Can Hypnotherapy Help You Sleep?

Is it possible that you are hypnotising yourself to have a poor night's sleep? Food for thought perhaps.

Sleep is a natural state. In fact, most of us need to spend a third of our days asleep. It appears that the reason we sleep is to refresh and restore our cognitive functioning; speech, memory, creativity and flexibility of thought.

Most people have experiences of sleeplessness; perhaps during a period of stress, change of routine or a change of lifestyle, for example. For most people, when things settle down again or we have habituated to the new situation, normal sleep patterns resume.

For some though, sleep does not return to normal and wakefulness becomes the new norm. In this situation, the person very often begins to worry about whether or not they will sleep well as the evening wears on and bedtime approaches. They may 'replay' over and over their experience of sleeplessness with all the accompanying anxieties and discomfort. By the time bedtime comes along they have effectively told themselves they are unlikely to sleep well and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Often, a key factor in helping people sleep better is bringing this to their attention. For many people, it is a relief to consider this possibility. There are then several ways to help you sleep through hypnotherapy. The 3 approaches I use most often are:

• teaching you how to do self-hypnosis

• direct suggestions

• regression

Self-hypnosis

Learning to put yourself into a light hypnotic state helps to bring your attention back on to yourself. Many people who sleep poorly have minds that are active at night whilst their body is tossing and turning. Self-hypnosis helps to bring your mind and body into alignment. The hypnotic state is akin to the hypnogogic state we pass through in order to go to sleep. Getting into the habit of entering this pre-sleep state perhaps triggers the body's natural sleep cycle since many people find when practising self-hypnosis for whatever reason, that they tend to sleep better.

Direct Suggestion

Without realising it, you may have been giving your mind and body the message that you will not sleep tonight. We need to convey the message to your unconscious mind that you want something different to happen. Direct suggestions are a set of new instructions if you like tailored specifically to you which filter through to your unconscious mind because they are delivered whilst you are in a hypnotic state. As the unconscious mind assimilates these, so they begin to take effect.

Regression

Sometimes poor sleep begins to occur at a particular time in a person's life, perhaps after a trauma or a period of intense stress. Although the person is now through that period of their life, there remains some unresolved emotion manifesting as a tension held at the mind and body levels. I have found many times that by resolving these past issues, the person's sleep patterns return to normal.