Sleep & Insomnia · Hypnosis session
Your Sleep Comes Apart About a Hundred Times a Night. You Remember One.
Twenty past two, and the sum starts: three hours forty if I go under now. The surfacing is ordinary — sleep is assembled from cycles and everybody comes up at the joins. What turns one of those into two hours of ceiling is the ninety seconds afterwards.
Go Back To Sleep
Just under twenty-five minutes, aimed at what happens after you wake at two — the clock, the sum, the bracing — rather than at the waking itself, and built for nightly use across a fortnight.
US$18.95one-off · no subscription · about A$27
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The publisher reports 3,535 purchases of this title.
Chosen by Ernest McLeodClinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice. About Ernest →
Is this your two o’clock?
- Awake with no reason attached: no dream, no noise, no bladder
- The phone was face down, and you turned it over anyway. 2:47
- The sum, done twice, worse the second time
- One arm out, pillow flipped, the doona wrong whichever way round
- Under again near five, and the alarm lands inside that sleep
Recognise three and you are in the right place. Lose the first hour instead of the fourth and that is a different job; months of it and start with the pattern.
What has to be ruled out before this is treated as a habit?
Repeated night waking is the textbook presentation of obstructive sleep apnoea. Each breathing event ends in a brief arousal, since the arousal restarts the breathing, and moderate apnoea means fifteen to thirty an hour.
A GP and a sleep study, not a recordingIf you snore, gasp or choke in your sleep, wake with a dry mouth or an aching jaw, someone has watched your breathing stop, or you get a full night in bed and still wake wrung out. Untreated sleep apnoea is a cardiovascular risk, and no audio touches it.
Most of it is never caught: 936 million adults aged 30 to 69 worldwide (Benjafield and colleagues, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 2019), against 8% of Australians reporting a diagnosis in the Sleep Health Foundation’s 2016 survey.
Two more wake people at this hour and neither is psychological. Bosch and Weiss, reviewing 43 community studies for the Journal of Urology, found at least one nightly toilet trip in 11 to 44% of adults aged 20 to 40. Reflux is the other, showing up only horizontal and often as a cough: Emilsson and colleagues found it weekly in 14.1% of people with untreated apnoea against 5.8% of a general population. Restless legs, thyroid disease and a mood that dropped before the sleep did: same appointment.
For women in their forties and fifties, the cause may sit elsewhere
Perimenopause does night waking specifically, and it starts before periods stop. Kravitz and colleagues surveyed 12,603 women aged 40 to 55 for Menopause in 2003: 38% reported difficulty sleeping in the past fortnight, peaking at 45.4% in late perimenopause, and the 2008 follow-up in Sleep found it climbed further with frequent hot flushes. That is a hormonal mechanism, no recording reaches it, and there are treatments. A GP conversation.
How many times did you actually wake up last night?
More than you think. Sleep runs in cycles of about ninety minutes, and at every seam you come near the surface.
Boselli and colleagues counted them in Sleep in 1998, in forty overnight recordings from healthy sound sleepers. Young adults averaged 14.7 brief arousals an hour, each about fifteen seconds: roughly a hundred a night. Teenagers ran at 13.8, the over-sixties at 27.1. Not patients — people who would tell you they slept straight through. The paper calls arousals components of sleep, not faults.
Full awakenings behave the same way. The Sleep Health Foundation’s Australian report has waking overnight reported by 47% of over-65s against 22% of 18 to 24 year olds; Ohayon’s survey of 8,937 Americans found 35.5% waking three or more nights a week.
You have been waking at two for years. What changed is that you started counting.
Go Back To SleepUS$18.95 · instant download · full refund within 90 days if it isn’t right.
Opens the publisher’s checkout in a new tab. Or keep reading — the free techniques below cost nothing.
So why does one ordinary surfacing cost you two hours?
Because of what happens next: the clock.
Tang, Schmidt and Harvey ran two experiments on it (Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 2007). Thirty good sleepers and thirty poor ones were told to watch a clock as they tried to sleep, or not to. The clock-watchers worried more and took longer to get under, good sleepers included.
In the second, 38 people with primary insomnia watched either a clock or a unit of random digits. Only the clock provoked worry, only the clock stretched the time to sleep, and the clock-watchers overestimated how long they had lain there. The digits were just as bright.
Then the arithmetic. Alarm at six fifteen, and it is two forty. Three and a half hours, so a bad day, so the meeting at eleven. Not information. A deadline, in a body that had almost gone back down.
