Hypnosis for a good night's sleep

This article appeared in the journal "Sleep" and involves research to show how you can end insomnia and sleep well.

Researchers have demonstrated that restorative slow-wave sleep, or deep sleep, can also be increased without medication - using hypnosis and hypnotherapy, as it is a method that can influence processes which are very difficult to control voluntarily.

The study involved 70 healthy young women who came to the sleep laboratory for a 90-minute mid-day nap.

Before falling asleep, they listened to a special 13-minute slow-wave sleep hypnosis tape over loudspeakers, developed by hypnotherapist Angelika Schlarb, a sleep specialist, or to a neutral spoken text.

"It opens up new, promising opportunities for improving the quality of sleep without drugs," said biopsychologist Björn Rasch from University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Highly suggestible women experienced 80 percent more slow-wave sleep after listening to the hypnosis tape compared with sleep after listening to the neutral text.

For older adults and patients with sleeping problems, the results could come as a sigh of relief as in contrast to many sleep-inducing drugs, hypnosis hardly has any adverse side effects.

As a clinical hypnotherapist who first stumbled on hypnotherapy to help me sleep over twenty years ago I know exactly how well the techniques that I use work. There really is no need to lie awake worrying about not being able to sleep. You can fall asleep and sleep well every night. It is so much easier to learn than you may imagine. Just give me a call or drop me an email if you would like to find out more. Most clients who see me for insomnia visit only three or four times and then never need to see me again.