Meditation against insomnia: why it works
Meditating means practicing a mental and physical presence for a specific period of time. The purpose of meditation is to make us aware of our thoughts at all times, not only during the minutes when we close our eyes and dedicate ourselves to this practice.
Meditating can be a tool of spiritual elevation, but mindfulness, as meditation is applied to wellbeing and not, or not only, to spirituality, brings many advantages both mental and physical.
Meditation is taught to people of all ages to bring greater general well-being . With meditation it is possible to improve one's psychophysical conditions with broad-spectrum benefits. Among these there is also an improvement in the quality of rest and sleep, as well as a resolution of insomnia.
Meditating is easy . You can meditate at any time, and any daily action can be an object and a means of meditation. Meditating involves a relaxed and punctual concentration on what is done, on what passes within us, on a physical and mental level, and on what happens outside, distancing ourselves from it.
Ok, but how do you do it? The kind attention that is devoted to actions and thoughts allows not to be dragged away in an avalanche of unwanted reactions. Every emotional state arises from a thought, most often unconscious, that describes what we are experiencing and gives it a very specific connotation for ourselves: pleasant or unpleasant or neutral.
Thoughts are very fast and mechanical: they occur in our head starting from conditioning and beliefs, and are not perceived by our attention. The thought is followed by emotion, and the emotion is followed by the body's reaction . It may also happen that a physical sensation arises first: this is always followed by a thought to interpret it, and the thought-emotion-reaction circle is nourished.
When the nocturnal awakening, for whatever reason, is accompanied by this incessant and unconscious thinking, here it becomes impossible to go back to sleep, the body reacts to the thought, the emotion amplifies it, and so we find ourselves victims of insomnia.
Meditating has the following benefits on insomnia :
> Making thoughts become detached observers allows us to identify them at their birth, distancing ourselves from them: thoughts are not reality, but only what we tell ourselves about it.
Observing thoughts helps to recognize them and not allow them to trigger negative emotions. The simple observation, without the tension of having to change anything, already allows a considerable change in the state of restlessness in which we find ourselves.
> By promoting physical relaxation, meditation helps release tensions that are concentrated in different parts of the body. You can apply the meditation called body scan, which reviews every part of the body, identifying where there are particular blocks or discomforts. Lying meditation can naturally lead to sleep.
Meditation against insomnia: how to do it
Meditating every day, even for a few minutes, and even in the periods in which you are feeling well, means acquiring a familiarity, in observing your own mechanisms and thoughts, which can then be implemented in moments of greater tension or discomfort. It is therefore important not to get discouraged and practice meditation every day.
It takes 5 minutes, two or three times a day, to make major changes. The goal is not to stop thoughts: the mind thinks, incessantly, constantly, it is in its nature to continually produce thoughts and associations of thoughts.
The goal is instead to observe the thoughts that come and go through the mind, without letting oneself be dragged and without clinging to them. Thoughts come and go . It is enough to observe them, without trying to change them, without judging them.
A particular meditation, called body scan, allows you to manage insomnia, even when you are a victim. You lie down in a comfortable position, head and neck and legs aligned, arms stretched along the body, slightly offset from the trunk, with the palms of the hands facing upwards.
Attention is paid to the breath that enters and exits, the movement of the rib cage and the diaphragm, at its rhythm, and is left to happen spontaneously, without forcing it. Breath is the anchor that will keep us steady whenever we wander : we will return to the breath every time we notice we are distracted.
The body is then scanned, starting with the fingers of one of the two feet. We become aware of physical sensations, of possible tensions, of the contact of the skin with the surface we are lying on, of the weight of our clothes, of the external temperature. Climb along the whole leg, up to the groin.
We then move on to the other foot and the other leg. From the groin, then we move on to the abdomen and the trunk, the hips and the back. Once arrived at the chest the same loving and curious attention is applied to the arms: it starts with the fingers of the hand, the forearm, the arm and then the shoulder. Once you have completed one arm, you move on to the other. Attention is finally paid to the neck and face, to the head.
Thoughts will come, tensions will be discovered in various parts of the body, sometimes even the discomfort of a section: when we realize we have wandered we return to the breath and then resume the scan from where we remember.
Very often we fall asleep before completing the meditation, which can last from 30 minutes up to 60. But if we cannot get to sleep immediately, we remain serene, we observe what we are saying about what we are living, with curiosity and kindness, and we continue to breathe without resisting: badly we will have meditated all night long and we will have practiced . The next time will be better.
Because it works the meditation needs, in fact, to be practiced regularly: to meditate only when you do not sleep is of little use, because it is precisely in moments of minor discomfort that one meditates better and realizes how it can be useful and pleasant to meditate.
