#64 Relax & Sleep Hypnosis Daily (Jason Newland)

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

It's going to be, as per usual, both a relaxation session and a sleep session. Basically, a sleep session is probably 99% a relaxation session anyway. So my suggestion would be, if you're listening purely for the relaxation, sit down in a chair that supports your body.

If you're listening for sleep, then I would suggest laying down on your bed. Because if you lay down, there's more chance of falling asleep. It doesn't mean that you won't fall asleep if you're sitting down, but it's very difficult to stay awake when you're lying down on your bed listening to this.

Why would you try and stay awake? But you know, in fact, the more you try and stay awake, the less likely you are to stay awake, if that makes sense. There'll be two versions of this recording, one with, one without music. The one with music lasts for two hours, and the details of the music are in the description box of the recording.

So, I'm just going to get on with it. There you go. I hope you're well.

I hope you're, you know, it's weird times at the moment around the world, in 2021 that we are in. So I hope that you're managing to, you know, get through everything. So, to start with, let's just get in touch with how you feel.

And I don't mean just physically, you know, regarding stress levels, but also emotionally. Just sort of get in touch with how you feel emotionally. So, there may be some stuff going on in your life that is problematic, traumatic, maybe, difficult, as there is with many people.

But it's easy to go down that road of think about how you're feeling emotionally, and then assume that it's going to be negative. And there's no reason why we need to assume that. You might be in a really good emotional place.

You might have just given birth to a baby, or you might have just been given a new job, got the job of your dreams, or passed an exam, or got the all clear from a medical test. Or, you know, it could be lots of really good things. So you're feeling really nice emotionally.

And sometimes that can give you a bit of a buzz. That can also, unfortunately, can sometimes get in the way of relaxing and sleeping. See, years ago, I used to perform on stage when I was in my 20s.

And I used to be buzzing afterwards. And I couldn't sleep. Not because I had trouble sleeping normally, because sleeping is very easy for me.

I'm quite lucky that way. And I should kind of be able to sleep quite well, considering, you know, what I do, making podcasts to help people sleep. But in those moments, and it happens sometimes, where I'm in a particularly good mood, you know, a little bit too high, maybe, within myself.

And that could be due to the bipolar or whatever, you know, some a little bit, a bit buzzing. So emotionally, it's a good thing. Emotionally, I'm feeling good.

It might be due to having watched a really funny film, or having just had a good time doing something. But if that gets in the way of calming down, and being able to just naturally drift off to sleep, then it's good to be able to get in touch with it, to realize, you know, how I'm feeling. Because sometimes if we're not really aware of it, it almost seems to take over.

But when we become aware, when you focus on how you are feeling emotionally, just by, you know, giving yourself a bit of space, a bit of time to just feel those feelings, they can sometimes seem to just not evaporate, but spread out a little bit. It's almost as if you've got this solid bit of ice, and by focusing on it, it starts to turn into water, you know, it melts.

So the water is still there, the feeling is still there.

But it's just a bit more fluid. It's a bit more flexible. Which means you can still have the feelings, but they're not controlling you.

They're not causing a roadblock in your thinking, in the processes of relaxing and drifting off to sleep, if that's what you choose to do. And it can be the same with an emotional issue, something that maybe is getting in a way or feels like it's getting in a way of your feeling relaxed and calm. And it can be as simple as just acknowledging the feeling, allowing yourself to feel it.

So not trying to push it away, not trying to hold on to it. But just letting it be there, and allowing yourself to experience it. Because when you allow yourself to experience whatever emotional issues there are, it's always a much lower level.

So if it's a painful feeling, it doesn't feel painful anymore. It's a different kind of feeling. Because quite often, the stress and the discomfort, the anger, the pain connected to emotional thinking, events that maybe have happened in the past, and we're thinking about it, that pain comes from quite often us not being able to either let it go, or allow it to just be there.

It can be painful trying to push it away. Because you may feel that you can't, you can't allow it to express itself, because it may be too difficult, too painful. And what ends up is you have more pain, you have more discomfort, because you're pushing away, and it almost seems to get bigger and bigger and bigger, the pressure gets more and more.

As soon as you stop that pushing away, it comes, you know, the pressure reduces huge amounts. And if you think of it like water, pushing against the door, a door that opens up in the middle, you know, two parts. And the water's built up so much that it's actually a head height.

Now, the fact is, if you open it all in one go, really quickly, that water will cover you. And then it will move on behind you. And you won't have that water, you know, but it will completely cover you initially.

But if you allow that door to open slowly, it will, the water will gush in, but it will move in. And you'll end up with very wet feet. And then allow it to go that way.

