Insight | Self-hypnosis for insomnia: a tool for falling back asleep

The Short Version

Self-hypnosis is a way to get back to sleep by calming the body first and letting the mind follow. Stanford psychiatrist David Spiegel teaches a specific exercise for it: don't look at the clock, imagine your body floating somewhere safe and comfortable, and put whatever is worrying you on an imaginary screen while the body stays comfortable [1][2]. Andrew Huberman uses hypnosis in two ways, as a ten-minute reset after lunch and as one of the tools he reaches for when he wakes in the night, and he reports doing such a protocol at three in the morning and sleeping until 6:30 [3][4]. Both describe it as a skill that is learned quickly and done alone, with no drug involved [1][3]. The honest limits are that the strongest trials Spiegel cites are for pain and not for sleep, and that about a third of adults are not hypnotizable [1][2].

What They Said

David Spiegel: what hypnosis is, and the exercise for the night

Spiegel is associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and directs its Center on Stress and Health; he has studied clinical hypnosis for more than 40 years [1][2]. He starts by clearing away the stage version. "Hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention," he says, like looking through the telephoto lens of a camera: great detail, little context [1][2]. Getting so absorbed in a movie that you forget you are in the audience is the everyday form of it [1]. In that state you experience more than you evaluate [2].

People fear it for the wrong reason. "They think you're losing control. You're gaining control." [1] Self-hypnosis is something you make happen and can switch on and off [1].

His method for stress is the basis of his method for sleep, so it is worth following in order. The problem with stress, he says, is a snowball: you notice your body tensing, your heart racing, you interpret that as bad, and you feel worse [1][2]. The technique separates the physical reaction from the psychological one in three moves [1][2]:

1. Imagine your body floating somewhere safe and comfortable, such as a bath, a lake, a hot tub or space.
2. Picture the problem on an imaginary screen.
3. Keep one rule: no matter what appears on the screen, your body stays comfortable.

You can't yet control the stressor, he says, but you can control your physical response, and from there you can think through one thing you might do about it [2].

For sleep he adds one instruction and keeps the rest. If you wake in the night, don't look at the clock, which he calls an arousal cue [1]. Keep your body floating, and watch your worries on the screen [1][2]. The worries are allowed. What changes is that they no longer drive the body.

His evidence for the sleep use is his own practice and his correspondence: he says he gets emails from people who hadn't slept well in 15 years and now can [1][2]. That is testimony. The controlled trials he describes are in other conditions, and they are the reason to take the method seriously. In a randomized trial published in The Lancet, patients undergoing roughly two-and-a-half-hour procedures without general anesthesia were given standard care, standard care plus a supportive nurse, or training in self-hypnosis. By an hour and a half in, the hypnosis group had reduced their pain by 80 percent compared with standard care while using half the opioids, with fewer complications, no anxiety, and procedures that finished 17 minutes sooner [1][2]. In a year-long trial of women with metastatic breast cancer who learned self-hypnosis in weekly support groups, the treatment group had half the pain of the control group at the end of the year on very little medication [1]. Spiegel's comment on the Lancet result is "if we had a drug that did that every hospital in the country would be using it now," but there is no industry to push it [1].

Those trials show that a person can change the body's state on purpose with this technique, under conditions far harder than lying awake at home. They do not measure sleep.

How it is taught. Spiegel usually sees patients only once or twice. He tests their hypnotizability, guides them through an exercise for their problem, and teaches them to do it themselves [1][2]. Hypnosis works, he says, because it becomes a skill, and people can tell quickly whether it helps [1]. His team built the Reveri app from the lab's clinical research, with sessions for insomnia among other problems; it offers 15-minute sessions and one- to two-minute refreshers, and he says two-thirds of users find it helpful even at one minute [1][2].

The induction. From his research with Huberman on cyclic sighing, a breathing pattern that emphasizes long exhales, he now stresses a slow exhale during his inductions to promote relaxation [1][2]. He names the core ingredients as breathing, vision and directed focus [2]. On vision, he explains through his eye-roll test that looking up and closing your eyes while staying alert signals the brain to turn inward [1][2].

