audio recordings that come with it. Since the book covers two topics, I will be reviewing each topic separately.

Self Hypnosis

Over all, I liked the self-hypnosis part of the book because it encourages experiencing rather than just reading about what you learn. As self-hypnosis books, go, I have found them to be all be just okay, but Eldon takes it a step further and helps condition you to the self hypnosis process and build confidence in it with his CDs. The goal being that you do not need the CDs after a time or two of listening. There are also full scripts of the CDs provided in the book.  

If you are not familiar at all with the mind, the book includes some interesting studies that should convince anyone of the power of their mind and get them excited about the prospect of self-improvement. For the already converted, these were not as necessary, but still fun to read. Here is an example from page 21:

"...does personality have anything to do with illness?.... Multiple personality patients routinely devastate mechanistic beliefs about the body. A patient may test totally normal in every physiological sense but with a shift of personality, some as quick as the snap of a finger, the individual may exhibit hypoglycemia or even diabetes. How does a personality shift alter body chemistry in seconds? Can a personal belief system, such as "who I am" alter cellular behavior instantly?"

He goes on to give examples of some even changing eye color and having one menstruation cycle per month for every personality housed within the patient. Wild, huh?

My only problem with the first part of this book was that I thought it was written at too high of a grade level. It made me wonder if it will be less accessible to a wide array readers. I know, that many readers, though they have the intelligence, won’t slog through so many 11 letter words. But let's hope they do.


 Subliminal Communication

Taylor’s second subject of his book is on subliminal communication and how to use it yourself as a self-improvement tool. This part of the book was fascinating to me. In the self- improvement world, I don’t know many people who are using this tool. But Taylor very convincingly proves its wide use everywhere else (advertising, sales, political campaigns, music, etc.)  Certainly I had heard of subliminal messages, and know that the subconscious mind listens to everything, even things that are out of our conscious awareness (hence the success of some NLP techniques), but didn’t realize the pervasiveness of their use.

In the second half of the book, after outlining the many ways that subliminal messages are used,  and his journey to becoming a kind of guru in this field, he gives an easy step by step process for how to create your own. So I decided to try it. I got my daughter to say some things into a voice recorder. Things like:

“I am smart. At bed time I fall asleep easily and effortlessly. I like reading books. I play nicely with my friends. I use my words when I feel sad or mad…..”

They were personalized for her and also included some of the same things that are on my Kids Affirmations MP3. Then I mixed them as he describes, with white noise and an audio track of nature sounds so I can play them in her room 24-7. Unfortunately, I have only done it for one day, so you’ll have to check back to read about the results.

If it works, which I assume it will, I may start making them for my clients--with their permission of course.

This brings me to my last thought, which is relevant to this book as a whole. I have said it before and I will say it again. If you are not working on the subconscious level, you don’t have free agency. The subconscious scripting that we all have (from years of being programmed by other people, our own negative thoughts, and subliminal messages we receive on a daily basis) creates so much condition-response behavior that "choice is an illusion." As Taylor says in his book on page 167, “Only limited choices exist, and those result from the patterns of our conditioning.”

To expand our consciousness so that we indeed have free choice, self-hypnosis is a wonderful tool. And I think using subliminal technology on yourself is a wonderful way not only for self-improvement, but to combat all the subliminal technology that you may be downloading unawares every day.  

This book was a quick read, and I would recommend it to anyone who is serious about self-improvement. For my readers, you invited to visit Eldon Taylor's book launch page to enter to win all kinds of prizes. http://www.progressiveawarenesspromotions.com/it/12j/indexJ.html