And then if you do that, it's annoying, you know, getting your feet covered in water is annoying. But it's a hell of a lot less annoying or painful than being covered, right, completely all over in your head, your face, your body, everything all in one go. So although you can stop pushing the anxiety, the pain, the emotional discomfort away, it doesn't mean you have to let it all just rush in.

You can open that door gradually, as slowly as you choose, allowing those feelings to be expressed, but not all at one time. And when it comes to holding on to something, I've done this in the past. And it's almost as if I was trying to punish myself by trying to hold on to these horrible negative thinkings that I've had, you know, re going over stuff that's happened.

And in some ways, it didn't make sense. But another way, it might well have been that I was just trying to make sense of it. I was trying to play it over in my mind to make sense of something that really didn't make any sense, maybe to me at the time.

So I'd almost handcuffed myself to it. So it couldn't get away. I mean, sometimes I feel that those emotional issues wanted to get away from me.

They'd had enough. So how many more times have I got to go over this? It happened. Let's move on.

But I'm holding on to it. I've handcuffed it to my ankle, so it can't get away. And it wants to get away because it's bored now.

Its energy is gone. It doesn't have any more energy left to cause any pain. But by handcuffing it to me, I'm causing it.

I'm almost forcing it to cause me suffering. So holding on to stuff, really holding on to it is a really good way to prevent yourself from relaxing and sleeping. I mean, you know, if you want a technique for that, think of something that you really, really struggle with emotionally and keep replaying it to yourself.

That's a way to keep yourself awake. Another way is to think of every possible worst case scenario and keep replaying them. That's another way to prevent yourself from relaxing and to keep yourself awake.

Why would we do that? You know, when it's presented in that way, the way of, well, all you've got to do to keep yourself awake is think of something really horrible that happened and keep replaying it to yourself. Who would listen to that sentence and think, wow, now that's a good idea. Nobody, I don't think.

Yet, isn't that something that all of us have done at some point? Or thinking of the worst case scenario, what's going to happen tomorrow? And then replaying it and keep thinking about it and keep thinking about it. Knowing that it's all it's going to do is cause suffering for you and it's going to keep you awake because you've handcuffed it to yourself. The thing can't get away.

That memory or that made up idea, that imaginary storyline that we tell ourselves that isn't even true because it hasn't happened yet. How can it be true? It's fed up. It doesn't want to keep replaying.

It can't be bothered. It's almost like you've got these live actors rehearsing and you keep going on. Now rehearse again.

Rehearse. We're going to have a crappy day tomorrow. Let's rehearse it.

And even the actors to start with, they're happy. They've got some work. It's a well-paid job.

It's like, yeah, brilliant. Now, after a while, they're fed up. They don't want to keep doing this.

It's boring. It's tedious. It's tiring.

It's negative. Absolutely. I mean, even the actors would start to feel really, really low and it's not even real.

It's just acting. And if you said to them, oh, thanks for your night's work. Do you want another night tomorrow night? Come back tomorrow night at 10 and we'll do it again.

They won't want to come back. Not for any money in the world. Because it was so boring and tedious and painful.

Repetitive, monotonous and negative. So why would you choose that for yourself? Why would we choose that for ourselves? We wouldn't really, would we? So a way to remove those blocks that have gotten in the way of relaxing deeply, deeply, maybe falling asleep deeply, is to allow yourself to just be aware, to observe any emotional feelings that you have, whether positive, whether negative, whether painful or whether wonderful.

And just allow yourself, whether sitting down or whether lying down, just allow those feelings to come and go.

Because they're not the only feelings that you have. When you open that door slowly and you allow whatever emotions are there, you start to realize that there's more going on than just that one thought or that one issue. There's more stuff going on.

There's a lot of just general feelings, memories that maybe don't seem particularly important. But maybe they need your attention just as much as the other extreme or very strong emotions. The smaller emotions, the ones that maybe felt good when a colleague at work told you or smiled at you or said, Oh, that's really good.

I like your hair. Or a manager says to you, I really like your skis, but they don't really go in the office. Maybe you can leave them at home tomorrow.

Just something that was an unusual conversation. So there's lots of things, emotions, thoughts and ideas that are there. And when you open that door and allow them in, instead of trying to push them away with the best intention, admittedly, to not want to be bombarded or to have to experience or want to experience any kind of suffering is natural.

Or if you're in bed and you want to go to sleep, you know, pushing thoughts away seems like a very logical thing to do. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Because the more you push, the more those emotions and feelings push back.

