Clients Falling Asleep During Therapy

One of the questions that hypnotherapists often pose is what to do if their clients fall asleep during a therapy session.

New hypnotherapists ask us the following questions:

Will the hypnotherapy session still work?

Can my client hear what I’ve been saying?

Should I wake them up from the session and start again?

Clients falling (apparently) asleep has happened to me a lot; most of the time they're not actually asleep but just appear to be, but if you want to make sure you could bring them up a level by raising your voice and speaking their name a few times.

On the odd occasions when this didn't work and I suspected they may have inadvertently fallen asleep, a few minutes of silence at the end of the session was usually sufficient to rouse them.  

The subconscious mind is always listening, even in the deepest of sleep so I wouldn't bring them out of hypnosis because of that.  

With our hypnosis recordings, if people say they fell asleep during a session, our recommendation is that if it happens every time, to also listen to the recording at a time when they are less tired so that the conscious mind also benefits from the suggestions but of course, you couldn't really do this with an actual session.

During my early training days, I used to listen to a variety of hypnotherapy audio files and one session in particular was so relaxing that I inadvertently ‘fell asleep’.  

On waking, I couldn’t recall anything at all that had been said but certain ideas and suggestions would come into my mind and even though I didn’t think that I had felt stressed to begin with, I did notice an unusual feeling of calmness and tranquillity and began to feel more confident in general.

It wasn’t until later, when I finally transcribed the audio file (slowly and deliberately I might add), that I realised that the changes I have just described were included in the hypnosis session.

While practising hypnotherapy, many of my clients made appointments for themselves straight after work and of course, some of them were naturally tired and did doze, sometimes for a minute or two or at other times from the beginning of the session until the moment I counted them out of hypnosis.

Out of the thousands of clients that I treated, around 99% emerged from hypnosis on the count of 5.  The 2 or 3 clients who didn’t awaken immediately reported that they could hear me but were too comfortable to come round and just wanted to stay there.

Of course, this isn’t possible if you have other clients scheduled for sessions shortly afterwards, so I tried to allow at least half an hour between sessions to give the client a 5 or 10 hour period of absolute silence which always brought them out of trance.