#30 Relax & Sleep Hypnosis Daily (Jason Newland)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name's Jason Newland and this is Sleep Hypnosis Weekly. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

I realise I haven't made one of these for a few weeks so apologies for that. I'm going to try and be a bit more regular. I've taken me prune juice so hopefully that should help.

So get yourself comfortable. I want to say that, I don't mean just physically but also mentally comfortable. Because in order to fall asleep you do need to feel relaxed.

And in order to feel relaxed you need to be able to allow those things that were on your mind to just, you know, drift away. Just allow those things to not be part of your mind at this time. And if there's something like really important that you want to remember and, you know, you feel perhaps writing it down on a piece of paper may be beneficial to remind you at a later stage, then do that.

But basically just the same as the door to your bedroom and the walls to your bedroom and the sitting room sofa or the cooker in the kitchen, all that stuff will still be there when you wake up. So will any of those things that you need to remember be there when you wake up. Which means you don't need to think about those things.

Because ultimately, if you lay down on your bed and if you are thinking about stuff, you know, worrying about the future, worrying about tomorrow, thinking about regrets from the past, all that kind of stuff, then that is very much like trying to have a bath without getting wet. So trying to go to sleep at the same time as thinking about all this stuff that is not necessary at this time is like trying to have a bath without getting wet.

It's just impossible really.

I say impossible, eventually you will fall asleep. You can lay down, you can think whatever you want about whatever you want and the only two things that will get you out of bed other than, you know, appointments or going to work, the only two things will be your stomach and your bladder or, you know, basically going to the toilet or needing to eat or needing to drink.

Other than that, you will lay in bed and you will eventually fall asleep.

But instead of running on a flat surface, you'd have put lots of obstacles in the way with those thoughts. And also, which is very natural, this is all natural to think about stuff. But from my experience and what other people have told me, that's the biggest obstacle to falling asleep easily is an overactive mind.

And having an active mind is kind of something that you can celebrate. It means you've got a working mind and you're intelligent, which is great. But that's not needed when you go to sleep.

Just like the feeling of completely full body relaxation, your mind drifting, you know, and your body being heavy and just drifting off to sleep, that sense of complete comfort. That's not needed when you're at work. So, you know, it's a different situation.

It's nice to feel relaxed, but you don't want to feel as if you're falling asleep when you need to be alert and working. Especially if you're flying a plane or something like that. So there's a time and a place for these things.

So having an active and alert mind is a great thing. So I think it's useful not to be getting angry at ourselves because we've got an active mind. It's actually a wonderful natural skill to have.

It's just not necessary at certain times. Just in the same way, it's great to have, I suppose, physical ability to jump up and down and do press-ups and sit-ups or whatever. Some people, you know, to have that physical ability, flexibility and stamina, that would be great for a lot of people.

Or to be able to do yoga, a great skill, but not when you're eating in a restaurant. You know, when I'm doing a full lotus while you're waiting for your salad to be delivered. Standing on your head on the table.

So your mind is an amazing thing. So instead of kind of having a go at yourself, oh why don't you stop thinking, my mind's too active. Well, your mind is great.

Your mind is great. Your mind is active. It works and that's brilliant.

It just needs to work a little bit differently when it's time for sleeping. It's almost a little bit like when you stop trying to push it away, it no longer pushes back. So when you stop trying to push those thoughts away and stop trying to push that thinking away, the thoughts and the thinking reduce just naturally.

It's just one of those weird aspects of life. Because you can't force sleep, not naturally. Of course, there's certain drugs you can take to put yourself into a sleep.

But that's not what this is about. That's not what this recording is about. And that's something between you and your doctor.

Just like you can't force yourself to feel relaxed. You can't force yourself to fall in love with someone. You can't force yourself to like a particular food if you don't like it.

You know, we just go by what's natural. If you like peanut butter sandwiches, great. If you don't, then you don't.

It's really that simple. You can't force yourself to fall asleep. Because that's the complete opposite.

As soon as you try to do that, your mind and your body says, No. No, no, no. We don't play that game.

You're not going to force yourself. You can't force your mind to slow down. You can ask your mind to slow down.

