Insomniac CHAI MEI LING toys with self-hypnosis in a bid to clock more sleeping hours

MANY a morning I woke up feeling like a wreck. I looked the part, too, no thanks to sleepless nights.

For endless months, sleep has been a torturous ordeal. The body would toss and turn and the mind wander through the craziest of thoughts, only to surrender in exhaustion in the wee hours of dawn.

In the past few weeks, however, I've had better luck at de-zombie-fying myself.

I stumbled upon self-hypnosis, by way of chance. Skills learnt while sitting in hypnosis guru George Houguez's workshop last month in Kuala Lumpur were put to the test.
Excited at the prospect of sounder sleep, and hence a less cranky behaviour and more smiley feature, I dived into the state of "focused daydreams".

Every night before bedtime, I propped myself up in bed and started to relax.

I closed my eyes and focused on each of my breaths, willing myself to ignore the clicking whirl of the fan and to think of the particles of air that travelled in and out of my lungs instead.

Thoughts, like work, family, friends and relationships, were tossed out the window.

Some nights, it worked. I managed to go into a trance and count away into deeper relaxation.

I would then recite my mantra, "I'm sleeping well tonight", with a picture of a chubby baby fast asleep in mind.

Sometimes, I didn't have my way, especially in the early days of practice.

It was so frustrating. I would frustrate myself so much in failing to put myself at ease that I'd storm out of the room to make the idiot box a nightlong companion instead.

But on the average, sleep hasn't been eluding me so much since.

After this successful bout, perhaps willing myself to wake up in time for work should be the new mantra.