A couple of people mentioned techniques that had been introduced previously that helped them get to sleep so lets review those.
The first application was one that I had used myself when having some difficulty falling asleep after waking up in the middle of the night. I was restless and somewhat uncomfortable. I usually advise people not to toss and turn in bed, but rather to get up out of bed and do something soothing that preferably does not involve turning on a light, TV, or computer. However on this occasion I did not feel well and did not want to get out of bed. The usual thoughts were running through my mind, thoughts like "I need to get to sleep," "it's going to be brutal tomorrow if I don't get to sleep tonight," and other thoughts like that. Instead of paying attention to the thoughts and arguing with them or getting stressed out by them, I shifted my awareness to physical sensations. I then focused my attention on any sensations of warmth and comfort that I could find. While there were certainly other sensations that were not comfortable, I was able to find enough sensations of warmth and comfort to keep my attention focused on those. As I did that I felt the sensations of warmth and comfort increasing or maybe I was simply getting absorbed in them and other sensations were fading away. In any case I kept feeling warmer and more comfortable until I woke up in the morning feeling rested.
This is an application of meditation in the following way. In meditation we train our mind to become conscious of various fields of awareness. In this case I deliberately became more conscious of physical sensations and deliberately less conscious of thoughts. My field of awareness was more my physical body and less my thinking mind.
In meditation we also train our mind to apply attention by picking a center of attention and varying the range of attention around the center. In this case the center of my attention was sensations of warmth and comfort and I focused on those, reducing the breadth of my attention to those sensations. I did not try to fight off other sensations or fight off thoughts because that would have shifted my attention to sensations and thoughts that would not have helped me get to sleep. Instead I simply focused more and more on sensations of warmth and comfort. I figured that even if I didn't fall asleep I would at least have a long period of resting warm and comfortably and that was better than tossing and turning. As it turned out I fell asleep fairly quickly.
Sometimes thoughts are too intense to shift awareness and attention from them. Two techniques for dealing with such thoughts are as follows. The first is to be used for thoughts that are creative or intelligent or contain important new ideas. If such thoughts are keeping you awake in the middle of the night then write them down with the intention of reviewing them when you wake up. Then do something to relax your body and go back to bed.
The second technique is to be used for ruminating thoughts that are not wise or creative but rather associated with distressing emotions such as anger, bitterness, or sadness. In this case allow the thoughts to flow out of your mind and onto paper writing them down in a stream of consciousness manner. Your intention in this technique is to purge the thoughts onto paper with the plan of throwing them away without looking at them. This is a cathartic technique and rereading the material you write would simply be like re-ingesting the toxic emotions that you have purged. As you write do not worry about grammar or punctuation or spelling. Just allow the pen to move. After you feel like you have purged the repetitive thoughts from your head then do something that is physically soothing and go back to bed. Remember to destroy the material you wrote.
A couple of weeks ago we went over a number of techniques which involved bringing attention to the breath along with either thoughts or imagined experiences. For the last technique tonight I would like to go over another breathing technique, this time maintaining the field of awareness mostly on the physical experience of breathing but extending the range of attention to include the whole body.
Start by bringing attention to the physical sensations of breathing wherever you feel them most easily. Then extend the range of your attention to other sensations of breathing which are less easily felt. Continue to become more and more aware of subtle sensations associated with breathing that are occurring elsewhere in your body. Extend the range of your attention to include your whole physical body, feeling for sensations associated with breathing all the way out to the tips of the toes, the tips of fingers, and the top of the head. If you wonder whether you are imagining these sensations then notice that wondering is a thinking process and bring your awareness back to your physical body and place attention on the sensations associated with breathing.
There is no need to try and imagine or force certain types of sensations to occur. Simply be aware of physical sensations and pay attention to those physical sensations associated with breathing, feeling especially for sensations in parts of the body which are not usually associated with the breathing process. If you're having any difficulty with the technique then simply focus your attention more on sensations associated with breathing that you can feel easily.
With practice we can feel as if our breath is flowing through our whole body. If we add a thought or imagined experience to the breath, like we did two weeks ago, then this technique helps us experience the thought or imagined experience more extensively throughout our whole body.
