April Newsletter

How To Make Friends With Time

by Sally Stone

Have you ever experienced time distortion? Time flies when you’re having fun. Time crawls when you’re bored. Time stops when you’re in love. Time is running out. Time marches on relentlessly. Time is a valuable commodity. I will love you til the end of time.

The end of time? Does time have an end?

We count time in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennium, etc., yet how can something we measure using such precise mathematical increments have such diverse qualities? Is time purely subjective — a figment of our own perception?

Time Distortion

In hypnosis, time and space often feel distorted. Like a dream, you can travel to a Caribbean blue sea, push on a trick bookcase that opens up to a city far away, fly through golden fields in slow motion, or sink into a deep dark space of silence.

Sometimes you remember nothing but come out of trance feeling refreshed— as if you’ve had a full night’s sleep. You’ve slowed down to the appropriate tempo for enjoying life. Time is on your side.

An hour of hypnosis can feel like a few minutes and 15 minutes can feel like a week. Time slows down and expands like the open arms of a welcoming friend. Experiencing time as a friend persists for a while. Living in the vast space of time at a manageable pace feels like a dream come true. How can we maintain that feeling when we go back to our busy lives?

We normally think of time as linear. We wake up at 5 or 6AM. The previous day has passed and cannot be retrieved. The future is yet to come. We have our to-do list and march through the day getting things done, checking off each item, feeling satisfied with having used our time well.

Is Time Really Linear?

Is time linear or does it only feel that way in certain states of mind? Which experience of time (distortion) is true?

When I traveled out-of-body at the time of my bike accident, past, present, and future felt compressed into all-at-once. I perceived the random puzzle pieces of my life as a perfect whole. It felt as if everything had been completed. I knew that everything that was going to happen had already happened. I was just a witness to its unfolding. There was nothing to do but be at peace in the completion. Read More