Paraliminals are a type of self-hypnosis recording, from Paul R Scheele's Learning Strategies Corporation, dealing with topics as diverse as giving up smoking to improving your time management.

When you listen to them, you hear different stories (and sometimes different voices) in each ear - ideally, you should use headphones to listen to them.

One ear (usually) hears a track involving a symbolic story and the other hears a track (usually) with more affirmation-ish type sentences. I think one track is intended for the logical "left" brain and the other track for the creative, intuitive "right" brain.

The idea is that it is impossible to pay attention to both tracks simultaneously so your mind gives up trying after a while and it kind of overloads your mind into accepting the phrases that are being spoken. It's a kind of positive brainwashing.

Most of the time you just end up ignoring both tracks and just enjoy the feeling of hearing snippets of positiveness in each ear.

I've been using Paraliminals on and off for more than 10 years. From about the mid-80s to the mid-90s, I had bought and tried virtually every self-hypnosis/subliminal recording available and it was not until I came across Paraliminals that I found something that was really effective.

I probably have them all - there was a special offer a few years ago for buying the whole lot in one go when they were finally released on CD - but there are only one or two that I listen to again and again. Some of them just don't resonate with me even if I am particularly interested in that topic, and a few of the more recent ones have people other than Paul Scheele on them and some of their voices just don't work for me.

My personal favorite Paraliminal is the first side of the time management one (Get Around To It). If I listen to that in bed in the morning (on a day that I am working for myself), I find that I am hugely more productive that day.

To sum up, I think they are the best and most effective self-hypnosis recordings currently available.