Meditation-Mind Blog

Every so often I run into my notes for the Five Finger Exercise, one of my favorite self-hypnosis breaks. This version is adapted from a wonderful book called The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook by Martha Davis, Elizabeth Robbins Eshelman and Matthew McKay

I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

You can use this exercise whenever you need to relax for a few minutes.

If you read it through a few times, you’ll find that you remember the steps quite easily.You just give yourself cues by touching your thumb to each of your fingers in turn. But it’s OK to peek at your notes until you get the hang of it. Enjoy the calm.

Five Finger Exercise

After finding a place where you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes and getting comfortable:

1. Begin by touching your thumb to your index finger.  As you bring your thumb and index finger together, think back to a time when your body felt ready for a rest, right after you had been for a walk or jog or swim or some other pleasant, physical exercise. It felt good and healthy to exercise and now it feels good and healthy to rest. Take a deep breath, and then another, and then one more, and give your body time to slow down.

2. When you’re ready to go on, touch your thumb to your middle finger.  As you bring your thumb and middle finger together, think back to a time when you felt very loving toward someone.  It can be anytime that comes to mind. Just remember having a warm loving feeling and let yourself feel it again. Stay with the feeling until you’re ready to move on.

3. Next touch your thumb to your ring finger.  As you bring your thumb and ring finger together, recall a time when you received a nice compliment. Let yourself hear the kind and appreciative words again and take them in. Accept them. And then, if you wish, extend a mental thank you to the person who said them. 

4. And now touch your thumb to your little finger.  As you bring your thumb and little finger together, think back to a beautiful place you have been. Maybe someplace you found awe-inspiring. Take in its beauty once again. The light, the colors, the sounds, the scents, the feeling in the air. Let yourself experience it for a while.

Let yourself be filled with these sweet feelings of peace and love and calm, and after a while, when you’re ready, come back to your resting place, still feeling very peaceful, very loving, very calm and very good.

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I hope you enjoyed this self-hypnosis break. If you’d like to share your experience, you’re welcome to leave a comment. Just click on the word “comments” below and an easy-to-use form will appear.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Relaxation, Self-Hypnosis, Stress Relief, Book and CD Recommendations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.