Who it works for. About a third of adults are not hypnotizable, two-thirds are, and about 15 percent are extremely so [1][2]. The trait peaks in childhood, "every eight-year-old is in a trance all the time," and is largely fixed by the early twenties; a Stanford study that retested people 25 years later found a correlation of about 0.7, more stable than IQ [1]. Training raises scores only a little, and he says it isn't worth the effort; better to use whatever level you have [1][2]. For low scorers he uses other approaches such as medication or mindfulness [1]. People who are busy evaluating instead of experiencing, including many with OCD, tend to be less hypnotizable [1][2].

His quick screen is the eye-roll test. Tilt your head back, look up toward the ceiling and, keeping your eyes up, slowly close your eyelids. If mostly the whites show as the lids close, you are likely more hypnotizable; if the colored iris drops into view, less so [1][2].

Drugs. Spiegel rarely combines hypnosis with medication. Benzodiazepines may help very anxious people but otherwise sedate them and blunt focus, and he sees hypnosis more as a replacement than as something that needs a supplement [1].

Andrew Huberman: hypnosis as deliberate rest, by day and at 3 a.m.

Huberman places hypnosis inside a category he named non-sleep deep rest, or NSDR, an umbrella for deliberate shifts toward deep relaxation that includes meditation, yoga nidra and hypnosis [3]. He singles out hypnosis as the practice with the most evidence for relaxation, focus and faster learning, because it is directed toward a specific goal [3]. He says he is very hypnotizable [1].

The daytime use. After lunch and a short walk he does a 10-minute session on Reveri, with scripts for focus, creativity, pain, sleep and anxiety, including one-minute versions that work best once you have practiced the longer ones [3]. He stresses this is not stage hypnosis. It lets him go into deep relaxation and come out clear-headed, without grogginess, and then start a second 90-minute work block at a time when he says he would otherwise be crashing [3]. He cites a paper in Cerebral Cortex by Jiang and colleagues showing that hypnosis changes activity in executive control areas and the default mode network and activates the insula, combining deep relaxation, focus and awareness of the body in an unusual way [3].

The night use. In his episode on daily routines he gives the instruction plainly. For waking from anxiety or bathroom trips, keep lights dim and use NSDR, yoga nidra, sleep hypnosis or long-exhale breathing, since "it's very hard to control the mind with the mind." [3]

In his episode on sleeplessness he gives his own case. "I woke up at three in the morning. I knew I wasn't feeling rested. I did a NSDR protocol. I fell back asleep. I woke up at 6 30." [4] He draws the lesson: "you need to teach your brain and your nervous system how to turn off your thoughts and go to sleep," and ideally without medication unless there is a real need [4]. His explanation of why these protocols succeed where willpower fails is the center of his view: "They work because they involve using the body to shift the mind not trying to just turn off your thoughts in the middle of the night." [4]

When to practice. His answer is any time. Do them in the middle of the night if you wake and want to go back to sleep, in the middle of the day to teach your nervous system to calm down, or first thing in the morning if you didn't get enough sleep: "do them whenever you have an opportunity to do them" [4]. The benefit he names is learning to turn on the calming, parasympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system [4].

The wider frame. Huberman is also the source of two cautions that matter for anyone using this at night. The first is about anxiety over sleep itself. He warns against getting neurotically attached to a schedule, because sleep anxiety makes it hard to fall and stay asleep, and he says "there isn't an IRS equivalent for sleep" when people fret about sleep debt [4]. The second is about light. The retina becomes much more sensitive at night, and he cites data that light between roughly 10 or 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. can disrupt dopamine, learning, memory, immune function and mood [3]. He keeps his phone in airplane mode from about an hour before sleep [3].

He ranks tools in a fixed order: "behavioral protocols first," then optional supplements discussed with a doctor, with prescription sleeping pills described as potentially habit-forming and high in side effects for many people, though some handle them fine [4].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

They agree on the mechanism in plain terms: go through the body. Spiegel separates the physical reaction from the worry and holds the body comfortable while the worry plays [1][2]. Huberman says you use the body to shift the mind because the mind cannot simply be ordered to stop [3][4]. Both treat racing thoughts as something to work around.

