A Safe Alternative to Medication to Help People Who Can’t Sleep

I have created a CD that has helps people suffering from sleep problems, and anxiety and stress. It has been effective for more than 95% of the 1,000 people who tried it. And, unlike some medications, it will not harm your liver or other organs.

It might surprise you to hear I actually discovered how to help people with sleep problems, almost by accident. Here’s how it happened.

In addition to being a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I am also Board Certified in hypnotherapy and have additional training and experience in helping people with Chronic Pain problems, anxiety and panic. For many years I helped people who became injured on the job, and couldn’t return to their usual jobs. They usually suffered from chronic pain. Of course, they were often depressed and anxious. Depressed, because of their losses and anxious because they didn’t know how they could get their lives back together. It was these experiences that led me to study ways to help people with these huge problems. Most people wouldn’t think about this, but did you know that people with chronic pain have a hard time sleeping? When you think about it, it seems obvious, but unless you know someone in that situation, it might not cross your mind. Not getting enough regular sleep can create and increase feelings of being depressed and can also make you feel a lot of anxiety.

I’ve always had an interest in finding ways to help people help themselves without having to come in to see me in-person. As part of that, around the same time I began working with injured workers, I also taught self-hypnosis classes for the general public. As you may know, it’s is a great way for people to self-manage a great variety of problems, including anxiety, many types of depression, and pain. I discovered it also turned out to be really helpful for people in 12-step programs.

I wanted the training to be successful so I created an audio tape to help people practice on their own after the class was finished. That’s when I started to get feedback on how helpful the tape was for problems I hadn’t even thought about. My students would take this little tape home and give it to their spouse or kids to play around with. Then they would report back to me the most amazing things. Parents reported it helped their kids sleep better when they were on vacations. Someone’s wife, husband, or friend used it to help them get rest when they were suffering from back pain or even headaches. A busy attorney used it at lunch time to take a 20 minute break and told me he had even more energy in the afternoon. (That’s because 20 minutes of this can feel just about as refreshing and restorative to your body and mind as 90 minutes of sleep.) I had people with ADHD report they found it helped them focus better. When people in the early stages of drug and alcohol recovery were willing to use it regularly they told me it solved a major problem and helped them successfully maintain their program. They said that they were told they should meditate but no one could teach them how and they couldn’t quiet their mind long enough to try. That tape solved the problem and worked as even better for them than trying to meditate. It quieted their mind and let them relax, often for the first time ever.

It started to sound almost magical that this one little tape could help so many people with so many problems. It occurred to me that if it was a pill or potion, it would be marketed as a wonder drug.


There was one problem with the tape. It was just a home recording, and the sound quality was not very good. I decided to solve that by going into a professional recording studio and work with a professional sound engineer to create a quality CD. When a musician I know heard the new recordings, she got so excited about it she wanted to compose special music to enhance it. The result was that she composed a custom musical background for the guided visualizations on the CD that are absolutely perfect for each one. There are certain points where she added subtle chimes that create a wonderful effect. This product is an experience. You don’t get the full effect by simply listening to it in the background; it is most powerful when you let yourself take the ride into a state of deep, soothing relaxation.

When the CD was finally finished, I was excited to get it out to people and find out if it would get the same results as the little tape. Amazingly what I heard back was that it is even more powerful and effective. The thing I didn’t anticipate was how effective it is for people with sleep problems.

When I thought about it though, I shouldn’t have been surprised. What I had overlooked was the one thing that people with anxiety, chronic pain and substance abuse problems all have in common. They have trouble sleeping. Just like everyone else who has trouble sleeping, they can’t quiet their restless mind.

The Fight or Flight Response

Have you ever heard of the fight or flight response? That is something that happens in our brain and our body whenever we get worried or think about problems or something gets us aroused like pain or anxiety. It is part of our evolutionary history and actually helped early humans survive. It can also interfere with sleep.

This is what I mean. Imagine a few hundred thousand years ago, one of your ancestors knelt down by a river to get a drink. Just when she got down, a “log” floating near the shore turned out to be a crocodile and tried to attack her. To survive, she had to be able to react instantly by recognizing the threat and within a tiny fraction of a second, jump back at full speed and get away or fight it off. We know you are descended from someone who had that ability because the others were killed or eaten.

Here is how it works. As soon as your ancestor perceived a threat, her brain sent messages to the body to release hormones, such as adrenaline, that trigger a whole cascade of reactions. The heart races, the blood pressure increases to move blood away from your hands and feet (that’s why mood rings work, they detect cold fingers when you are stressed) and into the major muscle groups and the brain so you can effectively fight or flee. It evens moves blood away from your digestive system which interferes with other aspects of your health; but in a life or death situation, who cares? Eventually, the physical activities of fighting or fleeing turn off the system.

Here’s the catch. At the same time all of that “alarm” activity is going on; chemical signals are sent to switching stations in other parts of the brain to remember everything that happens in great detail. That’s so you will recognize the danger sooner next time.

Some months or years later, here is your ancestor once again walking through the forest, when out of the corner of her eye, she sees a real log. She might not take any conscious notice, but the automatic parts of the brain remember that “logs” can be crocodiles so the brain and body react bio-chemically exactly the same way they would if it was a crocodile.

These hormones were especially important in helping our ancient ancestors meet the challenges of more primitive times when human beings were hunters facing regular danger from wild beasts and predators. A life or death situation may trigger this response, but the brain may respond in a similar fashion to persistent lower levels of stress. Nowadays, we don’t see many crocodiles or bears and such, so emotional stresses have replaced physical ones. Pain can also trigger this response. As a result, we can’t usually take the physical actions necessary to dissipate the stimulation of these hormones. So these powerful substances tend to “attack” the body instead of enabling it to deal better with outside forces. If a stress response is chronic, the constant presence of stress hormones begins to wear down the body’s immunological system; whatever part of the body is weakest will show signs of dysfunction first. And of course, it causes problems with sleeping.

To treat medical problems caused by the body’s stress producing substances, a doctor may prescribe medication which partly blocks the effects of these hormones. But, as pointed out by Herbert Benson, MD, there is another way to achieve similar results: the Relaxation Response.

This CD, Profound Relaxation, acts to turn off the Fight or Flight response. It quiets your restless mind and without any of the side effects associated with drugs from your doctor.

The heart rate is reduced and the heart beats more effectively; blood pressure is reduced. Blood is shunted towards internal organs, especially those organs involved in digestion. Therefore, the Relaxation Response breaks the vicious cycle by blocking the action of the hormones of the sympathetic nervous system. This blockage prevents anxiety and other harmful effects. As a result, you can finally slow down enough internally to sleep.

Please send me your comments and suggestions for future topics by clicking on the comments section at the end of each posting. Or you can e-mail me: bruyoli@hotmail.com Also keep checking back to see how I have responded to your suggestion or question in future postings. I suggest you add this blog to your list of favorites. That way, it will be easy to find again.