Broomfield and Espie built the Glasgow Sleep Effort Scale on this (Journal of Sleep Research, 2005): sleep is involuntary, so trying to control it makes things worse. Trying is the symptom, not the cure.
The line worth rememberingThe waking is architecture. The lying there afterwards is arithmetic. Only the second one is yours to change.
Is it true that people used to sleep in two halves?
Partly, and it gets oversold, so here is all of it.
Roger Ekirch, a historian at Virginia Tech, found casual references across centuries of sources to a “first sleep” and a “second sleep” an hour or two apart — American Historical Review, 2001, then his book At Day’s Close. He puts the collection at upwards of two thousand. One experiment rhymes with it: Wehr moved volunteers to a ten-hour photoperiod and their sleep split in two (1992).
Then the objection. Yetish and colleagues recorded three pre-industrial societies living without electric light and found sleep periods of 6.9 to 8.5 hours, uninterrupted by extended waking (Current Biology, 2015). No two halves. Ekirch replied in Sleep that long dark nights are a higher-latitude affair.
So a gap in the night is not a fault. It does not follow that your 2:47 is an ancestral rhythm resurfacing, or that the answer is an hour of reading at three called heritage. Your alarm still goes at six.
What can you do at two in the morning, for nothing?
Three, and the first happens tonight, before bed.
- Take the clock out of the room, and the phone with it
Face down is not enough, because you will turn it over, and the screen gives you the time before you decide to look. Buy a cheap alarm clock, face to the wall, or leave the phone in the hallway to shout from there.
A number you do not have cannot start a sum.
- The twenty-minute rule, done the way it is meant
Bootzin’s stimulus control, set out for the front of the night on the insomnia page, is a harder ask at three. There is no stopwatch, because you removed it: twenty minutes stands for the moment you notice you have stopped resting and started trying.
Then out of the bed and out of the room. A lamp, not the kitchen downlights. Something dull, on paper. Back only when sleepy. Jansson-Fröjmark and colleagues pooled eleven trials in 2024: gains of 0.38 to 0.85 against doing nothing, 0.06 to 0.30 against other active treatments.
If getting up is not realistic — a cold house, a shared bed, unsteady feet in the dark — use countercontrol: stay put, sit up, low light, something dull to read. Davies and colleagues taught it to 34 people aged 35 to 78 with this exact problem, and time awake fell about 30%, from 78 minutes to 57 (Psychology and Aging, 1986). Stimulus control manages 48%, so it is second-best.
- Do the arithmetic once, in daylight
In the morning, work out what tomorrow needs and what you will drop if the night goes badly. On paper, while you can think.
Then the night rule is no counting. When it starts, say “not now” and return to what you were doing. Two things not to tell yourself: that lying quietly is as good as sleeping, and that eight hours is the pass mark.
Does hypnosis do anything for the second half of the night?
Less than the guideline does, and better said before your card goes through. In July 2026 the Australasian Sleep Association, the Sleep Health Foundation, the RACGP and three others published a joint position statement on adult insomnia in SLEEP Advances: CBT-I first-line, medicines not, benzodiazepines and z-drugs held to two to four weeks. Hypnosis is not in it. Past three nights a week for three months, the free THIS WAY UP course and a GP appointment come first, both on the insomnia page.
One line of research does speak to it. Cordi, Schlarb and Rasch had seventy healthy young women listen to either a hypnotic suggestion to sleep more deeply or a control recording before a ninety-minute nap, with EEG running (Sleep, 2014). Slow-wave sleep came out 81% higher, time awake 67% lower.
Then the qualifications, which matter more. It appeared only in highly suggestible people. The same team repeated it across a full night with 43 people in 2020, same pattern, strongest early in the night — the half you are not losing. These were healthy volunteers, not poor sleepers.
Promising, small, and aimed slightly to the side of your problem. What a recording can fairly do at ten to three is give you something that is not counting.
Why pay for this when YouTube is free?
A competent sleep hypnosis track is a minute away, free. Michael Sealey is Australian with an enormous following, and if his voice gets you back under, you have solved this. Nothing says a paid file hypnotises better, and I will not imply otherwise.
The argument that belongs to this page is the clock. At ten to three a streaming site means waking the screen, which hands you the time before you chose to see it — exactly what the first technique above is trying to take away from you. A downloaded file plays from a locked screen, with no advertisement at minute nine and nothing queuing behind it at four. If that is not your bedroom, use the free one.
