Hi, everyone!

I have had difficulty sleeping for about nine months. It is purely behavioral, caused by patterns which I establish while going through a health crisis.

The health crisis is over now (thank goodness!), but the patterns have remained. For quite a while, I only slept three hours a night. I'm now back up to 5-6 hours, which is a BIG improvement. I've brought this about through self-hypnosis, as well as a slew of behavior changes.

I think that the one thing that will really finish things off could be an anchor, used right at bedtime, to really make me very sleepy, and drop off right away. If I could do this, it would help me to greatly reduce the time I spend in nighttime ritual preparing for bed (sometimes as much as two hours!).

I thought I had one set really well yesterday. I was able to think of a time when I was really sleepy, even augment the experience in my mind to the point of bringing about a physiological response (a big yawn!). At the point of greatest intensity, I created a kinesthetic anchor (rubbing my left thumb and index finger together in a circular motion). I was even able to reinforce it through repetition--about 20-30 times!

Last night when I went to bed I tried it, and the response was not quite as good as I had hoped. I did get to sleep, but not much more quickly than I had been, and I did not feel terribly sleepy.

Does anybody have some suggestions for me? Is there an other NLP technique that might work better in this situation?

Thank you for your posts!