Albert Einstein wasn’t your typical genius; Einstein essentially engaged in a technique resembling “image streaming.” The concept behind it is that our minds continuously generate a flow of images, regardless of the tasks we’re occupied with. This ongoing stream of mental imagery can transform into hypnosis when one either guides the creation of these images or concentrates on them with undivided attention. Einstein’s practices were closely linked to this idea, suggesting that many of his breakthroughs stemmed from creative and intuitive thought processes. Notably, this process bears a resemblance to what happens during hypnosis, where individuals delve into their subconscious through a similar focus on mental imagery.

Some people wrongly believe that really smart people can’t be hypnotized, but Einstein, one of history’s brightest minds, swore by it. The man responsible for the theory of relativity? Yes! He claimed he came upon it during a self-hypnosis session.

Einstein once said, “You can’t solve problems using the same thinking that got you into them.” To break free from his usual thought patterns, he’d have these hypnotic or “image streaming” sessions every afternoon. And during one of these, he came up with his famous equation, “E=mc².”

Einstein, didn’t have an easy time as a child. He had dyslexia and struggled with language. They thought he’d never talk; every sentence he spoke, he’d whisper to himself, moving his lips. He even got kicked out of high school and flunked a college entrance exam. After finishing college, he was stuck working in a Swiss patent office, making it seem like he would never amount to anything.

But then, when he was 26, he dropped his Special Theory of Relativity on the world and snagged a Nobel Prize 16 years later. In his “Autobiographical Notes,” In his “Autobiographical Notes,” Einstein wrote that he came upon the first crucial insight that led to his Special Theory of Relativity while he was daydreaming when he was 16 years old. He wondered “What would it be like to run beside a light beam at the speed of light?”  But it took him a whole decade to put it into action. He chalked up his scientific smarts to playing around with mental images, imagination, dreams and sensations, which he thought was the secret sauce for deep thinking.

Einstein was all about using hypnosis to unleash his imagination, forming random connections and doing what he called “thought experiments” in a sort of trance-like state. He saw algebra as a fun puzzle and proved we’re all made of energy using math. According to him, the biggest scientific discoveries happened through these intuitive, wide-awake daydreams. For those of you who know mre about hypnosis, its getting into the alpha and then theta brain state.

Let me show you how you can do self-hypnosis and give yourself the permission to become creative.