Tag Archives: sleeplessness
Waking up at three in the morning and not being able to fall back asleep is rough. Going to bed at 11 pm, but not falling asleep till 1:30 am is equally wicked. Let’s look first at the biochemistry of sleeplessness, and then explore two techniques useful in putting yourself into sleep. 
By and large, it’s a chemical reaction that keeps us awake–one instigated by our thoughts and feelings. The trick then, is creating a different chemical reaction, requiring different thoughts and feelings.
Here’s what I mean. More often than not, when we can’t fall asleep, our minds are chewing on some thought. But by the nature of that thought, we begin to feel more and more anxious, nervous or scared. It’s those uncomfortable feelings that begin the biochemical process. Essentially, those scary thoughts, that then make us anxious, produce a fight or flight reaction in the body. Literally, when in a fight or flight reaction, the body pumps hormones through us that ready us for action. You know those chemicals are coursing through you when you start twisting and turning. The chemicals are trying to activate you so you can protect yourself. That’s because the scary thoughts and feelings are telling the body it needs to protect itself. Great when chased by a dog. Not great when wanting sleep.
When trying to sleep, we want chemicals or hormones released by our bodies that encourage relaxation. But if our minds are chomping on scary thoughts the body is incapable of those relaxation hormones.
This is where the techniques come into play. Both techniques below offer replacement thoughts that produce more comforting feelings, that then encourage the body to release more relaxing chemicals. The techniques are called The Golden View and The Compassionate Heart.
Let’s start with The Golden View exercise:
Step 1. Recognize that your mind is racing
Step 2. Imagine an ideal or Golden solution to the fearful situation your mind is stuck on
Step 3. As your mind pulls to return you to the fearful thinking and feeling, gently continue to fill in all the details of your Golden View of the future as your ideal solution unfolds.
Now a look at The Compassionate Heart exercise:
Step 1. Recognize that your mind is racing or uncomfortable
Step 2. Call to mind someone you know who’s struggling or in some kind of pain
Step 3. As you inhale, compassionately see that person, and as you exhale, send them love and trust
- Sleeplessness is often the product of a racing mind.
- If your mind races a lot during the day, it’s not likely to just stop racing when you try to sleep.
- Try to slow your mind down during the day, as a way to ready it for the same thing at bedtime.*
- Your mind slows down and you get drowsy at night on the highway because the signs and posts along the road create a step-down effect on your racing mind, whereby your attention on the road and passing markers give the mind something to train on besides your thoughts.
- Use a simple thought or process when you’re trying to fall asleep to create the step-down effect on your mind that highway signs do.
- As a mental step-down exercise, consider saying the word “love” on every inhale and the word “trust” on every exhale as you fall asleep.
- A racing mind, at any time, is a fear-based response that produces a cascade of hormones in the body whose purpose is to move us to action.
- Action is the last thing we need when trying to sleep.
- Shallow breathing often accompanies fear-based responses.
- Begin any exercise to help you sleep with deep, full breaths.
- Deep, full breaths tell the body, “It’s OK, we don’t need to take action.”
- When the body feels no need to take action, it stops releasing hormones designed to get us moving.
- When hormones intended to get us moving stop coursing through our bodies, we naturally begin to feel heavy in the bed and soon drift into sleep.
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Here’s one of the scripts offered in Journey Beyond Hardship to help you fall asleep.
If you like, after you’ve slowed your breathing as suggested above, read the following paragraph to yourself, or have someone read it to you, or record it and play it back when you’re ready to sleep. Remember to be kind with your mind if it wants to race as you read or listen:
My mind is racing to support me, but at this point I’d like to settle down and fall asleep. To help me fall asleep, I am taking deep, full breaths. And as my mind and my breath slow down, I am occupying my mind with this image: I see my electromagnetic field like a large soap bubble attached to the top of my head. With each slow inhale, I see the bubble shrinking, as if my inhale is drawing air into my body from inside the bubble.
As this air from inside the bubble is drawn down through the top of my head, it is converted into a beautiful gold light, like honey. And as I continue to breathe, this honey-like light begins to make its way into every cell of my body, bringing calm and quiet.
First, the honey-like light slowly fills my head, my neck, and my shoulders. As it fills these areas, I feel them relax. Next, the honey drains into my upper arms, then my lower arms and now my hands. And as the light reaches these areas, they relax as if each and every cell is filling with pure love.
Now the honey-like light makes its way into the cells of my upper back and chest, and as it does, I actually feel the muscles there relaxing, receiving the love of this light.
As I breathe in deeply, the bubble above my head gets smaller, and the honey-like light now drains into my middle back and my belly. It feels comforting. As this honey-light pours through me, there is a release of tension as each area is filled and relaxed.
With each deep breath, the golden light makes its way farther down my body, now pouring comfortably into my lower back, my hips, and my groin region. I am finding myself more and more quiet inside as I watch the golden light move through me.
Now the light is in my upper legs and then my knees, and the golden light is filling the cells in my legs with calm and love, and I enjoy the relaxation. And the honey-light continues to pour down into my shins and calf muscles. And now I see that the bubble above my head is nearly completely gone, as each inhale has emptied it, and the activity contained there has been converted into a golden light, like honey, now reaching my ankles and, finally, filling me completely. The sensation I’m left with is one of fullness, relaxation, and pure love.
*Journey Beyond Hardship offers several step-by-step techniques for quieting anxiety and the racing mind.
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