EXERCISE YOUR IMAGINATION The audible suggestions of psychologists have broken the nervous habit of wakefulness and proved a boon to thousands troubled with insomnia. Many have practiced autosuggestion with the same good results. That is, after lying down they have held in their minds thoughts like the following:
My body is now entirely relaxed and I am going to sleep. I am quiet. My mind is passive and drowsy. I will soon be fast asleep and I will sleep restfully until morning.
But, occasionally, the very effort to hold such thoughts defeats the purpose and keeps one awake. One woman tried to “autosuggest” herself asleep. She relaxed hopefully, and repeated her formula over and over, but it didn’t work. She tried it for several nights, growing more restless and impatient, and more skeptical of her own powers, each night.
It seemed to her that she was two persons, one lying sensibly in bed, trying to realize that she could and would sleep, and one perched on the foot-board looking on and sneeringly repeatedly, “You can’t do it, you can’t do it.”
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