Today I want to talk to you about sleep and some of the challenges you may be having with getting a good night’s rest. The challenges to our nervous system on any given day seem to be ever increasing. And naturally, this can trigger us to worry or to end up in a state of what we call in the hypnosis world- of “overload” or Fight/flight/Freeze. This constant activation of stress, reactivity, or our primitive brain can cause us to wake up in the night-or, to have trouble falling a sleep or both. So, it’s important to reach for an effective tool in that moment- rather than fall into that spinning of the mind and worrying.
If you think about your brain, it never goes to sleep at night- it just changes it’s job. And, In the middle of the night- we don’t have the same cognitive facility: our brain is switching out of one function, and into another. So what it is doing at night is assessing information, projecting for what might be coming- so, pre-cognitive dreams and processing and then finally, the releasing and emptying/processing phase- or the venting phase.
When you wake up out of this state or from one of these states, your mode of thinking and cognition is not instantly back to how it functions during your day – where you have the higher cognitive functions so, it’s in more of a processing function.
And stored subconscious exaggerated fears and phobic conditioning will appear to us in that exaggerated form if we have awakened at this time of course- because we are processing that. So, if you find your sleep is being disrupted- whether it’s difficulty with falling asleep or waking up in the night as I described- what can you do? You can reach for a tool like progressive relaxation combined with a specific breathing pattern: In one of my other videos, I showed you how you can instantly calm the nervous system with a simple breath pattern of 3,3,6. Simply inhale calm for 3 counts, hold and absorb the calming breath for 3 counts and then, a slow and controlled exhale for 6 counts.
And, when you combine this with the progressive relaxation, and you engage the 3,3,6 breath pattern at each body part as you move through the body- this can be a very effective tool to quickly change your state- into a calm state, taking you out of your thinking, and triggering that parasympathetic nervous system, the calming system, and allowing you to enter that healthy sleep cycle once again.
Ultimately, adding a tool like hypnosis is going to be most effective, after all, the hypnoidal state is that last state of consciousness we pass through on the way to sleep- and so, in working with a hypnotherapist one on one, not only can we get to the root cause of what that disturbance is that is manifesting in your disrupted sleep- we can recondition you to become suggestible once again, to that hypnoidal state &, we can effectively help you to unburden the emotional disruption because like that final stage of sleep- hypnosis is a venting state and so we encourage this venting of negative experiences and emotions that then allow you to return to that healthy sleep cycle and the happier, healthier more balanced state of well -being over all.
Finally, we can design a sleep recording that is specifically tailored for you and your needs that you can then listen to on your own to support you on your return to that healthy sleep cycle.