The first application was one that I had used myself when having some difficulty falling asleep after waking up in the middle of the night. I was restless and somewhat uncomfortable. I usually advise people not to toss and turn in bed, but rather to get up out of bed and do something soothing that preferably does not involve turning on a light, TV, or computer. However on this occasion I did not feel well and did not want to get out of bed. The usual thoughts were running through my mind, thoughts like "I need to get to sleep," "it's going to be brutal tomorrow if I don't get to sleep tonight," and other thoughts like that. Instead of paying attention to the thoughts and arguing with them or getting stressed out by them, I shifted my awareness to physical sensations. I then focused my attention on any sensations of warmth and comfort that I could find. While there were certainly other sensations that were not comfortable, I was able to find enough sensations of warmth and comfort to keep my attention focused on those. As I did that I felt the sensations of warmth and comfort increasing or maybe I was simply getting absorbed in them and other sensations were fading away. In any case I kept feeling warmer and more comfortable until I woke up in the morning feeling rested.
This is an application of meditation in the following way. In meditation we train our mind to become conscious of various fields of awareness. In this case I deliberately became more conscious of physical sensations and deliberately less conscious of thoughts. My field of awareness was more my physical body and less my thinking mind.
In meditation we also train our mind to apply attention by picking a center of attention and varying the range of attention around the center. In this case the center of my attention was sensations of warmth and comfort and I focused on those, reducing the breadth of my attention to those sensations. I did not try to fight off other sensations or fight off thoughts because that would have shifted my attention to sensations and thoughts that would not have helped me get to sleep. Instead I simply focused more and more on sensations of warmth and comfort. I figured that even if I didn't fall asleep I would at least have a long period of resting warm and comfortably and that was better than tossing and turning. As it turned out I fell asleep fairly quickly.
Sometimes thoughts are too intense to shift awareness and attention from them. Two techniques for dealing with such thoughts are as follows. The first is to be used for thoughts that are creative or intelligent or contain important new ideas. If such thoughts are keeping you awake in the middle of the night then write them down with the intention of reviewing them when you wake up. Then do something to relax your body and go back to bed.
The second technique is to be used for ruminating thoughts that are not wise or creative but rather associated with distressing emotions such as anger, bitterness, or sadness. In this case allow the thoughts to flow out of your mind and onto paper writing them down in a stream of consciousness manner. Your intention in this technique is to purge the thoughts onto paper with the plan of throwing them away without looking at them. This is a cathartic technique and rereading the material you write would simply be like re-ingesting the toxic emotions that you have purged. As you write do not worry about grammar or punctuation or spelling. Just allow the pen to move. After you feel like you have purged the repetitive thoughts from your head then do something that is physically soothing and go back to bed. Remember to destroy the material you wrote.
A couple of weeks ago we went over a number of techniques which involved bringing attention to the breath along with either thoughts or imagined experiences. For the last technique tonight I would like to go over another breathing technique, this time maintaining the field of awareness mostly on the physical experience of breathing but extending the range of attention to include the whole body.
Start by bringing attention to the physical sensations of breathing wherever you feel them most easily. Then extend the range of your attention to other sensations of breathing which are less easily felt. Continue to become more and more aware of subtle sensations associated with breathing that are occurring elsewhere in your body. Extend the range of your attention to include your whole physical body, feeling for sensations associated with breathing all the way out to the tips of the toes, the tips of fingers, and the top of the head. If you wonder whether you are imagining these sensations then notice that wondering is a thinking process and bring your awareness back to your physical body and place attention on the sensations associated with breathing.
There is no need to try and imagine or force certain types of sensations to occur. Simply be aware of physical sensations and pay attention to those physical sensations associated with breathing, feeling especially for sensations in parts of the body which are not usually associated with the breathing process. If you're having any difficulty with the technique then simply focus your attention more on sensations associated with breathing that you can feel easily.
With practice we can feel as if our breath is flowing through our whole body. If we add a thought or imagined experience to the breath, like we did two weeks ago, then this technique helps us experience the thought or imagined experience more extensively throughout our whole body.
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