Stress, ruminations or even difficult digestion can delay falling asleep. Here are 3 hypnosis exercises to do in bed to fall asleep in just a few minutes, according to our hypnotherapist.
It is well known: sleep is fundamental for the proper functioning of our body. But sometimes the brain ruminates, falling asleep is delayed and insomnia threatens us… So, to do without medicinal solutions and find sleep naturally and quickly, we can try to do these 3 hypnosis exercises in bedeven if you are a novice, offered by Cédric Lebigre, hypnotherapist from the Medoucine network.
1. We use abdominal breathing to relax our digestive and nervous systems
Lying in bed, eyes closed, we come to practice abdominal breathing. It’s quite simple : it is expand the belly when inhaling paying attention to it and blow slowly while exhaling feeling your stomach deflate little by little. This technique, the basis of many meditation practices and also used in sophrology, is ideal for relaxing in many situations. From a physiological point of view, it allows lower the diaphragm who goes like this massage the viscera and the vagus nerve, thus causing deep relaxation making it easier to fall asleep. Still in a sleeping position, you pay attention to the different parts of your body one after the other starting from the feet to the head : the feet, then the ankles, the shins, the knees… At each stage, we imagine its limbs becoming very heavy and sinking into the mattress, as if they were disappearing. Thus, we will feel totally relaxed, we will be able to leave our flow of thoughts to be in a state conducive to falling asleep. This breathing exercise is also recommended as a preamble to the following two exercises.
2. We visualize the sensations of our body to connect to the present moment
Still lying in bed, eyes closed, we become aware of our body, of its place it occupies in the bed by visualizing it and feeling the different bodily sensations, such as its weight, the temperature of the room or the noises our limbs make in the sheets for example . Here the idea is to explore the senses of hearing, touch, of smell if possible, successively, and at each turnenlarge the explored sphere. Then we play with the scales and we visualize a larger spaceby imagining the objects, by listening to even more sounds, by feeling even more textures, smells… We then enlarge the perimeter to the house or apartment, then to the neighborhood, to the city, to the country… Space will thus expand up to the Earth with its place in the Universe, or even beyond (at least what we imagine), by letting our consciousness take over all of space.
3. We do mental arithmetic (easy) to stop ruminations
If we tend to think and cogitate when sleeping, we will make sure to do “overflow the flow of thoughts”, in order to saturate the left hemisphere of the brain – analytical – which will therefore allow the latter to switch off. Indeed, rather than “stopping to think” it is sometimes more effective to think even more, but in a conscious way : this involves asking yourself a new question before having answered the previous one, then another, and continuing like this until the flow of thoughts overflows and therefore saturates the system of reflection. This is a very effective technique for stopping ruminations. More simply, we can also play with numbers starting from 1 And multiply by two with each exhalation (2…4…8… etc.), until the numbers become so large that the mind prefers to let go. This is another way to play with thoughts while using breathing.