Hypnosis and Sleep

Photo by heyjoe…

Hypnosis works.

I had an epiphanic experience last night with hypnosis.

Let me explain a little about me and hypnosis, to put my experience into context.

Roberta Temes, in her book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hypnosis“, in a chapter on self-hypnosis, explains how some researchers believe that some people are born with a greater talent for hypnosis – and some are born with a lesser talent. Some traits that people with this lesser talent probably have are: they are highly organized (well, I do try), they are logical and not overly emotional, and they like to understand how things work. This reasoning would, in my assessment, put me solidly in the “lesser talent” category.

Having “lesser talent” notwithstanding, hypnosis has fascinated me for years.

The amount of information available today, in books and online, is dazzling. And some of the best books on the subject are out of print. (But there are amazing resources for finding out of print books. My favorite is AbeBooks.)

The book that is my most helpful resource these days is “TRANCE-formations” by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. This book is not primarily about self-hypnosis, but many of the ideas can carry over. The book explains the need to “trust your own unconscious processes,” and how to present your unconscious mind with “artfully vague” “process instructions.”

It’s taken me quite a lot of effort and persistence to make this work for me, but I have. I used self-hypnosis to substantially moderate a long standing teeth tapping and grinding pattern – and it worked.

More recently, I’ve been trying to use hypnosis to improve my sleep patterns, and sleep can be pretty problematic for me.

Since it’s usually late in the evening when I find the time to do hypnotic work, I’ve found that when I ask my subconscious to draw me into a deep hypnotic trance, too often I just fall asleep. I wake up about 2 in the morning, record in my hypnosis journal that I fell asleep, and I move to the bed.

I started to include in my induction a suggestion that my subconscious mind might help me not fall asleep, so I could continue with my hypnosis session. And it worked. I was able to achieve a fairly deep trance – that I could feel was deep – and I was usually able to stay awake to work on improving my sleep pattern.

I found that my sleep pattern got worse – much worse. As I would get close to passing into sleep, my mind would pop awake. It started to feel like I was afraid to fall asleep, for some reason. Almost the only sleep I got was when I was so exhausted I just crashed. And when I was sufficiently exhausted to fall into sleep, after I’d slept until about 4 or 5 in the morning, I would pop awake, and I’d be unable to get back to sleep.

I started to wonder if perhaps I’d used a word – or an image – that my subconscious mind interpreted differently from my conscious mind. I began to wonder if I was creating – or aggravating – my own problem.

Last night, as I was getting started on my induction, and I was ready to ask my subconscious to help me stay awake, so I could get through the session, an idea popped into my head – like golden brown toast popping up from a toaster. Me asking my subconscious to help me stay awake for my hypnotic session on the futon was perhaps getting generalized across to when I was trying to fall asleep in the bed.

It occurred to me to wonder if my subconscious was telling me what the problem was.

I spent much of that hypnosis session explaining to my subconscious the difference between a hypnosis session on the futon, when I wanted to stay awake – and when I was trying to go to sleep in the bed.

That night, I had a normal latency period – that time between when you start going to sleep and when you do drop into sleep. And I slept normally until about 4:45. When I woke up, I noted the time, and drifted right back to sleep – until the alarm went off at 6.

Now, one night does not a useful pattern make. But I’m hopeful.

I’ll continue to work on this. And I do have a fair bit of sleep deficit to work through.

Of course, sleeping well is only one side of the problem. I have to arrange my life so that I give myself enough time in bed. I must steer myself away from staying up late – reading, or writing, or who knows what.

This could seriously improve my sleep patterns. Which in turn could improve other things. Sleep, like nutrition, exercise, and breathing, impacts everything else – for better, and for worse.

This could also incrementally increase my confidence in my ability to use hypnosis in a useful way. Another good thing.

Thank you Richard, John, and Dr. Erickson.