And you don't need that. You don't want that. It's not helpful, not useful.

So if you allow that door to open, you realize that although the pressure was very strong on the other side of the door, you open the door slowly. Those emotions and feelings and thoughts, they come in slowly. And then they just move on.

They've had your attention. It's all they needed. And it's allowing that freedom of movement.

The energy needs to be free to move around, whether it's inside our body or outside our body, all energy needs to be free to do what it needs to do. And just to move needs to be flexible. And once you give it that permission, once you say, okay, do what you want to do.

I'll just observe. You then realize that those thoughts and emotions that maybe before felt way too strong to deal with, actually almost reduced in size, the instant you allow that door to open and you stop pushing away. I mean, how often have you perhaps knocked on a door or you've heard a dog barking and you've thought, wow, that's a scary sounding dog.

And then you see the dog and there's a tiny little thing and the bark does not match the dog. Another example, I was on a bus and I might've been on a train. Anyway, there is these people behind me, deep voices talking really aggressively, like really aggressively.

And it was winding me up, I'll be honest, it was at a really horrible, really with the verbal conversations that we're having, really violent. And they were talking about violence and stuff like that. Now I hadn't seen them because they must've come in behind me because I was on a train and I sat down and they must've got on a different stop and sat behind me.

And when the train came to its final destination, they were still on the train, so was I. They got up first and then I got up and I looked at them and they were all, couldn't have been more than about 14 years old, little kids. They were just kids acting tough. And I nearly started laughing in their faces, but I didn't.

But it was just like completely different to what I thought I had behind me. They were just kids showing off. So, something might seem like it's going to be way worse than what it actually is, when you allow those emotions to express themselves.

And sometimes all they need is just your attention, your acknowledgement, just like a crying baby. Sometimes all the baby needs is for you to go up to the cot and pick the baby up and it will stop crying and you put him down again. Sometimes it's enough just to turn the light on and the baby sees your face and that's enough.

Just so they know you're there, just so that you have, you know, they've got your attention, sometimes that's all that's needed, which means that your mind becomes really calm, so calm. It's almost, it's almost like there's nothing there at all. There's nothing there.

And you're no longer putting any energy into pushing thoughts away. You're not putting any energy, wasting any energy into trying to hold on to thoughts. You're just allowing them to come and go like clouds in the sky.

And just like clouds in the sky, you don't think about them once they've gone past. They don't cause a memory for you. You know, I never, I never sit down and think back to that cloud I saw back in 1993 when I was lying on a beach.

Oh, do you remember that cloud, that particular cloud? No. No, I don't. But it looked like E.T. No, I don't remember it.

It was a cloud. And that went past and another cloud came and that went past and another cloud. They've all got shapes.

I like to, I like to think of it as a cloud shape. They're a little bit like sheep, aren't they really? You know, like big fluffy coat of a sheep just passing by, which I think is how the counting sheep came about. It's like looking at the sky and just watching the clouds go by, which is a beautiful thing.

Because it's nice, not only to feel that you can't control it, but you accept that you can't control the clouds. I don't think there's many people lying down on a beach or in a park or in a garden looking up at a blue sky with clouds going by, getting angry because they can't control the speed of the clouds or the shape of the clouds. We just accept that they're there and they're going to do whatever the clouds do.

And it's that mindset that's useful to have when you're relaxing. Just allowing the thoughts to come and go as they please without any effort or energy needed from you. And your body naturally relaxes in the same way as when you're watching the clouds go by on a lovely day.

Your body relaxes. You don't need to go through the different parts of your body and now I'm focusing on my knees and now my ankles. Your mind seems to cause your body to relax naturally and so deeply.

It's a lovely feeling. And now you're there. Now you're in that feeling of complete relaxation.

You can enjoy it for as long as you choose. You can enjoy feeling relaxed and calm and loose. And there's pleasure connected to this feeling relaxed, calm and loose as that energy moves without obstruction, just moves through your body however it wants to move.

Causing you to feel even more relaxed. The more relaxed you feel, the closer to falling asleep you are. And if you choose, you can just drift into an easy, soft, relaxing sleep.

Counting from 20 down to one. With each number, you can drift even further, drift even deeper and allow yourself to enjoy the feelings of completely letting go. Now, 20, drifting.

19, drifting. 18, drifting. 17, drifting.

16, drifting. 15, drifting. 14, drifting.

13, drifting. 12, drifting. 11, drifting.

10, drifting. 9, drifting. 8, drifting.

7, drifting. 6, drifting. 5, drifting.

4, drifting. 3, drifting. 2, drifting.

Drifting.