So anyone who’s friends with me on Facebook will know that I survived the flight and am now in Sydney.  That sentence amazes me – Sydney!!  More about that in my next post, but today I thought I’d just extol the virtues of self-hypnosis.

One of the key challenges of this trip (apart from raising the money to get here) was getting on the plane – two planes, actually.  About a week before I was due to fly, I started listening to a lovely self-hypnosis app, handily titled ‘Fear of flying’, every night when I went to bed.  People were asking me what was on it, but I have no idea, as I seemed to fall asleep within the first couple of minutes of putting the soothing voice into my brain.  I say soothing, but probably I mean hypnotic, obviously.  I did hear ‘3,2,1 and awake’ a couple of times, but that was pretty much it apart from the very beginning where I was encouraged to relax, relax, relax…

On Wednesday, I made my way (very early in the morning) to Manchester airport, and noticed that I didn’t feel exactly terrified – at least, not to my normal level of pre-flight panic.  After a fabulous amount of queuing and waiting, I finally made it onto the plane, and found myself with a window seat, just beside the wing.  Normally, this would have been a terrible thing – seeing a plane wing and an engine is not the best way to induce calm in someone terrified of all the things that might go wrong!  But this time, I felt okay about it.  Take off was good (always happy to find that even big planes can make it into the air) and then it was drink/lunch time (at about 11am, for goodness’ sake – my poor body clock!).  I managed not to keep one eye trained on the cabin crew, as I normally would, and I even watched some films!  And I was taking pictures of the mountains somewhere over Iran/Iraq without any sense that I really shouldn’t be looking down there.  Then it was feeding time again, followed by a landing in Abu Dhabi.  Under usual circumstances, I’d be really, really hacked off at the thought of having to go in another plane, but again I was fine.  Most amazingly, on the second part of the journey I managed to go to sleep!!  By now, I was realising the amazing brilliance of that hypnosis app – honestly, ask anyone who’s had to endure a flight with me before, I was like a new woman this time.  At the end of it all, as we made our exciting landing in Sydney, I even had the bizarre thought that I’d quite enjoyed the experience!

Happily, I’ll have time to listen to the app plenty more before I have to get on another plane.  For now, it’s Sydney, and then the exciting train journey up to Byron Bay – no hypnosis app required for that one!