Hypnosis and sleep music go hand-in-hand. Guided hypnosis sessions, either in person or through your BetterSleep app, can help you develop better sleep quality. With the right practice, hypnosis can help you sleep faster, sleep longer, enjoy more deep sleep, and even experience more lucid dreams.

While hypnosis can be a powerful tool for sleep, it's not the only one at your disposal. Research suggests that sleep music can also help battle insomnia. Combine the two for a powerful way to take greater control of your sleep every night.

What is Sleep Hypnosis?

Sleep hypnosis is a type of therapy used to treat insomnia. Also called hypnotherapy, hypnosis is a valid therapeutic treatment provided by trained professionals.

When a therapist uses hypnosis, they help a patient enter a deep state of relaxation in which the subconscious mind becomes open to suggestions. They can use it to treat insomnia, help patients stop smoking, and change other problematic behaviors.

Does Hypnosis Work?

Hypnosis is not a new psychological tool, but researchers have recently begun to explore and study it more thoroughly. In terms of insomnia, researchers find that hypnosis can be helpful. It can help you relax into sleep more quickly at night and enjoy more quality sleep and time spent in deep sleep.

Other proven benefits of hypnotherapy include reduced anxiety, reduced stress, and improvements in some physical health conditions: chronic pain and irritable bowel syndrome. It can also help people lose weight, quit smoking, or stop other unhealthy behaviors.

Self-Hypnosis

If you struggle with sleep and insomnia, a qualified hypnotherapist can help, but you can also get some of the benefits of hypnosis without seeing a therapist. Self-hypnosis is putting yourself into a hypnotic, trance-like, and suggestive state of mind.

Although hypnosis and meditation are not the same, they are similar. Both require a period of focused attention, and both have the potential to change your consciousness and improve mental health.

Studies find that self-hypnosis can provide some of the same benefits as hypnotherapy guided by a professional. For instance, in one study of 90 women struggling with sleep due to postmenopausal symptoms, some women underwent hypnotherapy while others hypnotized themselves

The study found that both groups of women significantly improved both menopause symptoms and sleep disturbances. In other words, guided hypnosis on yourself can be just as effective as in-person therapy sessions.

Relaxing Music and Sleep Music

Hypnosis might not be new, but it is still growing in popularity as a therapy technique and a self-relaxation strategy. More common and popular is using music to get to sleep. Many people find it relaxing to listen to music, which can induce sleep before bed.

The knowledge that music can help you sleep shouldn't be surprising. After all, most parents use soft, gentle lullabies to get their babies to sleep. We aren't that different as adults. The right music can help you fall asleep faster.

Music can also improve your quality of sleep. According to one study, listening to 45 minutes of relaxing, meditative music before bed leads to better quality sleep, even on the first night. Participants experienced a better-perceived quality of sleep, longer sleep duration, less sleep disturbance, and greater daytime functioning.

According to people who use music to sleep and researchers, there are four main ways listening to music promotes better sleep:

• Music has unique properties—not perfectly defined—that encourage and support longer, more quality sleep.
• It blocks distractions, including internal ones like anxious thoughts and external sounds.
• Music relaxes the mind and body and helps induce a state of mind and rest conducive to sleep.
• Music becomes part of a bedtime routine for many people, and a standard routine repeated every night primes the body and mind to rest.

Two is Better Than One: Adding Music to Sleep Hypnosis

Both music and hypnosis have benefits for sleep, so why not combine them? If you enjoy music before bed, try adding a hypnosis meditation to promote even better sleep. If you meditate or have tried hypnosis, consider adding some of your favorite relaxing music to enhance the effect.

They are well-suited to work together. Music has powerful effects on the mind and body. When listening to music, you might experience the following:

• Slower breathing
• Lower blood pressure
• Lower heart rate
• Less central nervous system activity
• Reduced muscle tension
• Less anxiety and stress
• Reduced cortisol, the stress hormone
• Increased serotonin and oxytocin, hormones associated with sleep

These effects are similar to what you should experience when engaging in hypnosis. If you can combine self-hypnosis with music that relaxes you, you have a powerful, two-part solution to insomnia.

Choosing Hypnosis Sleep Music

The kind of music you choose to enhance sleep hypnosis matters. Music can be relaxing but also stimulate the mind and body, which is not conducive to falling asleep. Avoid music that makes you feel more awake raises your heart rate, or triggers racing thoughts.

Elements of Relaxing Meditation Music

There will always be an element of personal preference when choosing music that helps you sleep. However, in general, researchers have uncovered certain elements that make music more conducive to sleep:

• Lower frequencies
• Stronger bass
• Slower, sustained musical notes
• Slower and simpler rhythms, described as non-danceable
• Legato a musical term used to describe smooth transitions between notes

The researchers found that these elements were much more important than the genre. People fall asleep to a wide variety of types of music as long as it is relaxing rather than stimulating. Sleep music is less about the style, era, or genre and more about how it makes you feel.

In other words, you can choose the music that is personally more enjoyable for you. Don't force classical music just because you think it's the right kind of music to use to get to sleep. Select your favorite music that is relaxing and meets the criteria.

Hypnosis and Meditation Music Online

If you're unsure where to start, try searching for meditation music. Meditation music is specifically designed to support a meditative, focused, and relaxed state of mind.

Don't limit yourself to standard meditation music, though. You can also find hypnosis music or use any sleep music you find relaxing and soothing.

Binaural Beats and Sleep Hypnosis

Sometimes music that is more focused on a particular rhythm than any tune or melody is more useful to hypnosis and sleep than anything you enjoy listening to. If you haven't tried binaural beats, try adding them to your next sleep hypnosis session.

Binaural beats are sound mixes that combine frequencies in a specific way to change brainwaves. The brain's frequencies change all the time, including during sleep. People have hypothesized that you can improve your sleep by mimicking and listening to the brain waves of sleep.

You can use different combinations to get a frequency that will help you focus better, experience lucid dreaming, meditate more deeply, or sleep better, with or without dreams. There are few studies of binaural beats' effects, but they have shown promising results.

You can find binaural beatson your BetterSleep app to promote lucid dreaming, fall asleep faster, or supplement your practice of hypnosis or meditation before bed.

BetterSleep is your one-stop shop for both the Zen music you need to relax yourself to sleep and the guided meditations that will help you develop the habit of hypnotizing your mind into a tranquil state. You can find hundreds of meditations here, including many with an element of hypnosis.

The Sweet Dreams Hypnosis, for instance, will take you on a nearly hour-long journey to develop lucid dreams or just pleasant dreams. This is a great choice, not just for improving your sleep or battling insomnia but also for overcoming nightmares that disrupt your sleep at night.

The Put Me Out Hypnosis gets right to the point. It will help you clear your mind and prepare for a good night's rest. The Palace of Light Sleep Hypnosis is a powerful gratitude session that uses a great palace and shining light to guide your mind to a state conducive to sleep and being more thankful for all the good in your life.

Once you have selected the perfect hypnosis to go to bed, choose an accompanying piece of music. All of the music on BetterSleep promotes sleep, so you can't go wrong. Choose what moves you or suits your current mood. Some options include light jazz, spa music, chill Zen music, healing music, and even a sound bath.

To experiment with frequencies, try out the selection of binaural beats, Solfeggio frequencies, and isochronic tones. You can also try white and pink noise or any soothing background sound that you find personally relaxing, like a forest at night or a waterfall.

Hypnosis is a powerful tool that anyone can use. Combined with soothing music or purposeful beats, you can experiment with different techniques for getting a better night's sleep.