#130 Relax & Sleep Hypnosis Daily - TRY NOT TO RELAX (Jason Newland)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is Relax and Sleep Hypnosis Daily. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

Just to let you know, I have a few other podcasts that you may be interested in. I do a Deep Sleep Whisper Hypnosis Podcast, Let Me Bore You To Sleep, which is me talking complete nonsense for about an hour in order to bore you to sleep. I do what else do I do? I also do a Jason's Bedtime Storytime.

And there's also my Boring Objects, which is my newest podcast, where I just talk for about half an hour about an object, a topic for, and it's very, very boring. So these, these podcasts, as well as the Stress and Pain Relief Podcast, are really aimed, including this one here, to distract your mind from the thoughts and the maybe, you know, any kind of negativity that might be there to distract you as you focus on my voice.

For the duration of the recording, takes you away from thinking and all that stuff that may not be particularly necessary or useful in this moment when you are choosing to let go of all the stress and tension from your body and mind and relax deeply.

So you can just get yourself comfortable sitting in a comfortable chair that supports your body or lying down on a flat surface such as your bed. But the warning is that if you lie down on your bed, you're very, very likely to fall asleep. It's quite difficult not to fall asleep when you're lying down on your bed, listening to my boring voice.

Remembering that you can change your physical position at any time, because feeling comfortable is important, especially when it comes to relaxation. Now we're going to do something that goes against the grain, goes against logic in some ways. Because I'm going to ask you to try not to feel relaxed.

And you may think, well, I don't need your help for that. But bear with me. I'm going to ask you to purposely try not to allow the muscles of your body to relax deeply and try not to allow your mind to slow down whilst listening to my voice, my boring voice.

Try not to relax. That's your only task during this time together, is for you to try not to relax and just observe what happens when you try not to relax. So to start with, again, we're going to do something that seems to be the opposite of what you would ever want to do.

But trust me, I've done this before. So I'd like you to focus on a part of your body which feels tense. Focus on a part of your body that feels uncomfortable, tight and tense and stressed.

And you can kind of draw a circle around that part. And it may be a particular part of that body. So for example, you may feel tension in your back, but it might only be in the right hand side of your lower back.

So in your mind, you can draw a circle around that so that you can really zoom in. So I'd like you to focus wherever it is, wherever the tension is. Draw that circle around that part where the tension was.

And what we're going to try and do is I'm going to ask you to hold on to it. As you focus on it, really focus on that tension. Really zoom in, almost like with a microscope.

Zoom in to that tension, to that stress in your body. Hold on to it. Don't let go of it.

Try and hold on to it. Try and zoom in more. What you may find is that it's quite hard to find, even though you know that you could feel it before.

And you know, you would have argued perhaps that, well, it's there, I can feel it. I can feel it in my body. But then when you start to focus just on that part of your body, and you really focus as if through a microscope, with the intention of holding on to it, notice what happens.

Try and keep the feeling, or maybe try and find the feeling. Because it seems to start to become elusive. For no logical reason, the tension that was there before starts to almost seem as if it's hiding from you.

The physical sensations change as you focus even more on that part, looking, trying to find something that would actually represent that physical feeling of tension and stress. Almost something that you could hold in your hand and present itself like there it is, there's the stress, there's the tension, as if it's a real thing. And you may already have noticed that something has changed.

It's just not there the way it was, and it doesn't make sense. Of course, it doesn't have to make sense, but it doesn't seem possible that a feeling, a negative, stressful, tense, physical experience and sensation in your body, once you start to focus and try to keep that feeling, it won't play ball. Almost as if it doesn't want to do what you tell it to do.

Like an obnoxious child trying to just go the opposite way. Doing the opposite to what you want, what you're demanding. And the more you search, the harder it is to find.

And none of this makes any sense. Maybe as you step back in your mind and observe the rest of your body, the level of comfort has increased. The complete opposite has happened to what you were attempting to do.

Trying to hold on to tension and stress seems to have activated the complete opposite results. Maybe that's because your body doesn't want tension or stress. Maybe it's because your body and mind can't force feelings to occur.

You can gently ask, you can gently request, and gently expect to feel more comfort and calmness, and maybe sleepiness and pleasure even in your body and in your mind. But you can't force it because your body and your mind does not work that way. You can't force yourself to relax.

You can't force yourself to feel tense or stressed any more than you can force yourself to fall in love, or force yourself to enjoy a meal that you cannot stand. You'd hand me a sandwich, a peanut butter sandwich, and bovril or marmite, and I, nothing in the world I could do to make myself enjoy that sandwich, other than maybe having starved myself for a few days. You know that's an extreme situation, because I imagine stale bread would taste nice if you hadn't eaten for a long time.

But in the real world where we are now, I would find a marmite and peanut butter sandwich to be very disgusting, because I personally don't like those fillings. I don't like them. That might be the perfect thing for someone that likes it.

But I could tell myself, oh it's yummy, yummy, yummy. Make no difference. In the same way you can't force yourself to have any feelings.

You can't force yourself to feel relaxed. You can't force yourself to feel tense. But you can welcome those feelings.

You can welcome and anticipate a sense of relaxation spreading through your body and into your mind, slowing down your mind. And the same works for chronic pain and tension, anticipation, expectation. Works both ways, which means be careful what you expect.

Choose what you anticipate, because it's more likely to happen if you expect it to happen. But when you try to force your body to go against its natural tendency, it won't play ball, because your body and mind's natural energy is comfort, relaxation, calmness, the ability to function and the ability for our minds to be clear. That's the natural process.

When we allow ourselves to get in touch with our born nature, our ability to relax so easily and to let go of everything, we were born with those skills, to be able to enjoy those pleasant feelings in our body when we are relaxed. And comfortable and peaceful. As you focus on your mind, noticing any thoughts that are in your mind, noticing any negative thoughts that may still remain there temporarily.

And you can try to increase the stress in your mind. Try to force it. Try to force the negativity and the tension in your mind.

And as you do that, you can start to look deeper. Drawing that circle around your mind and focusing, digging deeper, using that microscope, searching and looking for that tension and that stress and negativity. Really look deep.

And the more you search, the calmer your mind becomes. It's like being on the beach and putting your hands in the sea and trying to grab a wave. Grabbing a part of a wave in your hands and then taking it home with you.

Or maybe in a bucket, taking that wave home with you and expecting it to still be a wave. Maybe going to your local swimming pool and pouring that water into your swimming pool. That you're at and expecting that wave to suddenly appear.

It's not there anymore. The energy has gone from that wave. And because you focused on part of the wave, it's gone because you would need the entire sea.

In order to capture that wave. And even then it would only be temporary until the wave crashed against the shore. And then that wave would be gone.

Just as the thoughts with a negative stress and tension in your mind. When you try to capture that, try to actually hold it in your hand and look at it. It's nowhere to be seen.

It's almost as if it never existed. Almost as if it never existed. And as you focus on the mind now, you can see and feel and experience the calmness in your mind.

The complete calmness. As well as the calmness in your body, that relaxation. Spreading through every muscle, bone, every fiber of your existence.

Completely loose, calm and deeply relaxed. Deeply relaxed. And as I count from 10 down to 1. With every number, you hear me say, you can choose to feel.

You can expect to feel. Twice as relaxed. Twice as peaceful.

Twice as calm. In your body and your mind. Now, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3,