I wanted my sleep back
Sleep was the first thing I wanted to get back, but I knew mindfulness could do more for me.
I have been trying to use mindfulness for a year or more. Even before that I was using one of the tricks of mindfulness — labeling each aberrant thought, and watching it go away. That trick helped me turn off the rampaging thought stream when I was trying to get to sleep.
I have had sleep problems since I was a kid, although I didn’t see it as a problem then.
I remember lying down in the back seat of the car while Mom and Dad chatted on the 100 mile ride home from Grandma’s. My brothers were all asleep. I was listening, not so much to the words, as to the rhythm of the conversation, the wind of the car passing in the night, and the soothing purr of the motor. And that didn’t put me to sleep!
I was listening, not so much to the words, as to the rhythm of the conversation, the wind of the car passing in the night, and the soothing purr of the motor.
The car sounds changed as Dad sped up and switched lanes to pass. The purr sang higher and louder as the car sped up. Then Dad said something louder and sharper, the motor’s purr became a roar, and the car surged forward. Next the lurch as Dad switched back to the right lane. And then the roar of a semi truck smashing the air out of the way as it went by in the other direction.
I mentioned this to Mom and Dad when we got home. Mom said, “Oh, you couldn’t remember that. All you kids were asleep.” Ah, no, I wasn’t asleep. And after that excitement, I stayed awake all the way home.
As a new parent, I was the one instantly awake when the baby cried.
As a new parent, I was the one instantly awake when the baby cried. I got to change the diaper while my wife was in the washroom before she breastfed the baby! Yay! But that early bonding wore off before they hit the teen years.
So, yeah, that’s just to establish some of my early bad sleeping experience. The boring part of feeling like I was awake all night, that so many people get? Yeah. I’ve got that too.
Today, sleeplessness for me means two things: not getting to sleep, and then not getting back to sleep when I inevitably wake up after about 4 hours.
I have been working on this, with: daily light exercise, not eating after 9pm or so, and breathing exercises. It helps, a lot.
The surprising thing that helped? The step tracker. I use a cheap electronic step tracker that works on motion sensing. It also recognizes when I am sleeping.
The step tracker has given me insight into my real sleep patterns that I would not have gotten without it.
How does the step tracker help? It confirms when I am asleep. For example, sometimes I use breathing exercises, and then suddenly realize my mind has been off on some other thought path for a minute or so, maybe more, and I’m not sure how it moved from the exercise to the new thinking pattern. That generally lines up with one of those time periods on the tracker when I was asleep for a half hour or more.
This means that sometimes when I thought I had no sleep, I was apparently dosing off, sometimes even into deep sleep, and waking up without realizing it. So the step tracker has given me insight into my real sleep patterns that I would not have gotten without it.
A year or so ago, in 2018, I started trying to practice mindfulness, as an alternative to breathing exercises, because I wanted my sleep back. Yes, I understood it would help with my general ability to focus. I was also interested in the spiritual side of mindfulness, the ability to connect with the God/Goddess within. But better sleep was the first reason why I started practicing mindfulness.
So I learned about mindfulness. I read about mindfulness from some blogs. I got a copy of Ram Dass’s “Be Here Now”. It didn’t focus on what I wanted to learn. On a friend’s recommendation, I got a copy of Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”. I have been slowly reading through this book, meditating, practicing being mindful, reading some more each day or every few days. I have been through the whole book once and about half way through the second time. I am getting better at it. I am also getting better sleep, although not longer sleep.
Mindfulness started as a trick to get more sleep. Today mindfulness has become my main spiritual practice. I have tried before to make my spiritual practice part of my work life. With mindfulness, I am actually achieving that.
Your experience of mindfulness will almost certainly be different from mine. I encourage you to try it anyway.