This is a relationship that we have with our bodies and with our minds. It's a loving relationship. It's not a controlling relationship.

It's not an abusive relationship, where you shout at yourself, Stop thinking, relax now. Because that's not going to work on someone else, would it? If someone shouted at you saying, Relax. You're not going to relax.

Someone shouts at you saying, Stop thinking. That's not going to work. It's not going to stop you thinking.

Even with threats, it wouldn't stop you thinking. Because it doesn't work that way. So you can ask yourself.

You can provide yourself with the circumstances that feel nice. Because if falling asleep is a chore, you're not going to want to do it. You're going to want to be asleep, but you're not going to want to go through the process.

Because it's a chore. If it's not pleasurable, or easy, like relaxing. If the only way you could relax would be by travelling 100 miles to go and sit in a room and with a dolphin, I don't know, you know, you have to go all the way out of your way to do this.

And that's the only way that you can, would be able to relax. The experience, I'm guessing, wouldn't be very pleasurable. It might be lovely when you get there.

But the process would be almost negative and possibly cancel out the relaxation that you experienced. It doesn't mean that it's something that you need to like fall, look forward to. And it doesn't mean that, you know, falling asleep has to be like a massive orgasm.

Or like winning the lottery or something. But pleasant, pleasurable, natural. Just a natural process.

Because that's all it is. It's just a natural process. It's actually the easiest thing in the world.

And you're born to do it. I'm born to do it. We were all born with the ability to sleep.

And we weren't born with the ability to do many things. What can a baby do? Cry, cry, sleep, poo, throw up, maybe smile, look around. They don't even have control of their own limbs at that point.

They don't understand what they're seeing. It's just all natural bodily functions. That's all they've got.

Which sleeping is one of those. It's a natural bodily function. It's as natural as farting.

That's all it is. Sleeping is very much like a fart. It's as natural as digesting your food, as natural as breathing.

And I think that can be part of the reason where it becomes, it can seem difficult. Because we start trying to take control of those things. So if you were trying to take control of your breathing, every breath you took, you were actually controlling it.

Or if we had to control our breathing, if it was one of those things that we had to do manually, we wouldn't be able to do anything else at all in our life. If we had to concentrate on breathing, that would take up every second of our life. Which would be a bit rubbish, wouldn't it? It'd be a bit crappy.

We wouldn't know any different if that was the situation, but luckily those things are automatic. As is sleeping. It's as automatic as breathing, as automatic as your heart beating, as automatic as your kidneys, your lungs, your spleen, your spinal cord, the blood flow, the hair growth, whatever, all that stuff.

The immune system, automatic. And that's what sleep is. And sometimes it can get a little bit off kilter.

In the same way, sometimes parts of our body can get a little bit off kilter. It can have a few problems that need addressing. But then it comes back.

And the thing is, unlike the actual body, where things can go wrong at times, with the sleep, it's not reliant on anything. It doesn't need anything. All you need to do is be alive, that's it, and you can sleep.

Ideally, laying down or sitting up in a bed, depending on your physical situation, but generally just lying down on a bed, allowing your body to naturally relax, enjoying that feeling. Not trying to force it, because that doesn't work. As my nan always used to say, never force a fart.

And I'd say never force anything. Don't try and force relaxation. Don't force... You can't force sleep, you can't force relaxation.

You can suggest it, you can open your mind to the possibility that actually just by laying down those natural abilities that you were born with, in fact you weren't even just born with it, you were doing this before you were even born. You were sleeping before you were even born. You didn't need a bed, you didn't need a pillow, you didn't need to relax, you didn't need to switch your mind off.

And I bet you when you were growing in the womb, there was a lot of stuff going on. Your whole body was growing, your mind was developing, your brain was developing, yet you still managed to sleep through that. And then when you're a baby, you've got all these people wanting to look at you and pick you up and cuddle you and smell your head, and all these different family members and people in the streets stopping, wanting to look at you and sort of...

Eventually, you're able to sleep through that as well.

You're able to be in a pram, in a supermarket, and supermarkets are not quiet, they're not quiet places. You just fall fast asleep. Because you know you're safe, and you don't have to think about relaxing, you don't relax the different parts of your body manually in your mind, because you don't need to do that when you're a baby.

