A good night Sleep and Hypnosis

Sleep helps to regulate metabolic functions, and a lack of sleep is associated with imbalances in leptin and ghrelin levels. These hormonal fluctuations may lead to overeating due to cravings for sweet, starchy, high-fat, and salty foods.

How Much Sleep Do We Need?
On average, UK adults get 6 hours and 12 minutes of sleep a night – less than the NHS recommended 7-9 hours. 3 This, as well as waking up twice a night on average, means a third (36%) do not feel like they are getting enough quality sleep most nights. More than one in six (16%) feel they aren’t able to keep good physical and mental health as a result of poor sleep, and 63% feel the desire to nap at some point during the day.4

What happens with less than regular 8 hours sleep?
Being tired makes you feel hungry and crave sugary, starchy, and salty foods. When sleep gets short, the waistline expands. Lack of sleep makes you lose more muscle than fat which can be why if you’re dieting to be careful. It can impact your brain receptors that tell you that you are full, so you end up eating more as the full signal isn’t working well. Stress can play a part as lack of sleep raises your cortisol levels which leads to fat storage around the abdomen. Not enough regular, restful sleep reduces the melatonin which is needed to reduce the cortisol for reducing stress. Not enough melatonin can increase your cortisol and stress. Regular lack of sleep can lead to insomnia, and other health problems like diabetes and dementia, etc. have been linked due to the slow flow of blood to the brain. Women can have a 40% higher chance of insomnia and are more than twice as likely to receive a diagnosis of restless legs syndrome.

A Good Night’s Sleep Tube Map

Each tube line represents a different aspect of how you can achieve a good night’s sleep, with key points as stations on the respective lines. This should help you easily visualise and remember the steps to improve your sleep quality.

Get a routine in place.

When we are children, our parents would have set a bedtime routine for us. As adults we do what we like because we can. But the routine worked, and we had good restful sleep as a child and lots of energy in the daytime. There would be healthy meals at a set dinner time, maybe a card or board game or a relaxing tv programme, then a soothing bath, a story and bed. I’d use colours going through the body as a relaxing thing with words like loved, safe, and secure, and tired as a sweet dream with my boys.

• Think about adding a routine for bedtime without eating late, news, social media, TV or phones in the bedroom.
  Do write in your journal any worries to get them out of your mind.
  Write what 3 best things happened that day or made you smile or what you are thankful for.
  Avoid caffeine, fast food, sugary foods, and alcohol a few hours before bed.
  Dim the lights in your house an hour before bed to help your brain start getting ready for sleep.
• When you go to bed and if you’re struggling to sleep, yawn as this releases the sleep hormones and makes you sleepy.
• Picture the thoughts that might be keeping you awake on a wall or dark curtain and visualise rubbing them away, fading and disappearing into the fabric or wall. Do this for each thought that’s keeping you awake.
• For doing self-hypnosis, sit in a chair with your feet on the floor, your crown facing the ceiling and your eyes raised to allow them to flutter. The eye fluttering is adopting the hypnotic mindset as you focus on a spot on the ceiling or wall and close your eyes. Focus on your breathing in and out to the count of four. In for four, hold for four, breath out for four, hold for a count of four and breath in for four, and again. Now imagine you are going gently down some steps. Picture your legs and feet as you go down the steps. Each step is taking you deeper into relaxation and sleep, focusing on the steps and you going down and down to peaceful sleep.
• Recall a good night’s sleep. Maybe recently, or when you were a child or how you’ve seen a baby sleep. As recall this good night’s sleep, notice how relaxed, rested and calm you feel.

Hypnosis suggestions

Each night when you go to bed, you’ll be at ease and relaxed, you’ll feel relaxed and calm knowing that every day is another adventure.

Starting now, as you go to bed every night, you’ll be calm, and at ease, your mind and your body will be calm, tranquil and relaxed. You’ll be able to sleep calmly, at peace, able to sleep the way you did when you were a baby – so calm, so relaxed, so completely at peace. You’ll sleep so well. You’ll be able to sleep soundly, knowing in the back of your mind, that day by day you’re beginning to live more fully, more deeply. As time goes on, you will live with more and more confidence and relaxation, and you’ll let yourself sleep the way a baby does, when a baby feels good and very secure. You’ll sleep very well, and very calm, and when you wake up in the morning, you’ll be fully rested, very refreshed and at peace.

And each day, as you wake up in the morning, you’ll have an inner feeling of excitement, a feeling of energy and underlying joy, eager to get up from bed and to get going. You feel so good, refreshed, awake, relaxed, with energy, an inner feeling of joy, and well-being, when you wake up in the morning. And throughout the day, a feeling of joy of living, of vibrant energy.

As you wake up in the morning, you’ll feel refreshed, strong and healthy, as you’ll have slept calmly and at peace, knowing that each day as life goes on, you will enjoy a good night’s sleep more and more. You’ll be at ease with your life and everything around you.

What to do to get a good night’s sleep roundup

• Laughing – watching or reading something funny in the evening helps release endorphins to help relax.
• Zen your bedroom for sleeping.
• Remove TVs, computers, mobiles, blackout curtains, pets in another room (I love my cats, but jumping on me at 2am isn’t great.)
• Best to sleep and wake up at the same time weekdays and weekends. Try this before taking sleep supplements.
• Having the sleep routine is good for getting back your body’s natural rhythms and being consistent with your circadian rhythm.
• Retrain your brain that the bedroom is for sleeping, getting up, and loving only.
• If you find yourself lying in bed wide away not going to sleep, after a while get up and go to another room, read or get fresh air, stretch out and go back when you are tired.
• It is good to go to bed when you are sleepy. It is the retraining your brain to associate with the sleep response and sleep reduction.
• Look at any root cause to what the sleep deprivation could be, like noises, stress, worries, heart burn, pain, etc.

What change will you put into place to get a good night’s sleep?
Would you like to take part in my sleep hypnosis pilot study? Which would involve a questionnaire, then practising hypnosis for 3 weeks. There will be another group without the hypnosis if you’d prefer. There would be a group session once a week on Zoom. Email Charlotte@whatisyourstoryhypnotherapy.co.uk ☺