If I keep still in my normal sleep position eight hours every night in bed, if I relax every muscle and let it stay relaxed; if I breathe lightly, regularly, rhythmically in a well-ventilated room, making sure the early morning light will not strike across my face and wake me up; if I simulate sleep in every way I can; if I shut out all preoccupation, expect each night to go to sleep, and steadily hour after hour suggest sleep to myself in words like these I shall surely go to sleep:
I am going to sleep. I shall not lie awake. I cannot lie awake. I am going to sleep. The tired eyes are closing. The blood is flowing from my brain to my extremities. There is no longer any pressure on the brain. The muscles are relaxing. Sleep is stealing over all my senses. They are growing numb. I am getting drowsy, drowsy. I am softly sinking into sleep, dreamless sleep. I am sinking deeper, deeper, deeper. I am almost asleep. I am asleep, asleep, asleep. I am asleep.
THE ULTIMATE EFFECT
Even if, in spite of this, one sometimes fails to sleep, one will at least be free from the nerve-strain which a night of worry about sleep invariably brings. And if, in the face of every discouragement and every temptation to lapse from this wholesome attitude toward sleep, one habitually practises each night some such auto-suggestions, he has forever turned his face away from chronic sleeplessness.
He may not always sleep at will. He may not always live up to the light vouchsafed to him. But he will sleep much better than he slept before. He will be free from the morbidness and worry of insomnia. He will have faith where he had fear, peace where he had the troubled mind, and the light at eventide of a night which is not dark with griefs and graves. More than this, he will sleep. He will sleep habitually—to his body’s health, his mind’s contentment, and his soul’s supreme delight.