They agree it is a skill learned in very few sessions and practiced alone. Spiegel teaches it in one or two visits [1]. Huberman practices it daily and says the short versions work best after the long ones [3].

They agree on long exhales. Spiegel builds a slow exhale into the induction, and Huberman lists long-exhale breathing beside sleep hypnosis as a night tool [1][3].

They agree it should come before drugs for most people. Spiegel calls it a replacement more than an add-on [1]. Huberman puts behavior first [4].

They differ on how specific to be. Spiegel prescribes one particular exercise: floating body, screen, the comfort rule, no clock [1]. Huberman treats hypnosis as one option among several interchangeable rest protocols, and on the night he describes he says only that he did an NSDR protocol [3][4]. The reason is their work. Spiegel is a clinician matching an exercise to a problem. Huberman is describing a personal toolkit, and his claim is about the category.

They differ on who should expect it to work. Spiegel says a third of adults are not hypnotizable and sends them to other treatments [1]. Huberman recommends these tools broadly and does not screen [3][4]. A person who tries the hypnosis script and feels nothing has not failed; by Spiegel's numbers that is common, and Huberman's list contains alternatives, such as yoga nidra and breathing, that do not depend on the same trait [1][3].

They differ on how far the evidence goes. Huberman calls hypnosis the best-supported practice of its kind for relaxation and focus and says "These things really work." [3][4] Spiegel, asked whether repeated self-hypnosis strengthens the brain networks involved, says there isn't evidence yet, though it is plausible on the principle that "neurons that fire together wire together" [1]. His sleep claim rests on patient reports, and his hard numbers are for pain [1]. So the idea that practice trains the nervous system to calm down, which Huberman states as fact, is something Spiegel regards as likely and unproven [1][4].

They differ on what sits beside it. Spiegel seldom adds drugs [1]. Huberman describes a supplement combination he takes before bed, magnesium threonate or bisglycinate, apigenin and theanine, as a middle ground between nothing and prescription sleep drugs, to be discussed with a physician [3][4]. He is skeptical of melatonin, which he says helps people fall asleep but not stay asleep [3][4].

Why It Works

Hypnosis quiets the brain's alarm. Spiegel's imaging studies found that during hypnosis activity drops in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, part of the salience network that detects conflict and potential danger [1][2]. That is the system a 3 a.m. worry engages. More hypnotizable people also show more GABA activity in that region, a calming effect he compares to what benzodiazepines do [1][2].

It links control regions to the body. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex becomes more connected to the insula, a mind-body control area [1]. His demonstration that this has physical force is the stomach acid study: hypnotized people imagining their favorite foods raised acid secretion by 87 percent, and when they relaxed and thought of anything but food it fell by about 40 percent [1][2]. Imagining a floating, comfortable body is an instruction through the same channel.

It loosens self-evaluation. The prefrontal cortex becomes inversely connected with the posterior cingulate, part of the default mode network tied to self-reflection [1][2]. Night-time rumination is largely self-reflection, and Spiegel says this dissociation lets people do something without worrying about what it means for them [1].

It breaks the snowball. The body's arousal and the mind's interpretation feed each other [1]. Holding the body comfortable while the worry stays on the screen cuts the loop at the physical end [2]. The clock is removed because it restarts the loop [1].

Slow exhales and inward-turned eyes support the shift. Breathing sits at the edge of conscious and unconscious control, which makes it a lever, and patterns with longer exhales seem to promote calm [1][2]. Huberman adds, in his discussion of desk posture, that looking down with hooded eyelids promotes sleepiness while looking up with eyes open supports alertness [3].

It restores a sense of control. Spiegel's deepest point, made about trauma, is that "the essence of trauma is helplessness it's not fear it's not pain it's helplessness." [1] Lying awake has a helplessness of its own, and Huberman notes that worry about not sleeping can itself cause insomnia [4]. A procedure you can start whenever you choose is an answer to that.

