Pastor Ken
I recently watched a YouTube clip on how to fall asleep in two minutes, which is part of the US military training. Understandably, soldiers have to adapt to various situations and need to fall asleep fast. They must get enough rest so that they can perform tasks once they wake up.
What the short film describes is exactly the self-hypnosis method of falling asleep that I learned in a workshop on “Hypnosis” years ago. I’ve used it for many years, and it’s very effective.
From a medical point of view, hypnosis is a form of psychological therapy. It’s intended under professional supervision to change the state of awareness by relaxing the body to improve focus and concentration. This differs from the portrayal of hypnosis in popular culture, where the hypnotized person loses control, and his behavior is manipulated by another person. Although the second form of hypnosis has statistical data to explain its phenomena, conclusive results from scientific research are lacking.
Self-hypnosis to fall asleep is just one application using the principle of hypnosis. It relies on one’s own will and imagination, leading to the desired goal of falling asleep fast.
In practice, we first lie flat on the bed, ensuring there are enough blankets after we fall asleep. Then we learn to lie still and relax the muscles of the whole body. Starting from the top of the head, we check if our face is relaxed. If we are unsure, the easiest way is to tighten our eyes and mouth, then loosen them up slowly. Afterwards, we move on to the neck and shoulder. We check on the fingers. Any tense areas need to be loosened and remain relaxed.
The second step is to imagine a machine that scans from head to toe, and you, like a bystander, trace the scanning beam. During the scan, you keep breathing slowly and deeply. Imagine that the beam is moving downward, from the forehead, eyebrows, eyes, bridge of the nose, lips… If you realize the beam has missed a part, backtrack and continue. You can always start it all over. After it passes the neck, let it do the left arm first, all the way to the tip of every finger. Let it return to the neck and do the right arm. Let it go back again and continue down the body. In such a manner, you have it scan the whole body. Whenever you are distracted, tell yourself not to think but to focus on the body. The entire body can be scanned at a normal speed in two or three minutes. Repeat the process if you are still awake. After you practice this regularly, you can fall asleep quickly.
I once did a comparison in winter. On the first night, I wanted to lie down and fall asleep naturally. My hands and feet began to warm up after 20 minutes. The next night, I used self-hypnosis and imagine that there was a warm spring flowing through my body. Within three minutes, my body warmed up. I didn’t understand why, but it worked. Being unable to fall asleep is frustrating. Whatever method we use, we must first determine that we “need” adequate sleep for health reasons and for functioning properly the next day. Self-hypnosis cannot guarantee that you’ll fall asleep. Since a lot of research has been done about this method, you should at least give it a try, which is better than tossing and turning in bed for a long time.
