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[Jan. 22nd, 2009|10:36 am] |
Insomnia – not just a Stephen King novel.
So here’s my (fairly ignorant) view of insomnia, based on the very few times I’ve had it. In recent years I’ve averaged about 5.5-6.0 hours sleep a night, but that was due to getting up early for work (and not an inability to pass out cold when the opportunity arose). My natural body clock appears to be based around “Sleep at 3am, wake up at 11am” - office working is not convenient for this.
So, reasons for insomnia:
1) Fear
2) Your body
That’s it.
Of them, your body is the simpler one – you’re simply too jacked up to sleep. Too much sugar, or stimulants, or your body clock is all out of synch and thinks it’s mid-afternoon. There are many reasons that your body can make it difficult for you to relax or slow down enough to get restful sleep, although to be fair most of them will be entirely your own fault.
Fear contributes to the two big causes:
3) Fear of the next day
4) Fear of sleep itself
Let’s go into these for a minute:
Fear of the next day (or just the future, or death, or anything) keeps you awake because you don’t feel safe, and your brain wants to make sure it’s done everything it can to prepare. It’s racing, because it’s saying “Did I do everything I could to reduce the risk? Is there anything else I can think of to add control and make this fear go away?” You dread the thing that’s waiting to drop on you, and sleeping until an hour or so before it hits just isn’t going to happen.
But it’s Fear of sleep that’s the hilarious one, and the only version I’ve had badly myself. This is based on fear of letting go, of being defenceless and unconscious during the night, with a hint of ‘annihilation of the personality’ and the chance you’ll never come back. Sleep is weird, man! You have to give up your hold on… well, life, really. An added bonus is the realisation that there are hours and hours before you can wake up, far too long to spend sleeping. How can you possibly give up consciousness for that length of time?
This particular reasoning is great because now you don’t even need an actual source of stress in your life in order to have weapons-grade insomnia! You can have it anytime you stop to consider how long sleep takes! Do you realise your heart has to keep beating that whole time? What if it stopped for no reason? We’ve all gotta die sometime… but what if someone broke into your house while you were asleep? Or the ceiling fell in? Or there was a fire? Do you realise you move around every 15 minutes while you’re asleep just to avoid cramp – what if you fall out of bed? And then there's all those dark hours to ponder the meaning of life and death, and our insignificance in the Universe!
How can you possibly sleep ever again?!
Luckily, I love sleep far too much to avoid it for those paltry reasons. Warm duvets, slow stretches and sweet, sweet unawareness are just an added bonus to the awesomeness that is being able to dream. Dreams are great, and a nice antidote to the disappointing way my real life doesn’t have enough giant robot battles or panting supermodels in it. (Did I ever do that LJ post on lucid dreaming in the end? Well, I will.)
There are cures. Being really goddamn tired is a good one (what is this ‘overtired’ rubbish? That just means I crash out quicker!) as is mental exercise. Here’s one for the hardcore among you:
Lie on your back with your arms by your sides. Close your eyes, take some slow breaths. Focus your attention on the big toe of your left foot. Imagine that it is dipped in warm water, and is surrounded by warm golden energy. Feel it inside and out, shining and dissolving all the tension. While keeping that there, include the next toe on that foot as well. Picture dipping them into warm water. Move on slowly to include all the toes on that foot, keeping the feeling going in each as you add it. Start on the big toe of the other foot, and do the same.
Bring the level of the golden glow up your feet slowly, like a hot bath, at whatever speed you feel you can properly hold it and also feel all the muscles on the way up. This part is easier, because now you only need to concentrate on slowly moving the line up your shins. Feel it go over the knees, and up to the thighs. If your hands are by your sides, feel it hit the fingertips as it progresses upwards and include them.
Now you’re half in this warm, gold energy. Keep it moving up the body, holding the same intensity in the toes and up your hips, back, stomach. As it reaches your head, it will feel… really fucking strange, but keep going until it rises up beyond the crown of your head. Hold it covering every part of your body for a while, then slowly let it go. The whole thing should take at least 5 minutes, and probably 10.
If any of you (who aren’t very used to this sort of thing) can move your arms or head at that point, I’ll be very impressed. What it generally does is melt every muscle in your body, and also blast your head into a state of, and I quote, “ ...Uh. ” It’s particularly good for when your mind is racing and wants to attack a problem, because it gives single targets (like the toes) to focus on and really turn up the intensity of the golden light. It also gives you a load of physical sensation to distract yourself with.
If all that is far too Yoga for you, any mental task that turns quick, chaotic thoughts into slow, big ones will work too.
Anyone on here get bad insomnia? Any idea what causes it for you? |
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