Sleep Hypnosis for Mental ED

When a friend brought up the idea of doing a sleep hypnosis for psychological ED video, I was skeptical. The idea that you could suggest changes to someone’s subconscious while they’re asleep sounded pretty sketchy to me.  But then I got kind of curious about it.  Could it work?

So I did a little digging .  While there's not much out there for academic research, there are some decent studies published in respected journals.  The studies suggest the brain actually is active and can absorb information while we sleep.  This is what I learned - 

Sleep Hypnosis Research

-Researchers have shown that sleepers can pick up verbal information transmitted by a human voice and respond to it while they're still sleeping (they suggested the sleepers contract their facial muscles as a way to respond). This ability occurs intermittently during almost all stages of sleep.

-Multiple studies have found that a basic form of learning, called conditioning, can happen during sleep.  The brain can make associations and form new memories, even though those memories aren't necessarily available to the conscious mind.  So people's behaviors might change as a result of suggestions they were given while sleeping, even though consciously they didn't know why.  THis sounds a lot like what you see in some stage hypnosis shows where the hypnotist will give a post-hypnotic suggestion then suggest amnesia for the suggestion.  

-Some research suggests that the period when a person is drifting off to sleep might be a particularly receptive time for suggestions, potentially leading to more creative thinking and problem-solving when prompted with specific topics during this phase.

-But some other research suggests that deep slow wave sleep might be the best time to give the suggestions.  And there's a little bit that suggests REM sleep might be good as well.

-People who have better hypnotic capacity when they're awake tend to make better subjects when they're sleeping as well.

My conclusion from everything I read?  It may be possible to influence certain behaviors and cognitive processes during sleep, particularly if you're a good hypnotic subject.  And it seems like there's the potential that the brain can absorb suggestions across all the different levels of sleep.

So no guarantees or anything, but I think there's enough evidence here to make it worth doing a sleep hypnosis for ED session .  

This is going to be a very long one.  If you listen when you're awake at all, you'll hear that there's a lot of repetition.  You'll also hear that I'm using a wide variety of approaches - lots of very direct suggestions as well as lots of indirect suggestions, stories and metaphors.  With eight hours to fill, I figure let's give it everything we've got, right?