Many of us find sleep elusive! We either fall asleep quickly only to wake anything from one to three hours later finding it impossible to fall asleep again, or lay awake for several hours before finally falling into an exhausted sleep. Any of us who live too much in our heads, finding it difficult to switch our busy minds off, fall all too easily into this pattern! However, insomnia can affect any of us whether we’re over brain active or not. There is a remedy from energy medicine that’s worth trying for anyone who finds it difficult to sleep.
On the whole, in my blogs, I try to retain a link with science. This is difficult in that complementary medicine is frequently criticised for having no scientific backing. The primary reason for this is lack of funding: professional associations simply cannot raise the funds required although a significant number of small studies provide sufficient encouragement to justify larger studies being carried out when funding can be found.
I mention this only as a prelude to commenting that there is some science supporting at least part of what I’m about to describe as an aid to better quality sleep. For the rest, I suggest trying it. It absolutely causes no harm!
The energy medicine comment I made earlier relates to the heart energy centre. The scientific element is that it has been shown that the heart generates the largest electrical and magnetic field in the body. All of our organs generate their own fields but only the heart generates sufficiently strong frequencies to entrain all of the other organs in the body including the brain. By this I mean that they fall into the same rhythm. Entrainment, which has been demonstrated scientifically, is the basis of the energy medicine approach to improving the quality of sleep.
Moving away from science but into realms familiar in other disciplines, the heart centre – by which I mean the heart energy centre – is in the centre of our chests on the line of our nipples. What we need to do, to quieten busy minds, is first of all to focus on how our chests feel. The chances are that we’ll discover we hardly seem to be breathing at all and that our chests feel tense with the events of the day and/or anxiety. So start with breathing rhythmically (but not heavily or intensely) to help relax this chest tension and then breathe into our heart centre.
What do I mean by this? If we start with breathing, what I have in mind is different from the shallow chest centred breathing that many of us use in our everyday lives. I mean a deeper breath that causes our abdomens (guts) to swell on the in-breath and, more importantly, is felt in our low back muscles. Breath like this a few times envisaging that you’re breathing into your heart centre. It helps to quieten your mind if you extend your heart centre to include the whole of the lower part of your body including your hips but not your legs. This needs practice and shouldn’t be over-done in the early stages. It’s first purpose is to help us become more aware of what living in our bodies means and being comfortable about doing so; and then moving on to reconnecting with that quieter part of ourselves that we find in our heart centres. It’s here, too, that we’ll find a link with the essence of our belief system whether it’s God, Source or Universe related.
It also helps if you can visualise a link between your feet and the core of the earth – as though you’ve grown roots running from your feet into the Earth’s core, imagining that the Earth’s energy is running up through your body into your heart centre; and then build another link with the Cosmos through your head again drawing down the energy to mingle with the Earth’s energy in your heart centre. Keep breathing in the way I’ve described but without effort. Over time, it will feel more natural, as will the increasingly restful, peaceful and positive feeling you’ll come to associate as meaning you’re more in your heart centre than you are in your brain.
As you reconnect with your heart centre, you can reduce the emphasis on breathing and simply allow yourself to experience and enjoy that quieter part of yourself. If sleeplessness is a major problem for you, it helps to think ‘sleep’ a handful of times as you relax into that quietness. It’s in this quieter but more positive mode that you’ll not only find it easier to sleep but also deal with the worries that lead to sleeplessness in the first place.
David.