When you lie down to go to sleep, you actually pass through four stages. By understanding the stages, you can visit website or train yourself to become adept at entering the pre-sleep stages. When you want to have your own website, check out this agency and their services http://www.webdesign499.com/services/.
- Stage One: Thinking – Usually, when we get into bed we start thinking about the events of the day, what will happen the next day, or any number of things.
- Stage Two: Fantasy – Whether you are consciously aware of it or not, your thoughts eventually turn to thoughts associated with relaxation.
- Stage Three: Hypnoidal – As the mind and the body relax, muscles release tension, and you enter a light stage of hypnosis. You are still conscious, but you also experience time distortion and some amnesia. You actually must enter this hynoidal stage because it is what enables you to enter the final stage of sleep. Nobody can say, “Last night I feel asleep at 11:17 pm.” It is the amnesia and time distortion aspects of this stage that make it impossible to identify the transition from hypnoidal to unconscious sleep.
- Stage Four: Unconscious Sleep – We are not consciously aware of anything going on around us.
Self-Hypnosis and Insomnia
People with insomnia typically have difficulty transitioning from thinking to fantasy, or stay in the thinking stage far too long, often because they are worried about something and don’t know how to control their own mind.
One strategy is to skip the thinking stage altogether, and begin visualizing in order to immediately enter the fantasy stage. Remember, the fantasy stage involves mental events associated with relaxation. To intentionally evoke the fantasy stage, imagine a real experience when you felt relaxed, such as recalling a vacation, or visualizing a favorite activity. It is important that you use your own experience because you already associate those thoughts and memories with a feeling of relaxation. It is also important to maintain that fantasy thought process, because it will eventually draw you into a hypnoidal stage.
Hypnosis originally meant: “inducement of sleep” from Gk. hypnos “sleep” The two most popular self hypnosis strategies
- Using imagery (fantasy) to induce a hypnoidal state. Click here for an induction involving visual imagery
- Eliciting muscle relaxation to induce a hypnoidal state. Click here for a Progressively Relaxation induction to promote sleep.
- Using a Mantra to to induce a hypnoidal state. Choose a mantra [a sound or word that you will repeat to yourself on each exhale]. Examples: OM, sleep, calm relaxation; What the repetition actually does is to fill your mind with something so you do not go back to the thinking stage
____________.
Getting Back to Sleep
Sometimes we wake up at night and have trouble falling back asleep. Air Mini may be easier to use especially for children who aren’t old enough to properly use inhalers. One way to ward off this difficulty is to take advantage of our own suggestibility while in a hypnoidal stage. When getting into bed, say out loud or silently, “Worry in bed is pointless. I deserve my peaceful, restful, sleep. So I will use my mind to promote sleep while I’m in bed.” The work with one of the 3 methods listed above.