how do i hypnotise myself? I've heard of athletes who can do that, and make themselves feel cold, etc on command. Aren't there a bunch of steps of relaxation involved? I should ask my old rowing coach about it; he said when he was an athlete, he'd concentrate on the flame of a candle for hours on end & when he finished he said it felt like only 5mins had gone by.

There are several methods that you can use to hypnotize yourself. The method I used was to imagine walking on a beach on a deserted island. I imagined a beach scene with the constant sound of the waves and the soft sand under my toes; it was a very relaxing scene. As I walked on the beach I would relax all of my muscles. After walking on the beach for a while I would come to a cave. Inside the cave was an escalator. As I took the escalator down numbers would appear over my head. The numbers counted from 20 to 1 on the way down. When I reached 1 I would be somewhat hypnotized. Now, once you are hypnotized you have to give yourself a message about what you want to change. A problem arises at this point if you don't know exactly what your message is because you will wake yourself up thinking about it. The best method I found to eliminate this problem was to have a pre-recorded message already made starting with the countdown on the escalator.

 

If your coach was just staring at the flame and not giving himself a message then I think what he was doing would be better described as a form of meditation. Of course there is alot of overlap between the two. Both hypnotism and meditation bring about similar states and both have similar purposes. The difference between them is that hypnosis is used to change your habits and meditation is more for relaxation.