Getting At The Subconscious

One alternative for managing insomnia that doesn’t involve addictive drugs is hypnosis. There are many hypnotherapists using different techniques that can help you to sleep at night, sometimes after just one session.

The hypnotherapist will try to determine why you have insomnia. Could it be from chronic pain, poor sleep habits, or other disorders of sleep, such as restless legs syndrome?

Once the hypnotherapist pinpoints the reasons for sleep issues, he or she can develop a hypnosis plan that can get you back on a track of healthy sleep.

The hypnotherapist will try to find out what is going on in your subconscious that is interfering with getting a good night’s sleep. Through hypnotizing you, something you hadn’t thought of before might come to the surface so that you can get it out in the open and work on it. This can help you deal better with your problems so that sleep comes easier.

Self-Hypnosis

You can learn how to hypnotize yourself in order to get a better night’s rest. A good hypnotist either will make a tape for you to relax with or will help you go through the steps of self-hypnosis that you can practice every night before you get to sleep. This is a good option if the hypnotherapist can’t find an underlying reason why you aren’t sleeping and if an ordinary self-hypnotic technique will work to bring you closer to the sleep state each night.

Self-hypnosis works in several different ways. You can simply close your eyes and imagine yourself descending a staircase going deeper and deeper into your subconscious. When you reach the bottom “step,” you will be completely relaxed and will be focused on your breathing. The hypnotist will teach you things you will say aloud or silently to yourself such as “I am entering a state of deep sleep, completely calm and restful.” This is a lot like meditation but involves more verbal interplay between you and your subconscious whereas meditation focuses on breathing and visualization.

Either technique will calm your mind or, if you are lucky, you will fall asleep before even deciding to come out of the hypnosis. If you fall asleep during self-hypnosis, this is not a problem. You will just drift off and will wake up refreshed naturally.

If you don’t fall asleep during the self-hypnosis practice, you can bring yourself out of the self-hypnotic trance with the post-hypnotic suggestion that you will fall asleep soon. Then prepare for sleep, as you would normally do. Whatever post-hypnotic suggestion you gave yourself in order to sleep will work to allow you to go to sleep, even after you have come out of your hypnotic state.

Hypnosis is especially effective for those who have sleep problems due to anxiety or stress. Hypnosis can de-stress your thoughts so that your mind is free of anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings.

You may need more than one session of hypnosis in order to master the practice of hypnotizing yourself so that it becomes a part of a bedtime ritual routine. When your sleep patterns become more normal, it is possible that you won’t need the self-hypnosis technique and can simply drift off to sleep without the aid of hypnosis.