How hypnotherapy can help with insomnia

Insomnia is affecting over a third of the population.  Every night, 1 in 3 of us is dreading bedtime.  It is a problem that affects women more than men and the effects of insomnia can be devastating.

Why we need to sleep

When we are sleep deprived, our judgment is affected.  We are less able to make decisions for our own benefit.  Our emotions become heightened.  Without a decent night’s sleep, we often find ourselves unable to cope with situations and our responses become sensitive and reactive.

On a physical level, insomnia can make us more prone to infection.  Our skin, hair and nails become weaker.  Our blood pressure can be quicker to rise and our adrenal glands begin to work overtime.

Put simply, we need to sleep.  Not necessarily for the 8 hours we are told we need.  In fact our optimal levels of sleep vary for each of us.  Some of us can thrive on only six hours a night but studies suggest that about 7 and a half hours is the perfect sleeping time.

However for sufferers of insomnia, getting to sleep and staying asleep can feel almost impossible, can’t it?

How can hypnotherapy help with insomnia?

In so many ways really.

1.  Our sleep patterns are often affected deeply by our emotional reactions to the events of the day.  Stress can be a real bummer as it affects our ability to switch off.  It can also lead us to override our body’s natural signs that it needs sleep as we try to pack more into every day.  In extreme cases, stress can lead us to feel the need to stay awake and “solve” the problem and we often try to achieve this by resorting to the use of stimulants such as caffeine and alcohol to keep us awake.

Using hypnotherapy to tackle the cause of your stress can be a great help in overcoming insomnia.  By drilling down into our core beliefs and unraveling the cause of the stress, hypnotherapy can help us to see more creative solutions and also to re-programme our minds to respond differently to those triggers which used to push our “stress” buttons.

2.  Hypnotherapy can also be very helpful in realigning our internal body clock or circadian rhythms.  These are the natural mechanisms in our body which respond to light and dark and release the hormonal cocktails we need to enjoy deep sleep.

By using  hypnotherapy to realign our inner workings we are able to experience a more natural and deeper sleep as we work with our bodies to restore natural patterns for our own benefit.

3.  Hypnotherapy can be particularly effective if you, like me, struggle with falling asleep.

There are different types of insomnia and the most common is not being able to fall asleep in the first place.  As we lie in bed tossing and turning and mulling over our worries, we can all to often fall into the pattern of worrying about falling asleep.  It is this which, ironically, stops us from falling asleep quickly.

By using hypnotherapy to guide us through the process of falling asleep, we stand a much better chance of allowing our bodies to get the rest that we all need.

Over the next few posts I will be offering some support and guidance to those of us who suffer from insomnia.  I have been busy researching this topic and I have discovered lots of tips and tricks to make insomnia a thing of the past.  I can’t wait to share them with you.

Over the next week or so, I will be putting the final touches on a great hypnosis MP3 designed to help us get to sleep quicker and stay asleep for the perfect amount of time for you.

It’s going to be a life-changer.

I will be letting my email subscribers be the first to know and offering them a chance to get the product at a huge discount so do sign up for the list so that I can let you know by email when the Deep Sleep track is ready for download.

Things you can do to get started

For today, I want you to try the following tonight to help you begin to make the changes you need to make so that your natural sleep patterns can return to a more harmonious state and you can finally get the sweet dreams you deserve.

Tonight:

• begin to prepare for bed two hours early.
• Get out your journal and write down the things that have been stressful today.
• Then, an hour before bed time, take a warm bath and try a small warm milky drink.
• Finally when you get to bed, take 10 deep breaths and focus on the action of the breath coming in and going out.
• In the next blog post, we will explore why a great bedtime ritual can be one of the keys to regaining sleep.  In the meantime, good luck tonight.

Remember, your body naturally knows how to fall asleep, we are just trying to get our minds to tune into that wisdom.  So, write down your cares, warm fluids and deep breaths.

See you next time, when we will be looking at our bedtime rituals. (and don’t forget to sign up so that you are the first to know when that post is up and live!  You can do that here)

Much love

photo credit: thejbird via photopin cc