It's a useful skill to learn as an adult, or as a younger person, but when you're a baby, it's just natural. In fact, when you're a baby, a toddler, even two, three, four years old, they can fall asleep actually at the dinner table, which is just amazing. I used to be able to fall asleep so easily.

When I was a child, I'd just drift off. There's something about getting in touch with that natural ability, and this has got nothing to do with childhood. This has to do with your natural born ability.

It has to do with what you had inside you before you were even introduced to the world. The ability to sleep naturally, and easily, and enjoyably. Going to sleep, it can't be a chore.

It can't be difficult. If it's difficult, it's just not going to happen. It needs to be easy, it has to be easy.

Simply because that's how it works. To the point of laying down on your bed and just saying, you know what, I don't even care if I fall asleep. I'm just going to enjoy laying here with my eyes closed.

When you do that, something strange happens. It's almost like your mind and all those thoughts that maybe used to be there previous times that you were trying to sleep. And because you're not trying to sleep, your brain, your mind doesn't know what to do.

You've interrupted that process. You've basically split the river. You've redirected the river, so the river can't go in the direction it used to go.

It's almost like you've made another little turn and dug some holes where those thoughts can just drain off. And they can just stay there for the night. And you can feel peaceful.

Because when you eat food, you're not thinking about, oh, I've got to digest this. You haven't got to focus on digesting it or concerned about the digesting or that food turning into poo in a few hours time. You haven't got to think about that stuff.

You might be now that I'm mentioning it, but you don't need to because it's not relevant. Because it's a natural process that doesn't need your involvement. Which means you can enjoy the food.

Which means you can enjoy the sleep. The process of just laying down, closing your eyes, allowing your body to relax naturally. Of course, you can do relaxation exercises.

There's lots of different things you can do. But the fact is your body and your mind is programmed and has been programmed right from the very start of your life to do a certain thing when you lay down on a bed. And what's that thing? Fall asleep.

You've been doing it and I've been doing it, laying down on a bed and just falling asleep naturally from the beginning of our lives. Maybe you curl up in your bed, I do a bit, and you were doing that before you were born. That's only because we couldn't stretch out when we were inside the tummy.

There's not enough room to stretch out, was there? So we had to curl. I do like to stretch out a little bit in the bed. And it's nice to have that feeling, to take the weight off your feet, to not have to look at anything, to not have to hear anything, to not have to think about anything, to not have to speak to anyone or to listen to anyone.

It's just sleeping. In fact, if we actually just got rid of the word sleep, I just said I'm going to lie down. You're just going to lie down.

And that's it, you lie down, your body naturally relaxes because lying down on your bed is a trigger to your body and your mind, for your body to relax and your mind to slow down and just drift off to sleep. Easily and naturally, effortlessly. And I'm a big, big fan of stuff that's effortless.

I'm very lazy. I don't like stuff that takes work and effort. And sleeping takes no work.

In fact, it's the opposite to working. It's the opposite to effort. The more effort you put, it just goes against the sleeping.

It's almost like trying to swim against the tide or, you know, being in a canoe and going against the rapids the direction it's going. Instead of going with the tide, sailing the direction of the wind. And that's what sleeping is.

You're just allowing nature, our nature, your nature, my nature, that thing that we were born, with and had before we were even born, the ability to sleep easily, without any effort. So easily. It can never be forced.

Instead of trying to force sleep, you can welcome sleep. You can allow yourself to fall asleep. You can embrace that sleep and love that part of you that's natural, that you were born with that ability to naturally drift away into a deep sleep.

Effortlessly. And the process is enjoyable because you're laying down and your body's naturally relaxing. And it feels nice, it's actually pleasurable to just lay there.

And there isn't anything to think about, not really, but when you're laying there, nothing else is important, including going to sleep. There is nothing that needs your attention. You're just laying down.

That's all you're doing. And everything else just happens naturally. You're just laying down on your bed.

Just laying down. And it feels nice to just allow yourself this space and you can enjoy sleeping naturally.