The first hurdle is to understand your own sleeping problem. Insomnia is very common and about 20 per cent of healthy normal adults suffer from insomnia at some time during their lives.
What is insomnia? Insomnia is the distress and the anxiety of not being able to fall asleep when you want to. Insomnia does not equate with not sleeping. Some people who suffer from insomnia can stay up all night playing card games or enjoying themselves at wild parties without any distress at all. People complain of insomnia only when they stay in bed and cannot sleep. They develop a phobia of sleeping in bed. They may be able to sleep happily in the park or on the sofa in front of the television. They may try to exhaust themselves by reading in bed until their eyes are so heavy and red that they can hardly stay open. They are fearful of their inability to sleep whilst in bed. They feel distress when they lose control of their innate mechanism to sleep.
Sleep is something we have no control over. We cannot close our eyes and give the magic word sleep, as sleep may not follow. In studies of how people fall asleep, it is observed that we are not folly awake one second and asleep the next. We all go through a very brief hypnotic state, which is called the Transitional Hypnotic State or THS. Although we have no control over sleep itself, we can be taught to go into THS. Once you can go into THS, which is the precursor of sleep, you will have indirect control on sleep itself and consequently substantial control over falling asleep.
THS is the transit stage between the awake mode and the sleeping mode.
People who suffer from insomnia appear to have a block between the awake mode and the THS mode. THS is the switch, and with practice you can have full control of the switch and switch off every night.
*1\174\4*
