The Best Day Follows the Best Night

Years back, I was travelling from Tallinn to Vilnius by bus. Next to me across the aisle, Gypsies were sitting – two women and about an 8-year-old girl. They were chattering in their Gipsy language until it was dark outside, and then suddenly, they decided to fall asleep. That’s how it appeared to me – they decided that now it was time to sleep, and nothing could disturb their sweet dreams.

I also got ready to sleep, but it was more like dozing off because I woke up every time the bus stopped or took a wider turn in a curve. Every time I peeked at my neighbors and was assured – they were still sleeping.

Tired from the nighttime bus ride, with envy I watched how the Gypsies opened their eyes just half an hour before arriving at Vilnius and were as fresh as daisies. When I sometimes can’t sleep at night, I remember those women and wish to be a carefree Gypsy who can sleep when they decide it’s time to sleep.

SLEEP AND BRAIN FUNCTIONING

If you want to sleep, a part of the brain needs to be switched off. The rhythmic activity of the brain has been analyzed using EEG (electroencephalography), and it has been determined that our brain works on five different frequency levels: beta, alfa, theta, delta, and gamma rhythm, which has just been recently registered by researchers.

When a person lives their daily life and is in their regular awareness state, the brain functions mainly in a fast, higher frequency beta rhythm. When a person falls asleep, the brain functioning slows down and the proportion of slower brain rhythms increases. In deep sleep, the delta rhythm is the most active, and with dreaming, the theta and delta rhythm are activated.

It’s important to know that brain rhythms always reflect the current status of a person, both mental as well as physical. The more tense, worried, anxious, or fearful a person is, meaning the more negative stress they have, the faster their brain rhythms; the more relaxed, happier, worriless, freer, the slower their brain rhythms.

Good sleep depends on what rhythms are dominating in the brain and how well a person can manage their relaxation-tension status. So, the mathematics of sleep is simple – get your brain rhythms slower and you sleep peacefully like a happy baby.

If you want to rest well at night, you need to learn to do two things:
1. Relax your body.
2. Relax your mind and calm your anxious thoughts.
Generally, I’ve been blessed with good sleep, but still there are nights when I don’t sleep well, although there’s no snoring neighbor or loud party next door. What to do when I want to rest, but my own condition won’t let me? A lot of people have two kinds of sleeping problems, and based on the problem, the solutions are different:

1. I CAN’T FALL ASLEEP

When I usually fall asleep in five minutes, there are nights when I toss and turn for an hour or even longer. That happens when I’m busy writing late in the evening, developing a creative idea and my thoughts keep running in my head for a long time, and I need to calm my brain down to fall asleep. What has helped me? A warm body and warm feet. I do a quick foot bath, put on warm woolen socks, and pull on an extra blanket that’s warm and heavy. But there are other effective tricks to relax your mind and body:

• Gradually relaxing your body using breathing. With anxious thoughts the body is tense and vice versa – when you relax your body, your thoughts calm down. With every exhale, relax your body even more and more. The strategic areas that easily tense up are shoulders, the neck, stomach, and extremities. These need extra attention.
• Heart-focused breathing. Focus on your heart, breathe slowly while imagining that you’re breathing through your heart. When your attention is on your body, there’s no space for anxious thoughts in your head. Here, you need to be consistent – when your attention drifts away from breathing, bring it back to breathing. To give some activity to your brain to calm down, you can count numbers while breathing. As you inhale, slowly count to five, and then to five when you exhale. Slow down even more and count to seven for example.
• Relaxing your tongue. This is an amazing relaxation technique. The tongue and thinking are inseparable – when we think, our tongue does micro moves just like when we’re talking. When you relax your tongue completely and remain relaxed, you can’t think. This needs some practice.

I’ve had clients in my therapy practice who haven’t been able to fall asleep for months and even years. Their brain doesn’t shut down because the general stress level is very high. These are people who tend to worry too much, are perfectionists, whose inner critic wants to do everything they’ve done even better. These are people who want to achieve a lot and are never satisfied with the result, who want to control everyone and everybody.

Warm socks won’t help them.

They need a different mindset. Scarlett O’Hara from “Gone with the Wind” says her golden words, “I’ll think about it tomorrow,” every time life gets hard.

A good exercise is “Agreeing with reality”.

If you can’t sleep then tell yourself “Things are as they are.”

There are things that I can’t change right now. Here, tonight, I can’t change them. It’s wise to agree with the reality.

Agreeing doesn’t mean giving up, it doesn’t mean quitting; it means accepting the reality. Life is as it is at the moment. Fighting all the time is strenuous and tiring. I’m resting now. Tomorrow is a new day with new chances. Here and now, I agree with reality. I’m going to stop fighting and tell life, “YES! IT IS WHAT IT IS!”

The effect of this exercise might not be long-term because the lack of trust is the problem. You need to increase trust towards life and yourself, then the need to control everything decreases. But that needs more and deeper work that might also require help from a therapist.

2. I WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT OR EARLY IN THE MORNING AND CAN’T SLEEP ALTHOUGH I COULD SLEEP FOR A FEW MORE HOURS

This happens when there’s a period in my life that causes stress – my workload is too high and there’s little time to sleep, there’s an unsolved problem, etc. In that case, the following simple techniques might help:

• If I don’t drink too many liquids in the evening, then my physiological needs won’t get me out of bed, and I can go back to sleep. A good trick is to continue watching your dream. You just need to remember one last image of your dream to go back into it.
• I put on my headphones and listen to a guided meditation that helps me relax. I used to listen to Holosync CDs, now the albums of Salasõna are helpful.
• I use the time to fantasize about a positive solution to my problem.
• I get up and read or start writing. There’s no point in tossing and turning in bed while angry at myself and the world.

There are those among my clients for whom waking up early in the morning is a daily torturing reality. When the general inner tension is too high, the body is in a constant state of disturbance. When the body has had the chance to recover from the worst tiredness, you lose sleep. As soon as you wake up, the brain starts to spin anxious thoughts. These people have no use of the techniques described in the previous paragraph; to get a good night’s sleep, something must be done during the day already.

THERE ARE TWO THINGS THAT HELP:

• Exercise, move, do some heavy lifting. The body needs help – the adrenaline that has accumulated due to a state of disturbance needs to be used up. Negative emotions need to be taken out. Stress is always accompanied by fear and anxiety. It’s possible that a therapist is needed who can help to release emotions.
• Meditate and learn to guide your mind. You can stop your train of thoughts at will and by focusing. Our brain is a device that needs tuning; we ourselves can influence our brainwaves.

Ken Wilber, who has been meditating for several decades, knows how to manage his brain so well that he can willingly shut down all his brainwaves. That’s an extraordinary sight and you can read the comments about it from here.
I never stop wondering about how humanity has come so far in the development of civilization – conquered the cosmos and forced deep into the cell and subatomic level, but it still can’t handle the brain.

It’s time to tell your body and mind that it’s time to sleep!

The “Päeva lõpuks” guided meditation is good for relaxing your body and mind. This journey of the mind helps you to look back on your day with gratitude and prepare for a night’s rest with a calm mind.
Author: Marina Eberth

Read the original article.