“Though science has been slow to acknowledge it, humans are always to some degree both awake and asleep,” he says. When you’re struggling with insomnia, Naiman says, it’s important to understand something that the spiritual traditions teach-that waking and sleeping (as well as dreaming) are natural states of consciousness that coexist in the mind at all times. Add a couple of hundred years, a lot of electricity, artificial light, and technology, and here we are: overstimulated, overworked, and vastly underslept. That is, as something you could turn on and off with the flick of a switch. We started treating our bodies like machines.” “Suddenly, people were working 12- or 14-hour days, and machines were the new model. So what happened? “The Industrial Revolution changed everything,” he explains. I think of the yin-yang symbol: There was a little bit of light in the dark, and dark in the light.” “Conversely, people also regularly napped in the middle of the day. “If you look at all of the documentation on sleep recorded from 1500 to 1830, you find that people typically did wake in the middle of the night-they had a little ‘night watch’ and used that time to pray, or meditate, or talk quietly, and then they went back to sleep,” Naiman says. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, night waking was considered normal, explains Rubin Naiman, PhD, a clinical psychologist and sleep therapist who draws on spiritual teachings from yoga and other traditions in his sleep retreats and audio programs including The Yoga of Sleep. We think our job at night is to black out.īut in fact, this is a relatively new way of thinking about sleep. Perhaps this perception explains why so many of us are willing to reach for a sleeping pill. Like most Westerners, I tend to think of “awake” and “asleep” as polar opposites, and that you can have one only at the expense of the other. My first lesson was about the nature of sleep. And so I reached out to teachers and sleep experts who could offer insights, tools, and practices to help me get to the source of my problems, and, hopefully, to find a solution. I needed to look deeper into yoga’s teachings, beyond relaxation practices, and find help facing this crazy insomnia monster instead of running away from it. I could push away sleeplessness all I wanted, but here it still would be. Recently, after three especially difficult sleepless nights, I realized that I couldn’t overpower my hyperalert and anxious state, or pound my mind into sleep through force of will. That’s hardly the sort of peaceful attitude that promotes sleep, which is probably why, in spite of all of the medications, herbal remedies, sleep-hygiene tips, and aromatherapy I tried, I never found a strategy that really worked. I even brought that attitude to my yoga practice, expecting it to work like a magic weapon to knock me unconscious. I was warlike in my efforts to win the battle. I always treated it like an unwanted houseguest, greeting it with anxiety and open hostility. Wakefulness has been knocking on my door since my early teens, usually during times of stress and strain. It’s enough to keep you up at night! I know because I’ve been there-for like, the last 30 years. Regular sleep deficits have been associated with high blood pressure, type II diabetes, heart disease, depression, cancer, obesity, and even increased risk of death. These medications can have side effects, like any drug, and their effectiveness is questionable at best, but we’re willing to stomach them because not sleeping is more harmful than simply feeling lousy the next day. Some 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from insomnia, according to the latest count by the Centers for Disease Control, and the prevalence of sleep medication bears them out: Last year, about 60 million prescriptions were written for sleep aids. If you’ve struggled with sleeplessness, you’re in good company. You’re suffering from insomnia, and peace of mind is beyond your grasp-and so, at least for the moment, are all of the mind-body-spirit benefits that sleep confers. If you’re thinking about it when you’d rather be dreaming, there’s a good chance you don’t. Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!
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