Take a piece of string and tie in it twenty knots. By this means you can count with a minimum expenditure of attention, as a devout Catholic counts his prayers on a rosary. The number twenty has no intrinsic virtue; it is merely adopted as a suitable round number.
On getting into bed close your eyes, relax your muscles and take up a comfortable posture. These are no more than the ordinary preliminaries of slumber. Now repeat twenty times, counting by means of the knots, the general formula: "Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better."
The words should be uttered aloud; that is, loud enough to be audible to your own ears. In this way the idea is reinforced by the movements of lips and tongue and by the auditory impressions conveyed through the ear. Say it simply, without effort, like a child absently murmuring a nursery rhyme. Thus you avoid an appeal to the critical faculties of the conscious which would lessen the outcropping. When you have got used to this exercise and can say it quite "unself-consciously," begin to let your voice rise or fall—it does not matter which—on the phrase "in every way." This is perhaps the most important part of the formula, and is thus given a gentle emphasis. But at first do not attempt this accentuation; it will only needlessly complicate and, by requiring more conscious attention, may introduce effort. Do not try to think of what you are saying. On the contrary, let the mind wander whither it will; if it rests on the formula all the better, if it strays elsewhere do not recall it. As long as your repetition does not come to a full-stop your mind-wandering will be less disturbing than would be the effort to recall your thoughts.
Baudouin differs from Coué as to the manner in which the formula should be repeated. His advice is to say it "piously," with all the words separately stressed. No doubt it has its value when thus spoken, but the attitude of mind to which the word "pious" can be applied is unfortunately not habitual with everyone. The average man in trying to be "pious" might end by being merely artificial. But the child still exists in the most mature of men. The "infantile" mode of repeating the formula puts one in touch with deep levels of the Unconscious where the child-mind still survives. Coué's remarkable successes have been obtained by this means, and Baudouin advances no cogent reason for changing it.
These instructions no doubt fall somewhat short of our ideal of a thought entirely occupying the mind. But they are sufficient for a beginning. The sovereign rule is to make no effort, and if this is observed you will intuitively fall into the right attitude. This process of Unconscious adaptation may be hastened by a simple suggestion before beginning. Say to yourself, "I shall repeat the formula in such a manner as to secure its maximum effect." This will bring about the required conditions much more effectively than any conscious exercise of thought.
On waking in the morning, before you rise, repeat the formula in exactly the same manner.
Its regular repetition is the foundation stone of the Nancy method and should never be neglected. In times of health it may be regarded as an envoy going before to clear the path of whatever evils may lurk in the future. But we must look on it chiefly as an educator, as a means of leavening the mass of adverse spontaneous suggestions which clog the Unconscious and rob our lives of their true significance.
Say it with faith. When you have said it your conscious part of the process is completed. Leave the Unconscious to do its work undisturbed. Do not be anxious about it, continually scanning yourself for signs of improvement. The farmer does not turn over the clods every morning to see if his seed is sprouting. Once sown it is left till the green blade appears. So it should be with suggestion. Sow the seed, and be sure the Unconscious powers of the mind will bring it to fruition, and all the sooner if your conscious ego is content to let it rest.
Say it with faith! You can only rob Induced Autosuggestion of its power in one way—by believing that it is powerless. If you believe this it becomes ipso facto powerless for you. The greater your faith the more radical and the more rapid will be your results; though if you have only sufficient faith to repeat the formula twenty times night and morning the results will soon give you in your own person the proof you desire, and facts and faith will go on mutually augmenting each other.
Faith reposes on reason and must have its grounds. What grounds can we adduce for faith in Induced Autosuggestion? The examples of cures already cited are outside your experience and you may be tempted to pooh-pooh them. The experiment of Chevreul's pendulum, however, will show in a simple manner the power possessed by a thought to transform itself into an action.