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

It fits the person described in the plan for this article: someone who wakes in the night, or lies awake, with a busy mind and an aroused body [1][3][4]. It fits people who want to avoid medication, and those who score as hypnotizable [1].

It is the wrong tool when the problem is timing. Huberman describes a common pattern in which someone pushes through evening sleepiness and then wakes around 2:30 or 3 a.m.; he attributes that to melatonin starting early, and the fix is to go to bed earlier or get a little bright light around 7 or 8 p.m. [3]. Jet lag, irregular wake times and phone use at night shift the clock, and he treats those with light, exercise, temperature and meal timing [4]. He also recommends evening sunlight to make the eyes less sensitive to light later at night, and a cool, dark room, because body temperature must drop one to three degrees to fall asleep [3]. Hypnosis does none of this.

It may not work for the third of adults who are not hypnotizable, and Spiegel does not advise trying to train the trait [1][2]. He suspects many people with ADHD are not very hypnotizable, though he has not studied it [1].

It should not cover up a medical problem. Spiegel recommends working with a clinician licensed in a primary discipline such as medicine or psychology who is also trained in hypnosis, because a trained clinician can make sure hypnosis isn't masking something serious [1][2]. Huberman notes that persistent daytime sleepiness, beyond a short dip, is a sign of not getting enough sleep [4]. Ongoing insomnia, or sleeplessness with other symptoms, should be assessed by a doctor.

There is one practical conflict inside the advice. The sessions live on a phone, and a bright screen in the middle of the night works against Huberman's own rule about light [3]. The sources point to the resolution without stating it as one: Spiegel teaches people the exercise so they can do it themselves, and Huberman says the short versions work best once the longer ones have been practiced [1][3]. Learning it in the daytime means it can be done in the dark from memory.

Finally, the evidence should be held at its true weight. For sleep specifically, these sources offer a clinician's reports from patients and one neuroscientist's own night [1][4]. The trials are for pain and anxiety during procedures [1].

What To Do With It

1. Try the eye-roll test. Head back, look up at the ceiling, and slowly close your eyelids while keeping your eyes up. Mostly whites showing suggests you are more hypnotizable; the iris sliding into view suggests less [1][2]. Treat it as a rough guide.

2. Learn the exercise in daylight. Use a guided session of about 10 to 15 minutes, such as the ones in the Reveri app that both men describe, at a regular time; Huberman's is after lunch [1][3]. Once the long version is familiar, practice the one-minute version [3].

3. Use a slow exhale to begin. Spiegel now emphasizes a slow exhale during induction [1]. Close your eyes and let the exhale be long.

4. At night, don't look at the clock. Spiegel calls it an arousal cue [1].

5. Float the body. Imagine it in a bath, a lake, a hot tub or in space, safe and comfortable [1][2].

6. Put the worries on the screen. Let them appear there, and keep the rule that whatever is on the screen, the body stays comfortable [1][2]. If it helps, use the screen to think of one thing you might do about the problem, then let it go [2].

7. Keep the lights dim and the phone dark. If you get up, use as little light as possible, in line with Huberman's guidance about light late at night [3]. Do the exercise from memory.

8. If hypnosis does nothing for you, switch tools. Yoga nidra and long-exhale breathing are on Huberman's list for the same moment, and Spiegel moves low scorers to other approaches such as mindfulness [1][3].

9. Check the timing explanations too. If you wake at the same early hour after fighting sleepiness in the evening, try an earlier bedtime, and get light in the morning and late afternoon [3][4].

10. Don't make sleep a test. Huberman's warning about sleep anxiety applies to this practice as well [4]. Do the exercise for the rest it gives, and if sleeplessness persists, see a physician or a licensed clinician trained in hypnosis [1][2].

Sources

1. Dr. David Spiegel: Using Hypnosis to Enhance Health & Performance · Huberman Lab
2. Dr. David Spiegel on Clinical Hypnosis: How It Works and How to Use It for Stress, Pain, Sleep and Trauma · Huberman Lab
3. Maximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools · Huberman Lab
4. How to Defeat Jet Lag, Shift Work & Sleeplessness · Huberman Lab