“ I’ve got all the time in the world to sleep, when I’m dead”. These are the words a lovely lady down the road from me said this morning and it got me thinking. We hear people saying this quite often and the truth of the matter is, chances are if you carry on with this attitude you’ll end up at your final resting place sooner than you think. Also now going back into lock-down, so many people may find it harder to sleep and start suffering from insomnia. It inspired me to write today’s blog on the benefits of hypnotherapy for REM sleep.
Humans need eight hours of quality sleep. Various researches have shown that sleeping for less than eight hours would result in a negative impact on health. Everybody would agree with me that we all need adequate sleep; however, due to different factors such as insomnia and several other sleep disorders, restful sleep eludes a considerable number of people.
When we sleep, we sleep through the cycle between various stages of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep. Rapid Eye Movement is a cyclical stage of the regular sleep routine in which our eyes move in remarkably rapidly in many various directions. This phenomenon does not happen in Non-Rapid Eye Movement sleep.
REM sleep plays a significant role in how healthy we are because it acts as an essential tool in the regulation of our emotions. Various researches have proven that lack of REM sleep could result in physiological and behavioural disorders, and neurological disorders such as loss of memory, depression, anxiety and anger. Quite pathetically, there are several factors such as alcohol, cannabis, stress, stimulants and even poor sleeping habits that to hindering REM sleep.
An ideal therapy that could help break bad habits that interfere with our sleep such as eating late, snacking, surfing the internet late at night, or using occasional recreational drugs is hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy is a method of purposely actuating the REM sleep cycle. When done with the appropriate induction procedure, hypnotherapy alters sleep patterns for the better. More specifically, it increases the time spent in REM sleep by mimicking Rapid Eye Movement dream sleep-which happens when our emotional memories are processed and turned into a visual theatre we refer to as dreams.
During REM sleep, our brains activate the theta mode and produce the same brain moves that occur during hypnosis. REM sleep enables the experiences we go through during the day to be processed and turned into visual theatres, giving us control over it in the process.
Because sleep has a direct effect on the quality of our health, Hypnotherapy has an unprecedented impact on a handful of severe health issues such as anxiety, depression, and stress etcetera. It also plays a significant role in improving your performances with tasks, relationship, sex life, concentration, and a lot more.
General anxiety and anxiety about sleep can result in disturbed sleep or sleeplessness Hypnotherapy is also viable in helping to treat both general anxiety and anxiety about sleep and plays a vital role in teaching people suffering from any of these anxieties how to sleep naturally again.
Our central nervous system has to ramp down towards sleep and hypnotherapy, as well as several other things such as meditation, a bath, or soothing music, introducing soothing smells and soft lighting in the bedroom before bed, keeping your bedroom tidy, keeping a consistent bedtime routine, staying off alcohol, drinking plenty of water, warm milk and chamomile tea, melatonin supplements, regularly exercising, , sleeping in darkrooms, keeping the body and the home cold are also things we can do to improve the quality of our sleep.