(disclaimer: this writeup is less about hypnosis & more abt altered states of consciousness not caused by drugs. my perspective on hypnosis is more complicated than what's incl. in here, but imo it's a clean way to get the idea across if ur primarily interested in doing it on yourself)

HYPNOSIS 101 (what even is it?)

Hypnosis is a way of playing with the psychological process of suggestion! There is much disagreement over what "hypnosis" actually is and how it actually works. After researching & practicing it in some form or other for almost 10 years, my position is this:
Hypnosis is like a combo of guided meditation and Simon Says [REFERENCE NEEDED!]. The Hypnotist and the Subject both understand there is a state of consciousness called Trance, and that by following a Hypnotist's instructions, one will go into Trance. Trance has both a feeling and an effect associated with it: "being in trance" feels a specific way, and "being in trance" makes you more suggestible.
From a scientific perspective, the specific feelings of trance seem to be pretty arbitrary. The core mechanic here is the meta-suggestion: "When you feel like you're in trance, you're in trance, and once you're in trance, you are more suggestible (or imaginative, or uninhibited, or whatever the hypnotist's favorite word is)." Since suggestibility/openness/imaginativity/etc are just states of mind you can enter at will, believing you're more suggestible/etc and actually being more suggestible/etc are functionally the same thing. Hypnosis is a ritual that helps you trick yourself into being more suggestible, more open, and more powerfully imaginative than you might be able to without it. It may technically be all in your head but it works like you wouldn't believe. Closest thing we have to "real life magic". Placebo effect final boss.

SELF-HYPNOSIS 101 (so how do you do it?)

Self-hypnosis is just doing the ritual solo. In a lot of ways it's not that different from meditation, but just by calling it "self-hypnosis" you're going to make it feel different. The range of experience in drug-free altered states often comes heavily from the vibes, set dressing, your mindset, the ritual around it, and how you expect to feel. To me deep meditation feels more clear, light, focused, grounded in the real world, it's where I can do thinking about my everyday life/my goals, and I come out of it feeling calm, but more awake than when I started. Self-hypnosis feels heavier, more abstracted, comfortably dissociative (incredibly incredibly comfortable), it lets me be less self-critical, think "weirder" or more associatively, and I can get more dramatic body-feelings from it. If I am trying to, I can feel like I'm completely out of my body, like my consciousness is floating above my head.

Here are some ways to do it. Sit comfortably somewhere you won't be interrupted, and:

MICRODOSE

You can do this right now! Gently clasp your hands together, then point both pointer fingers out straight. Imagine that there are very powerful magnets in the tips of your pointer fingers, and that your fingers are slowly being drawn together. After a few seconds you'll actually feel this in the muscles of your hands. The harder you try to keep your fingers apart, the more powerfully they'll be drawn together. Notice how it feels to let it happen. Eventually they will touch. That's hypnosis. Unclasp your hands.

METRONOME STRATEGY

Get a metronome (or a metronome app). Adjust the metronome so that it's perfectly synced with your heartbeat. Slow down. Feel the sound, your heartbeat ticking, feel it bend into the beat. Relax, more. Let the rhythm pull you deeper. Once you've got it synced, set the bpm a few beats lower. Slow... down...

DRUGS WITHOUT DRUGS (MY FAV WAY TO DO IT)

This is a fun and easy way to make car rides go very quickly (IN THE PASSENGER SEAT). It's also a good way to start 'riding the hedge'.

• Choose like 1-4 specific effects: relaxation, euphoria, happiness, joy, sleepiness, solemnness, the feeling of a 'buzz'/vibration somewhere in the brain, sense of complete mental quiet, numbness or out-of-bodyness, feeling warm, feeling cool, heaviness or lightness, feeling as if you are up to your neck in water and the water is pressing on you, or as if you are floating a few inches above the ground, so on, so on, so on. The sky is the limit.
• Begin staring at a spot on the wall. The longer you stare, the harder it is to look away. Imagine your gaze locking in place. Notice how your peripheral vision goes fuzzier and fuzzier.
• Do "progressive muscle relaxation": Tense up and then relax every muscle in your body, starting at your feet, and working your way up (if you have a loud internal monologe, you can distract it by thinking 'my feet, my ankles, my legs, etc, are heavy and relaxed'). Once you get to your eyes, let them close.
• After you've gone thru your body like this, focus on imagining the feeling of one of your effects until the feeling starts to appear. Hypnotists often describe this as a 'just noticeable difference', and people are often suprised by how well this works. Simply imagine feeling warm until it almost seems like you're starting to feel warm, and then hone in on the 'almost', and you'll begin to feel warm, for real.
• Every time you breathe in, you will breathe in more of the feeling, pulling it further into your body. Deeper and deeper.
• Every time you breathe out, the feeling sticks & settles in place. More and more relaxed. (For some people it helps to imagine this visually, but I'm bad at that, so I just focus on the sensation itself.)
• (optional) Repeat with any other effects you picked in step 1, stacking them together as you go.

