Remember that when you are eating you are giving your body the fuel it needs to survive and that fuel could be really good quality and exactly what your body needs or it might be filled up with crappy chemicals. And if you’re filling your body with crappy chemicals, you are going to create some kind of chemical reaction within your body. That chemical reaction could be adrenaline. That’s the one thing that’s really going to interfere with you trying to get to sleep at night.
Using your bed as the place that you sleep and make love and nothing else. Ideally not reading in bed, not laying in bed playing on your iPad, not sitting in bed with your laptop on your lap. All those things can interfere with your perception of what ‘bed’ means. Bed should mean sleep and so if you’re doing other stuff in bed, it kind of loses its bed value. It loses its relaxation value. Make sure that you really like your bed and that you like your bedroom because if you don’t want to be in there, it’s going to be difficult for you to relax in there.
Like your bed sheets the colours in your room, the furniture. When I think about my bed I think: ‘I love my bed I love it’. If your bed doesn’t do that for you, you perhaps need to think about switching some things around in your bedroom. Changing the decoration, be it the colours, be it the fabrics, be it you know the main thing the actual bed itself. You need to like bed in order to want to go there and have a good night’s sleep.
Making sure that your day is finished properly so get the lists ticked, get jobs done. If you’ve got stuff that you know it’s hanging over your head that you’re going to have to deal with the next day that could prevent your brain from switching off. Where possible get things done during the day and use some positive visualisations about the day ahead – what you’re going to be doing the next day. Make sure that visualisation is not too stimulating, not too exciting. If you’re going to be doing a bungee jump the next day, probably not a good idea to lay there visualising doing that because it’s just going to get the adrenaline kicking in and getting you a bit too excited.
Don’t try to go to sleep because if you try then you’re forcing it and then it’s just not going to happen. It will feel unnatural and whilst you’re laying there, remember the feeling of letting go. When you have gone to sleep in the past and just on the cusp of that sleep, there’s been times when you’ve thought to yourself ‘Here I go!’ and you know that that sleep is about to occur and it is a really lovely sinking feeling. That’s the feeling that for me summarises what hypnosis is. Usually when you’ve had that thought, it’s maybe brought you around a little bit and then you have to get back into it in order to go properly off to sleep. But if you can remember that sensation and lay there having the memory of how that feels that will help to induce it and help to get you off to sleep.
If you are experiencing difficulties with sleep a hypnotherapist from the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire and North London can help. Consultations are free and non obligatory. You will also learn more in the 3rd and final part of this article series which will be available to you next month.
By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk
