Self-Directed Neuroplasticity and Worldview Literacy: Shifting from Dominant to Kinship

Did you know you can enter into self-hypnosis for realizing unconscious beliefs and creating new transformative ones with just a paperclip and a foot of dental floss? Simply hold it between your index finger and thumb and truly imagine it moving in a circle. When it starts moving, don’t freak out or question it as it will stop if you do. Trust what is happening and stay with it. Make it circle bigger, slow it down, or reverse it, all with your imagination. As Einstein wrote, “imagination is more powerful than knowledge.” This phenomenon isn’t supernatural; it’s neuroscience in action, offering a remarkable window into your hypnotic receptivity.

What’s actually happening is your ideomotor system at work, revealing the profound connection between your conscious intentions and unconscious responses. The usual hypnotic scripts to induce you into a state of hypnosis aren’t necessary. You are in hypnosis when the ideomotor neurons in your fingertips start the movement. These tiny ideomotor responses cause involuntary muscle movements that occur below the threshold of conscious awareness. Your fingers make microscopic adjustments because you’re doing hypnosis, which I define as “deep belief in an image while in a brainwave state lower than beta.”

The Pendulum as Real-Time Biofeedback

When you enter a receptive hypnotic state, your ideomotor responses become amplified. The pendulum becomes a biofeedback device, showing you in real-time when you’ve achieved the focused, receptive awareness that makes transformation possible. You’re witnessing proof that your unconscious mind is listening and responding. You’re witnessing proof that you are receptive to any other images you can structure and believe in.

Here’s where it gets powerful: while maintaining that pendulum movement, you’re in an optimal state to implant self-hypnosis directives. The continuing swing serves as both evidence and anchor for your receptive state. However, if you have to stop and think about a directive, you will come back into beta brainwave frequency and snap out of the hypnosis. Create your directive in advance. It must be one that will produce the image you wish to actualize in your thinking and behavior. Your words are crucial. They must create a truly positive image that is relatively believable, with the right amount of enthusiasm and the awareness that the words will be taken literally.

Creating Your Transformation

Now that you have your hypnotic self-directive clear and well-constructed, get the pendulum moving again and double-task by keeping it going while imagining what your directive does to create a new neural pathway. Then go forward with an “in-vivo exposure” that allows you to prove your transformational goal has been automatically actualized. The more you then practice the new thinking or behavior, the stronger the neural pathway gets until the old contrary one is completely overshadowed.

Remember, the key is crafting a directive paired with the right mental image. Your unconscious mind thinks in pictures, sensations, and feelings rather than abstract concepts. Instead of “I want to be more confident,” you might visualize yourself walking into a room with shoulders back, making eye contact, feeling a warm steadiness in your chest. As the pendulum continues its responsive movement, you hold this image with clarity and emotional resonance, repeating your directive: “I move through the world with natural confidence and ease.”

The pendulum’s persistent motion confirms your mind remains receptive. Each swing reinforces that you’re in that sweet spot where conscious intention can inscribe itself into unconscious patterns. However, you can use other forms of ideomotor phenomenon that can let you know you can give yourself a hypnotic directive. For example, when I am about to be introduced to an audience for a keynote, I might imagine my index finger moving or a helium balloon lift up my wrist. When it seems to rise on its own, I might imagine “tuning in to what the audience really wants to learn” or “making my words and sentences clear and motivational,” etc.

Such use of ideo-motor nueron phenomenon can be thought of as self-directed neuroplasticity. Your ideomotor neurons aren’t just moving a pendulum; they’re demonstrating that the bridge between conscious desire and unconscious transformation is open. In that openness, real change becomes possible.

Taking It Further: CAT-FAWN Technology

The most effective way to achieve optimal results is to use the pendulum in concert with CAT-FAWN technology. CAT stands for Concentration-Activated Transformation—this is the self-hypnosis part, but it also relates to metacognitive realization of your previous hypnotic beliefs, which may be inhibiting your highest self.

FAWN represents Fear, Authority, Words, and Nature. It’s a framework for understanding how our beliefs are shaped by these forces, particularly as we examine worldview literacy. This involves exploring our pre-colonial kinship worldview as it contrasts with our dominant colonial worldview. With such worldview understandings, you can reveal deep patterns affecting everything from personal transformation to our relationship with the planet.

To dive deeper into this framework and its applications, see our book Restoring the Kinship Worldview (for restoring balance on Mother Earth). Or start by downloading the worldview chart with its 50 contrasting, complementary worldview precepts at Kindred Media or worldviewliteracy.org