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MARK P. JENSEN ET AL.
well-being . . . with nothing to bother you and nothing to disturb you as
we continue. . . . Seven. Seven levels down . . . right now, there is nothing
you have to do. Nothing required of you and no one you have to please.
No one you have to satisfy or impress. No one you have to take care of.
Nothing at all. Just this opportunity to feel deeply comfortable and at
ease. . . . Eight. Eight levels down. Allowing this opportunity to become
more and more absorbed by your experience of comfort and well-
being. . . .As if nothing else matters…just your sense of comfort and well-
being. . . . Nine. Nine levels down. . . . Perhaps noticing that, as your body
relaxes more and more deeply, your whole body feels as if it were
becoming heavier and heavier . . . really sinking deeper and deeper into
the comfort of the chair. . . . And yet, and you might find this very inter-
esting, no matter how heavy your body becomes, you can also notice the
curious feeling of weightlessness. As if your mind could just lift up out
of your body and float, effortlessly…and so comfortably. . . . Allowing
yourself to drift and float, just like a puffy white cloud in a beautiful
summertime sky. Drifting and floating, as if nothing else matters right
now. . . . And now. . . . Ten. The tenth level of relaxation. Notice, now,
how deeply comfortable, how very much at ease you can feel. Hearing
my voice, understanding my words . . . and enjoying how easily you can
just rest.
Decreased pain.
The purpose of the suggestions for decreased pain
was to minimize the experience of pain intensity and increase the par-
ticipants’ ability to ignore pain. A shortened version of the script used
for the decreased pain suggestion (but which includes the primary
components of this suggestion) follows:
With every breath you take, breathing comfort in and tension or discom-
fort out, you can wonder how it is that you may be feeling more and
more comfortable, right here and now. You may be pleased, of course,
but you may also be surprised that it’s so much easier now to simply not
notice uncomfortable feelings, to simply not pay attention to anything
other than your comfort. So much easier to enjoy the relaxing, peaceful
comfort of each breath. So simple, so natural, to attend to your
breathing. . . . As we continue, you can enjoy discovering that the uncom-
fortable feelings just seem somehow to change. With every breath you
take, you can notice how those feelings seem to become less and less
clear, less and less strong . . . as if they are becoming farther and farther
away . . . or smaller and smaller, taking up less and less space in your
awareness. . . . You can trust that your unconscious mind will notice any
feelings that you need to pay attention to—if your health requires that
you notice any uncomfortable feelings, you will do so. It’s so nice,
though, that any old, chronic discomforts can fade away, becoming less
and less strong. You can picture putting these feelings in a box, then put-
ting this box in another box, and then putting this box in yet another box,
and placing that box in a room down a long hallway. So that even if you
are aware of these sensations at some level, it is almost as if they are
buried . . . far away . . . so easy to ignore. . . . As you breathe, and as you