If you’re anything like me, your brain’s cravings for stimulation don’t end just ’cause the day does.
Long after sunset, I’m watching documentaries or reading. Any 24 hour period sans some sort of an educational or “aha!” moment just feels like a wasted one for me. Even when my head’s uncooperative and fatigued, I climb into bed, thinking, “I can’t just end on this note, can I?” Maybe that’s why I so frequently turn to technology – specifically recorded hypnoses – to try and pawn off my self betterment quest as homework for my subconscious. The nice thing about that practice (for me at least) is that, allegedly, it means I get to be both lazy and learn. Change my mind’s bad thought habits somehow. Retrain unhelpful mental loops. Learn how to human better. All while I’m K.O.
But I’ve always questioned it: does the stuff really work?
Can I truly get schooled whilste I snooze?
(Hey, it worked for Franco.)
According to my “experience”, I can’t aptly answer that. Because, as a restless headed person, I always wanna try something new. I’ve never made the commitment to listening to the same hypnosis (which is supposedly what you’re meant to do) for an extended period. Thus, I needed to turn to some pros and their published findings to discover whether or not hypnosis can David Blaine your brain into something next level, like some Matrix-ian reprogramming.
And what’d I find?
That hypnosis isn’t simply effective at helping you get a better sleep.
It also can effect you on a deeper, sensory level. Mere associations can get so driven into your skull that they remain once rest has ended. In fact, some Israeli research done a few years back observed exactly this when they exposed slumbering subjects to sounds coupled with scents. If they played a tone with an odor that was unfavorable, then they’d shorten their respiration when they heard the noise alone. Likewise, a nice aroma juxtaposed against another noise yielded the opposite results – when they heard the tone alone, their breathing deepened like a basic white girl walking into a Starbucks. And, while this association was, of course, initially ingrained while they were snoring away, it was surprisingly still there once they awoke and were subjected to the auditory stimuli all over again.
This is kinda mindblowing, when you consider that associations like smell are closely related to emotion. It also means we’re so suggestible in our sleep that we don’t even need actual directions to sponge up ambient information. The pairing of other simple stimuli – like smell and sound – are enough to implant a Pavlovian type response in us that carries over into our waking world. In a way, that makes me really regret all those years I slept with the T.V. on while my logic were centers off. In a way, that makes me not want to listen to any hypnoses at night anymore. What if my brain hears the words wrong? And learns a bad assoche that I have to live with forever?
“Did she say you are one with the cosmos at all times? Or you really wanna cosmo… with fresh lime?”
(And, in another way, it makes me think that a fantastic million-dollar idea would be an aromatherapy-hypnosis package I sell to unassuming souls, pairing the scent of their favorite childhood comfort food with a strong desire to buy all the useless paraphernalia I’m pushing as they tell everyone else to do the same.)
But, despite my newly acquired apprehensions, I’m admittedly still intrigued.
Hey, maybe I can find one to teach me how to unplug and pause my noggin for seven straight hours.
(Right after it teaches me Mandarin.)