Cognitive Hypnotherapy for Insomnia | Online UK & West London
Insomnia- the inability to fall asleep, stay asleep, or get enough sleep- can be absolutely debilitating to your quality of life if it goes on for more than a couple of nights, causing lack of energy, low mood, and feeling tired all day long.
It can also mean you find it hard to concentrate, and causes you to make more mistakes than usual.
Insomnia feeds into depression, stress, anxiety and chronic pain- and covering it up with sleeping pills will just make it worse, as your body and brain forget how to fall asleep naturally. Getting the right stages of sleep as well as the right amount is also critically important.
Why does insomnia persist?
Sleep requires safety. The nervous system needs to shift from a state of sympathetic activation- (fight/ flight, causing alertness) - into the parasympathetic state (rest, digest, growth, repair) that allows the body and mind to rest and restore. When the nervous system is chronically dysregulated, this transition becomes difficult.
Insomnia is often maintained by a combination of heightened arousal- the nervous system stuck in a low-level state of alert even at rest- and hypervigilance around sleep itself.
The more effort we bring to falling asleep, the more elusive it becomes. Worry about sleep creates more wakefulness, which creates more worry- a cycle that can feel impossible to break from the inside.
Understanding this is often the first step toward change. When we work with the nervous system directly- rather than just the symptoms- the cycle can be interrupted and a natural sleep pattern restored.
"I have suffered with anxiety and chronic insomnia ever since I can remember. After 4 sessions with Ella, I am now sleeping with ease and more importantly, naturally — which I cannot believe I am saying."
How I work with insomnia
Cognitive Hypnotherapy can help correct insomnia by improving your ability to relax, helping you let go of worry and stress, creating healthy habits around sleep hygiene, and providing easy tools and techniques to fall asleep quickly, easily and naturally.
It can assist you to break the cycle of anxiety and fatigue that fuels insomnia, and re-establish a healthy and normal sleeping pattern, so that you feel refreshed and energetic during the day, and relaxed and able to drop off easily and comfortably at night.
As well as Hypnotherapy for insomnia, learning how to breathe correctly will also help you sleep better. By establishing relaxed and healthy breathing habits, Buteyko Breathing exercises can eliminate snoring, help you sleep more deeply and soundly, and even reverse sleep apnoea.
TRE will help you let go of any unnecessary muscle tension that can inhibit your ability to relax and fall asleep easily. TRE trains your nervous system to respond appropriately- to be able to relax when you need to. It also calms the mind and brings you back to the present moment.
Other types of Somatic Therapy can also be helpful for bringing the nervous system back to feeling safe- essential for good sleep.
Together these approaches form part of the wider Breath Body Mind Method - addressing insomnia from every angle rather than relying on any single technique.
Insomnia is also closely connected to anxiety, stress and trauma - and addressing the underlying nervous system patterns maintaining poor sleep often has a positive ripple effect across all of these areas.
If you would like structured 1:1 support, you can explore that here.
If you're looking for ongoing weekly nervous system support, you can find out more about the Membership here.