When I layer suggestions like this I like going over all of them between each one. Focus on the first effect until you feel it. Let it get stronger. Focus on the next until you feel it. Let it settle into the first, feel them settle into each other, let them get stronger in sync.

If you do this to feel "sleepy and relaxed" it can be insanely helpful for insomnia.

BREATHWORK STATII STYLE (SICKO MODE)

Breathwork is great for altered states because it gets to your physiology way faster than suggestion does (via Depriving and then supplying your brain of oxygen thats why I love the stairmaster #mystairmaster) Im not an authority on breathwork, but this is a method I found and have had some truly incredible experiences with. It's given me a genuine 'vision'/waking dream(?), a few times I've had out of body experiences, a few times I've just come out of it feeling like I'd come close to something divine. It feels very beautiful, sometimes very spiritual, and really intense. It's the psilocybin of sober altered states; I only really want to do it once every few months. You should probably not do this if you have asthma. LMAO.

• Pick an intention phrase for the work you are doing. This could be a song lyric/proverb/line of poetry, or something you write yourself-- two of the ones I've used are "the darkest hour is just before dawn" and "further up and further in". It should be short enough you can comfortably say it twice without taking a breath.
• Sit cross-legged on the floor.
• Gently rock forward and backward, muttering the phrase under your breath in rhythm. When you rock forward, breathe out; when you rock back, breathe in. The breath is very shallow and quick, almost like the motion of rocking is what's forcing the air in and out of your lungs. You're constraining your breath to the pace you're rocking, NOT rocking in time to your breath. The point is getting out of breath, and eventually getting completely physically exhausted
• It will probably feel kind of stupid at first, but keep going
• You will start getting really out of breath. Gasp & interrupt your chant if you need to, but keep rocking at a consistent rhythm, and above all, keep going
• You will start losing sense of the words you're saying, and stumble over them like a tongue twister. Let yourself stumble over the words, and keep going
• You might find yourself going a little faster or a little slower- that's okay
• You will start feeling different, like something strange is starting to happen to you. Keep going.

Eventually something interesting will happen. For me this is usually after pushing past the point where I feel like I might pass out.

LIGHTNING ROUND

STAYING AWAKE, SOCIALLY, FOR 22 HOURS STRAIGHT

Staying up all night talking with a group of your closest friends and then leaving to watch the sunrise is a transcendental experience

STAYING AWAKE FOR 40 HOURS STRAIGHT

I'm not gonna lie this sucks sooooo bad but if you have a friend to do it with it's like having an entire day's worth of 3am conversation. The bad-part of tiredness comes and goes at its whims and the slap-happiness is very interesting. the 1 and only time this happened was a few years ago though and you feel like you're in Inland Empire the entire time.

HYPNAGOGIA

When you're getting ready to fall asleep in bed, stick one of your arms straight up in the air. Let yourself drift off until the arm falls and wakes you up, stick it back up, repeat. This gets you into a state between waking and sleeping, and it will give you some incredibly cool and vivid dream-like visuals and thoughts for a moment, until you fully wake up, or fully drift off again.

GOING IN THE RIVER IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER UP TO YOUR NECK AS LONG AS YOU CAN STAND IT

This is physiologically similar to runners' high I think. If you've never taken an ice plunge I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend it.

SITTING IN A SAUNA UNTIL YOU GET DANGEROUSLY LIGHTHEADED AND THEN STEPPING OUTSIDE INTO THE SNOW

This is truly the second best feeling in the world