Imagine slipping into bed, settling into a comfortable position, closing your eyes, and gently drifting off to a night of deep, restful sleep. You might have slept like this as a child, but peaceful sleep may well be a distant memory now with work and daily worries taking increasingly more space in your life. With hypnotherapy for insomnia, you can once again embrace the deep, rejuvenating, healing sleep you enjoyed as a child.
What Is Keeping You Awake?
Falling asleep is a process and one that not even doctors fully understand. However, neuroscientists at Washington University are a little closer to the answer. They found that the sleep process begins when we are still awake with our brains gradually disengaging from the hustle and bustle of the day. As you relax, you gradually move between internal and external thoughts before you settle into what we conventionally recognize as sleep.
When you have sleep anxiety or certain types of insomnia, you worry so much about falling asleep that you cannot actually fall asleep. You are unable to “turn off” your mind and relax enough to slip into those relaxed early stages of sleep. With hypnosis for insomnia, you can learn to quiet your mind, relax your body, and let yourself drift away into a world of dreams.
Insomnia can be incredibly frustrating for those who suffer from it, and it can become a cycle that is difficult to escape. As you worry more about falling asleep, you find it harder and harder to sleep. Sleep anxiety and insomnia can be difficult to overcome on your own, but sleep hypnosis for insomnia can overcome the habits, mindsets, and patterns that keep you trapped, tossing, and turning all night long.
Are you ready to get a good night’s sleep again? Here is what you need to know about sleep hypnosis for insomnia and anxiety.
Using Hypnosis for Insomnia
Hypnosis is a state of deep relaxation and focused concentration, much like that early relaxed state before you fall asleep. However, while sleep hypnosis for insomnia can help you get into the right mind frame for sleep, this is not how it helps you fall asleep. Instead, sleep hypnosis for insomnia stimulates parasympathetic activity, which regulates the autonomic nervous system. This is part of the rest-and-digest system or the braking part of the fight-or-flight system. It acts as a critical counterweight for the stress response.
Instead of ruminating over the day’s worries and stresses, you will learn to let them go, one by one, and enter a calmer, more relaxed state of mind. As hypnosis relaxes you, it also helps you focus more intently on the issues that are keeping sleep just out of your reach. During the experience, your mind is more open to new ways of thinking, and the right suggestions can help you change the way you approach issues, whether that means:
- Developing healthy sleep habits
- Incorporating more effective sleep hygiene
- Easing away from nighttime rumination
- Erasing toxic worry and stress
- Getting back to sleep quickly after a sudden or unexpected awakening
Conventional insomnia treatments tend to revolve around medications, which can bring unwanted side effects and the risk of dependency. Sleep hypnosis for insomnia and anxiety is easy to incorporate into your busy life and has no risk of dependency. Perhaps most importantly, researchers have found that it works. At the University of Fribourg, scientists used MRIs to evaluate how women slept after listening to either tapes with neutral text or hypnosis audios. The women who used the hypnosis audios spent 80 percent more time in slow-wave sleep compared with women who used the neutral text. They also fell asleep faster. In other words, hypnosis for insomnia might just be able to help you fall asleep faster and enjoy a more restful night’s sleep.
At Renewed Edge, we can help you learn how to use sleep hypnosis for insomnia and anxiety to calm your mind and relax your body for a better night’s sleep. Contact us today to learn more about hypnotherapy for insomnia or schedule a consultation with our hypnotherapist.