Recently I received this newsletter which I have copied and pasted below. I help many people with sleep issues. By the time they approach me it may be months or years of staring at the ceiling all night long. I also know that people attend my Tuesday night group sessions because after a round or two of hypnosis they sleep better. Many times we do not even talk about sleep but just letting go of worry for an hour has long lasting effects. If sleep is an issue for you call me and set up a private session.
“Your Weekly Letter from Mike Mandel
Sleep is a funny thing; a strange thing…
My mother was a sleepwalker when she was in her twenties, and it was probably due to the bombs falling night after night on the city of Manchester.
She told me she’d get so tired that she wouldn’t even go to the bomb shelters as the Blitz wore on.
Fortunately, her sleepwalking stopped when World War 2 ended, and life became essentially normal again.
Sleepwalking runs in families, and I too have had some strange sleepwalking experiences, which in my case always contained an element of choking to death.
I’d sit up suddenly, fast asleep, but absolutely convinced that there was something stuck in my throat.
And I knew that if I didn’t cough it up, I would certainly die.
My night choking began in my childhood years, and persisted into my early twenties. After about the fourth or fifth event, my parents learned to accept that I was a somnambulist, and they would talk to me and humour me, until I woke up.
But the first time it happened, it freaked out my Dad.
It was late at night, and he was working in his ham shack on his radio gear, when he suddenly heard the sound of someone violently choking.
Dad burst into my room, only to see me sitting up in bed and gagging, while making a gesture like I was holding a camera and taking pictures, clicking the shutter release.
Dad kept photographic chemicals in the closet, and thought I was trying to tell him that I’d accidentally drank some of them.
Panicking, he told me to open my mouth so he could look, and when he saw my green tongue from eating a Clorets mint, he was convinced he was correct, and I’d poisoned myself.
Then I suddenly woke up and told him I was just dreaming, that’s all. I had dreamed that the metal developer spreader in my Polaroid camera was stuck in my throat, and I had been attempting to expel it.
We naturally had a good laugh about this, but I must have been highly stressed, because it kept happening with a wide variety of items stuck in my oropharynx, including but not limited to:
An entire 12 inch stick of sandalwood incense
A piece of wire from NASA’s vehicle assembly building at the Kennedy Space Centre
A small piece of jagged glass, and several more items
The most memorable choking event was the night I went into my parents bedroom to tell them I had an entire deck of cards stuck in my throat.
Dad calmly accompanied me into the bathroom and turned on the light. By now he knew he had to just keep me talking until I’d suddenly awaken.
I looked into the mirror, and saw that the entire deck of cards had telescoped down toward the cardiac sphincter at the top of my stomach; the King of Hearts visible in the back of my mouth.
Dad told me to have a glass of water and he’d call the hospital ER and have an ear, nose, and throat specialist standing by.
I woke up a few seconds later, and we all went back to sleep.
Eventually, my sleepwalking and sleep choking just stopped, and was apparently resolved.
But then a few years later, I began to get sleep paralysis, which was far worse. My mind would awaken, but the pontine tegmentum in my brain wouldn’t wake up the motor neurons, and I’d lie there, completely paralyzed, unable to move or speak.
Fortunately, my friend and colleague, Freddy Jacquin ran an impromptu hypnosis session on me, in Chris Thompson’s Tesla, on the way from Pearson Airport. From that moment, the sleep paralysis problem became a thing of the past.
When it comes to sleep problems, there are lots of variants, from waking at 3am with insomnia, to night terrors. The good news is, in almost all cases, they can be quickly resolved by a skilled and well-trained hypnotist.
Quality sleep is crucial to our physical and mental well-being. When our sleep gets screwed up, our lives get screwed up too. If you have trouble sleeping, in any way at all, be sure to tell your physician.
And then ask if you can get some help from a hypnotist.
The answer will probably be yes. And it might be just what you need.
– Mike Mandel”