Self hypnosis for sleeping less

anandv09 wrote: If I sleep less I feel tired and drowsy all the time.
My objective is to sleep less... may be for 5 hrs but...

First, sleep is not wasting your life. Sleep is an important part of life. The average person sleeps 8 hours, so you are fine. Studies have shown productivity drops as people drop below 6 hours our above 9 hours.

It is not the hours you sleep, it is what you do with the time you are awake. Bill Gates sleeps 8 hours a day. Has Bill Gates wasted his life? Plenty of very successful people get plenty of rest. Renee Descartes was known for staying in bed.

Instead of using your time/energy trying to hypnotize yourself to bypass a basic biological need, why not use that same time/energy to be more productive? After all, if your end goal is to be more productive, you could do so by saving hours/days of tired/drowsy feeling as you attempt to defeat biology. You could spend years of your life in a tired/drowsy state chasing the idea of living more life. I have seen people do this.

How much more could you accomplish if you were fully rested, full of energy and making all 16 hours of each day count? What if instead of 1 less hour of sleep, you set a goal for one less hour of television or social media, etc.? Would that make you more productive? How about a goal of reading an additional book each week? Would that make you more productive?

A good, healthy routine for sleep is important in being productive. It is the routine that is more important than the actual number of hours. Go to bed at the same time each day and get up at the same time. Changing the pattern will screw with your circadian rhythm and give you a form of jet lag, making you feel drowsy. Having a solid sleep routine, shutting electronics off early, having a quiet, comfortable place to sleep and you might find your body naturally begins to need less rest. You might naturally drop from 8 hours to 7.5 or 7.

What you may want is meditation, not hypnosis. I remember a study was done which found that an hour of anapana meditation replaces an hour of sleep. Anapana meditation also makes you more focused, which will allow you to accomplish other things in your life far more quickly, saving you time overall.

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:
First, sleep is not wasting your life. Sleep is an important part of life. The average person sleeps 8 hours, so you are fine. Studies have shown productivity drops as people drop below 6 hours our above 9 hours. .....

Thanks for your advice It makes good sense to me. I think its more about time management and like you rightly said...cutting down on non productive activities. I shall surely make efforts to plan myself better.

saladinsmith wrote:What you may want is meditation, not hypnosis. I remember a study was done which found that an hour of anapana meditation replaces an hour of sleep. Anapana meditation also makes you more focused, which will allow you to accomplish other things in your life far more quickly, saving you time overall.

I did hear about the benefits of anapana meditation...but never practiced it. I will research about it and if it can increase my productivity along with decreasing my sleeping hours...then nothing like it. Thanks for your suggestion

I'd approach the issue as follows:

* Assume that sleep has some kind of positive value that we don't want to interfere with.
* Reduce sleep via suggestions for (a) falling asleep quickly, (b) sleeping efficiently, and (c) waking quickly but pleasantly and ready to get out of bed at once.

My rationale is that time spent falling asleep quickly is likely to be pure gain, and (perhaps) waking quickly as well. As for shortening the time actually spent asleep, the idea of "efficiently" is to get 100% (at least!) of the benefits of sleep, but in less time, when possible. Then we get what we get.

I'm reasonably confident in the suggestions for falling asleep and waking more quickly, thus eliminating some time spent in bed each night, perhaps half an hour or more for the average person. The rest are worth a shot if done in a way that leaves no opportunity for interpretation as, "It's okay to turn me into a sleep-deprived wreck."

I have sleep apnea, which makes me aware of just how unaware we can be of the quality of our sleep. So let's all be careful out there.

Robert

I have sleep apnea, which makes me aware of just how unaware we can be of the quality of our sleep. So let's all be careful out there.

Robert

I'd be interested in hearing more if you care to expand

Cheers,
Jimmy

jimmyh wrote:

I have sleep apnea, which makes me aware of just how unaware we can be of the quality of our sleep. So let's all be careful out there.

Robert

I'd be interested in hearing more if you care to expand

Cheers,
Jimmy

You can see my writeup at http://www.plamondon.com/wp/slept-sleep-apnea/, but, basically, sleep apnea (and snoring, for that matter) happen when one is pretty deeply unconscious -- so unconscious that whatever part of the mind is active isn't even managing the body's breathing adequately. (With sleep apnea, one's airway relaxes to the point of interfering with breathing, with all the fun effects that come from not being able to breathe properly. But since it happens only during deep sleep, you don't notice.)

It's possible that this can be addressed through hypnosis, but it's hard for me to monitor myself when I'm asleep.

I have a plan for doing this but haven't implemented it yet. The instrumentation on my sleep apnea machine lets me look back over the previous night and see how I did. With an automatic CPAP machine like mine, if it sees that I'm not breathing, it'll crank up the air pressure until I can inhale again. If hypnotic suggestion works, I'll start seeing fewer of these.

All well and good, but I've cranked up the minimum pressure to the point where I don't HAVE any apnea events, and so the record shows nothing. The word on the street is that this gives better sleep quality than trusting the (somewhat sluggish) automatic function.

So far, I haven't worked up much enthusiasm about dialing down the minimum pressure so I can play with suggestions, but that's how I'd do it. Maybe a week or two of baseline, then self-hypnosis sessions plus recordings that repeated all night, changing approaches a few times if I weren't getting the results I want.

For anything other than altering the deepest phases of sleep, I'd have more confidence, especially with self-hypnosis recordings that ran all night, reminding the mind in various phases of sleep what is being requested of it.

Robert

Robert Plamondon wrote:I'd approach the issue as follows:

* Assume that sleep has some kind of positive value that we don't want to interfere with.
* Reduce sleep via suggestions for (a) falling asleep quickly, (b) sleeping efficiently, and (c) waking quickly but pleasantly and ready to get out of bed at once.....

Robert

Thanks for your insightful post. Over last few days I have been trying to have more quality sleep using one of the self hypnosis program on an experimental basis. My sleeping time has not reduced but yes my quality of sleep has improved.

I have come to the conclusion that I should not focus on sleeping less but having a good quality sleep...because ultimately it truly affects one's potential and performance during the waking hours!

saladinsmith wrote:What you may want is meditation, not hypnosis. I remember a study was done which found that an hour of anapana meditation replaces an hour of sleep. Anapana meditation also makes you more focused, which will allow you to accomplish other things in your life far more quickly, saving you time overall.

I agree with this statement because i think your mind has been bombarded with things from daily life which is very common in the current hectic world we live in so that is why i always make it a must to mediate 30 mins every morning. It calms my mind and helps to focus and conentrate better which in turn leads to better sleep at night! Cheers!

Thanks Robert, that was interesting. If you ever feel up to risking sleep deprivation for sake of experimentation, let us know how it goes.