I have had insomnia for as long as I can remember. I used to lie in bed as a seven year old and wait until my brother, whom I shared a room with, had fallen asleep before I would finally nod off myself.

In that time, I'd think about what had gone on at school and ponder on whatever I pondered on as a seven year old.

By university, the whole thinking in bed thing had become a habit and it was taking me about two or three hours to fall asleep. Luckily, I was doing an arts subject and I could spend half my life in bed without missing any of my lectures so I didn't feel sleep deprived.

But once I started work, I could no longer wake up mid-afternoon and soon began to feel pretty red-eyed.

I've tried a range of solutions for the sleeplessness, from hardcore sleeping pills, to magnet therapy and Valerian tablets that smell of old socks. I've been falling ill almost every month and my immune system seems to be grinding to a halt through lack of sleep so I've been looking for an alternative therapy that won't give me that zombie-like feeling that sleeping tablets leave me with.

That is what led me to visiting my GP and begging to be put on a three month waiting list for autogenic therapy, a cross between meditation and self-hypnosis that I'd read about.

The training takes two months and it is supposed to be a fantastic therapy for things like insomnia, high blood pressure, anxiety, asthma and eczema. When I told friends I was interested in it, some were intrigued while others dismissed it as mumbo jumbo for mung bean eaters.

I turned up at the Royal Homeopathic Hospital for the first two-hour session last week and suddenly became nervous at the prospect of confronting my sleep demons in front of a group of strangers.

But the session had a bizarre effect on me. As the teacher began explaining what autogenics was, I felt myself, for the first time that day, really begin to relax and switch off. While most of us imagine we relax in front of the TV or in the gym or maybe listening to a bit of ambient music, how many of us actually wind down and zone out? I don't very often.

The teacher told us how to sit and relax our limbs and then, strangely, to reflect on how our right arm felt.

I felt a bit perplexed by this. How exactly was my right arm going to help me get eight hours of shut-eye? But after a few repetitions of this exercise, I felt an overwhelming calm. It hit me unexpectedly and I could have keeled over and gone to bed for about 100 years there and then.

The first night of sleep after that session was the soundest I have had in a long, long time. I am not sure what the trick is but it seems to be working. I can't wait for the second session.