Creating Healthy Habits with Hypnosis and Neuroscience
According to Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and professor of neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, 70% of waking behavior is habitual behavior.
As it turns out, people take to breaking or developing new habits differently. Personally, I can, and have, quit my share of toxic behaviors and toxic relationships with relative ease. I’ve also started new habits at various times in my life, in my early twenties, I started a weight training program that lasted about 15 years and has now morphed into walks and a martial arts practice.
In Andrew Huberman's podcast, The Sciences of Making and Breaking Habits, he talks about a number of ways that our biology, neuroscience, and even the time of the day can assist in developing and or breaking habits. In this article, I will summarize his techniques and explain how you can employ the use of your subconscious mind and self-hypnosis practice in order to further assist the development of a habit.
The first technique he talks about is visualization. If you’re my client you know that the language of the subconscious mind is images and emotions. Therefore visualization is one of the go-to techniques of Self-Hypnosis. As Huberman puts it, “there is tons of literature on visualization.” Matter of fact, visualization was the tool I used to kick off my 15 year journey at the gym and more recently, I used the detailed version of visualization to quickly learn and perform a form for promotion at taekwondo, Huberman describes the detailed technique below.
“If you were trying to adopt a new habit, think about the very specific sequence of steps that’s required to execute that habit, [for example, making a cup of espresso every morning] I would actually think through each of those steps (visualizing), walk into the kitchen, turn on the espresso machine, draw the expresso. Walking through each of those steps from start to finish, turns out that just that simple mental exercise done once, can shift people toward a much higher likelihood of performing that habit regularly, not just the first time but as they continue out into the days and weeks that follow.”
Another tool to acquire a new habit is what he refers to as task bracketing. The way he describes task bracketing is not only thinking about the execution of the particular task, but incorporating and visualizing the efforts leading up to, and the feelings or events after performing that task. For example, if I were to think about posting this blog, I would not only concentrate on the act of posting, even though that is the goal, but I would focus on the hard part before posting, the research and actual writing part. I would use visualization and Self Hypnosis to prepare my subconscious mind, essentially practicing the act of research and writing in my mind before actually doing it, then visualizing the post completed and then the good feelings that are sure to come when I complete the task. During your visualization of the entire sequence, it is important to start rewarding yourself for the entire task, not just the completion. For example, using my self-hypnosis suggestions writing strategy, I would write an affirmation focusing on why it’s important or enjoyable to me to get the blog out. My affirmation would be something like this:
Because I value learning and personal growth. I choose to block out personal time in the morning to research interesting topics and write for an hour each day.
Writing in this way attaches that task to a value of mine, learning and personal growth while ignoring the fact that I don’t particularly want to do it. Another important element in this goal is the time frame, “in the morning.” According to Huberman, leveraging neural systems in different times, or phases of the day is another way to accelerate building a habit.
The third technique he mentions is using our brains and bodies' natural rhythms to assist in habit formation. For example, breaking down our day into 3 phases: phase 1 being, 0-8 hours after waking, phase 2, 9-14 hours after waking, and phase 3, 15-24 hours. Huberman points out that our brains and bodies are more suitable for taking on new, more challenging tasks during phase 1 than they are during phase 2 or 3. He describes phase 1 as our most active time of the day, when Norepinephrine, Dopamine, Cortisol and other neuro-systems are elevated and therefore is ideal to take on tasks with the highest limbic resistance or ideal to start new and or highly challenging tasks. If you do this habit or habits at the same particular phase of the day, your nervous system will get used to, and learn to expect this level of activity. Building a stronger likelihood that your new habit will become reflexive or deeply ingrained.
He goes on to say that in phase 2, 9-14 hours after waking, Norepinephrine, Dopamine and Cortisol start to decline, as Serotonin starts to rise making it ideal to create a more relaxed atmosphere. As Serotonin rises, our brains and body start winding down. By creating an atmosphere of lower light levels and even lowering the locations of the light source in the room, for example, turning off overhead lights and switching to table lamps, you’re mimicking the location of the sun during the afternoon hours. Other tasks recommended for this phase of the day would be walking, or otherwise getting low afternoon sunlight in your eyes, restful activities such as cooking or showering. This is a good time to perform activities already ingrained, known as low limbic friction, or prepare your mind for tomorrow's activities with your self hypnosis or visualization techniques.
Getting good sleep during phase 3, 16-24 hours, allows neuroplasticity, the basis of habit forming, to occur. During this phase he stressed keeping lights very low to no light, keeping the room cooler to allow for deeper sleep and of course limiting or eliminating caffeine in phases 2 and 3.
Employing the mind training techniques such as self hypnosis and visualization in this way and orienting the nervous system toward this task bracketing builds neural networks to more easily and efficiently build habits to achieve your goals.
To learn more about how to use self hypnosis, neuroplasticity, and time bracketing techniques to achieve your goals please sign up for my upcoming Self-Hypnosis Workshop or Complimentary Consultation