What is in the Go Back To Sleep session?
Just under twenty-five minutes, built for repeated use rather than one desperate attempt at three. It works on the response to waking, not the waking. Play it at bedtime for a fortnight, so it is familiar when you want it at two.
Go Back To Sleep
US$18.95About A$27 · one-off, no subscription.
- 24 minutes 56 seconds, narrated by Roger Elliott of Uncommon Knowledge, publishing since 1998
- Instant MP3 download plus the publisher’s app — any device, unlimited listens
- Plays from a locked screen: no clock, no notifications
- Suited to someone with apnoea ruled out who falls asleep fine
Opens the publisher’s secure checkout · no account needed
Figures the publisher reports about itself: trading since 1998, upwards of 24,000 people trained in person, over 5,000 clients seen individually, and 3,535 purchases of this title.
They also report 97% satisfaction from 9,604 customers surveyed — the support desk, not the recording.
Who is this session wrong for?
Anyone whose waking still has a physical cause sitting unexamined. If the list reads like your night, what you need is an appointment with someone who can see the whole night.
- You snore, gasp or choke, or a full night in bed still leaves you wrung out.
- You are up to the toilet twice or more most nights.
- The waking is getting more frequent month on month.
- Your mood dropped before the nights did, or has dropped since.
- You have had thoughts of harming yourself, or of not wanting to be here.
- You wake already frightened, or back into something that happened.
- You are nodding off at the wheel or at your desk.
Each is a GP appointment, not a purchase, the first two most of all. A recording bought instead of a sleep study is no harmless detour: apnoea does its damage while you listen.
Free and confidential, open now. Tap to call.
Common questions about waking in the night
Is it normal to wake up in the middle of the night?
Yes, and more often than anyone imagines. In a 1998 study in Sleep, healthy adults with no sleep disorder averaged 14.7 brief arousals an hour, about fifteen seconds each. Roughly a hundred a night, in people who would say they slept straight through.
Why do I always wake up at 3am?
Because deep sleep is front-loaded. The early cycles hold most of it, so by the small hours sleep is lighter and the ordinary surfacing between cycles reaches close enough to waking for you to notice it. Nothing mystical about the hour itself.
Should I look at the clock when I wake in the night?
No, and this is the best evidenced thing on the page. In two 2007 experiments, people told to watch a clock while trying to sleep worried more and took longer to get under, good sleepers included. A display of random digits did none of that.
How long should I lie there before getting out of bed?
About twenty minutes, judged rather than timed, since the clock should be out of the room. Get up once you notice you have stopped resting and started trying. Low light, something dull on paper, and back to bed only when sleepy.
Is segmented sleep real, and does it mean I am fine?
The history is real: Roger Ekirch found centuries of casual references to a first and a second sleep, and a 1992 experiment split volunteers into two bouts under winter-length daylight. But a 2015 study of three pre-industrial societies found no split at all.
What if the session does nothing for me?
Send the publisher your order number inside 90 days and the money comes back in full, no reason required. One refund per customer. Since nobody can predict how a recording will land for a given person, that window is what makes trying it reasonable.
Other sessions that may fit you better
- Fall Asleep FastIf you lose the start of the night, not the middle
- Night WorryIf you wake with one thing running and cannot put it down
- Cure InsomniaIf it has run for months and taken the days too
- Coping with GriefIf the waking started after someone died
If none is quite it, the sleep guide sorts sessions by what the night does. If the two o’clock waking is worry keeping office hours, the anxiety guide is the door.
Whatever you decide about buying, put the clock and phone outside the bedroom tonight, and do the sum at breakfast. Ten minutes, free.
Ernest McLeod — clinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice.
- ICHP
- FELLOW, ASCH
- IICT MEMBER
The most interesting fact here is that waking is normal, and it is not a treatment. Reassurance reads beautifully and does little at three. More →
Just under twenty-five minutes, and ninety days to send it back
If the clock is out of the room and the sum still starts, this is a small, private thing to have waiting.
US$18.95Instant download · 90-day refund · about A$27 · new tab
This is a self-help audio session, not medical treatment, a diagnosis, or a substitute for professional care. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia is first-line in Australian guidelines; this recording is not. Night waking with snoring, gasping, choking or unrefreshing sleep needs assessment for sleep apnoea first. Nocturia, reflux, restless legs, thyroid disease, perimenopausal symptoms, hormone therapy and sleeping medication all belong with a GP. Never listen at the wheel.