Of course you know how important sleep is to your physical and mental health….
Some people are fortunate enough to fall asleep quickly, stay asleep, and doze back off if they happen to wake in the middle of the night. Then, there are others who feel that sleep is a personal nemesis, and fight a nightly battle to conquer the elusive monster, many times to no avail.
According to an article titled Sleep and Health published by the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, “Scientists have discovered that insufficient sleep may cause health problems by altering levels of the hormones involved in such processes as metabolism, appetite regulation, and stress response. Studies such as these may one day lead to a better understanding of how insufficient sleep increases disease risk.”
For those who feel that they struggle with sleep, there are many different approaches to dealing with it, and some work better for some people than others.
In NLP there is a technique in which you envision your train of thought as you’re trying to fall asleep, however you may imagine it. Whether you are watching a ‘thought movie’ on an imaginary screen, or reading a ‘thought book’, ignore the content of your thoughts and take a look at just how you’re imagining them playing out in your mind.
Now take that book, or movie screen and make it slowly shrink away or disappear. Get creative and really make it fade away into the distance.
After this is successfully done (it may take more than once to make it stick), practice a few moments of mindful breathing. Just focus on in the intake of air into your lungs through your nostrils, and then the feeling of exhaling that air through your mouth. If your mind begins to veer off into a trail of thoughts again, turn back to your breathing.
This technique has helped many and perhaps tonight if you are struggling to catch those ZZZ’s, and counting sheep just isn’t cutting it, it will help you too.
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