If you struggle with insomnia, you may find it useful to practice meditation for healing sleep. Mindfulness meditation is about releasing resistance and accepting what is, and when we practice this, we often experience release. You may have noticed that when you’re lying in bed unable to sleep, your tendency is to try harder to sleep and feel frustrated when you can’t get to sleep. The harder you try to get to sleep, the more elusive sleep becomes.
Breathe. Let go. Sink into a state of deep relaxation and sleep with meditation for healing sleep.
When you practice meditation for sleep, rather than striving to sleep, you let go of the striving, and often this letting go creates an ease in the mind, the body relaxes, and this leads to sleep. It’s similar to having your hands in Chinese handcuffs. The harder you try to get out, the tighter they become, but when you stop trying, they release.
How to Practice Meditation for Sleep
When we practice mindfulness meditation, we practice being aware of our present moment experience as it unfolds through sensations, feelings, and thoughts. This practice works most effectively if you have a regular mindfulness meditation practice. If you’d like a brief introduction to the practice or a refresher, you can read my posts on “What is Mindfulness?” and “How to Meditate.” When you have a regular practice, you gradually become more skillful at recognizing when you’re getting hung up in old habitual patterns of thinking and behaving (like striving to get to sleep) that are creating suffering. When you see yourself clearly, you have the freedom to change those patterns.
As you’re lying in bed feeling restless about not being able to get to sleep, as soon as you notice this pattern, try taking a step back from your experience and objectively observing what you’re doing from a non-judgmental and kind perspective. Then rather than continuing to feel frustrated about not sleeping, try shifting your attention to the breath to practice awareness of breathing meditation. Notice how the chest and belly rise with the inhale and fall with the exhale. Continue to rest your attention on the coming and going of the breath in and out of the body. Your mind will want to go back to anxious thoughts about not getting enough sleep, so when you see this happening, just be aware of it, and then bring your attention back to noticing the breath moving in and out of the body, the rise and fall of the chest and belly with the inhale and exhale.
You might also try shifting your perspective so that you view this nighttime wakefulness as an opportunity to relax and engage the rest and repair mode of your nervous system rather than becoming anxious, frustrated, or angry in response to not being able to sleep. If you try awareness of breathing meditation and are still struggling, then you can try 3-Part Breath to encourage a state of relaxation. Remember that relaxing and resting during periods of wakefulness is more healing and restorative than getting entangled in frustration about not being able to sleep. Getting entangled in frustration is a pretty sure path to staying awake.