Of the countless encountered sleep disorders, one of the most challenging & mysterious disorders remains to be sleep walking. This is more so because of the serious threats that sleep walking pose.
Using tools like polysomnography, a lot has been learned & published about sleep walking behaviors and its correlation with variant brain states. Sleep walking can simply be explained as a sleep disorder in which a person starts walking in his sleep. Scientific results suggest that sleep walking primarily occurs at the time of partial arousal periods from deep sleep. During this time, a state of dissociation exists wherein the elements of wakefulness & sleep co-exist, resulting in an unconscious fabrication of complex motor activity.
Regardless of the age or sex of the person, sleep walking may be experienced by anyone suffering from constant sleep disruption or deprivation. In spite of all the delusions commonly associated with sleep walking, the fact remains that this is a typically limited disorder. In most cases, what is required is a frequent reassurance to the sufferer that sleep walking is just a temporary sleep disorder & not a permanent psychological condition.
While reassuring the patient is an effective way, for more serious cases involving sleep walking dangers, plain reassurance may seem insufficient. In such cases, it is better & advisable to implement safety measures like, hiding car keys, blocking stairways, keeping the kitchen doors locked & so on.
Sleep walking being basically a psychological disturbance, an excellent treatment technique for it is clinical hypnosis. Small scale studies with clinical hypnosis suggest a marked improvement ratio for a range of parasomnias, especially sleep walking. It is believed that clinical or sleep hypnosis if conducted with proper precision can show encouraging positive results. Additionally there are no side-effects of this technique as it is carried out in perfectly normal conditions.
A fact goes that development of normal & regular sleeping habits can do wonders for people suffering from parasomnias like sleep walking & nightmares. Researchers suggest the triggering of a mechanism as soon as a normal person falls into deep sleep that retards his motion. Hypnosis targets just this mechanism by suggesting the sufferer of wakefulness as soon his feet touch the ground. Through a constant reiteration of such suggestions, it is possible to curb the condition of sleep walking a fair bit.
Effective Hypnotherapy Techniques 