Mindfulness and Sleep E-Book

Anna Black

• Herausgeber: CICO Books
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

If you're having trouble sleeping, mindfulness can help. Do you worry about the fact that you are awake when you want to be asleep, and how tired you will feel during the day? You are not alone – sleep problems are often triggered by stress, illness and getting older. However, practising mindfulness meditation regularly can help. We can learn to become less reactive and more accepting of being awake, which in turn reduces our anxiety around not sleeping. This may mean we drift off to sleep, but even if we are still awake, the mind is quieter. In Mindfulness and Sleep Anna Black introduces mindfulness and explains how it can help change your relationship to sleep as well as reduce stress. There are 25 practices and activities that introduce mindfulness and how to practise it. These include meditations for night- and daytime, as well as everyday activities that shine a light on our habitual patterns and behaviours and help create better habits to support the body's self-regulating sleep system. Learn how to keep a sleep diary, too, which allows you to make notes about what you discover when you pay attention to what helps and hinders you in sleeping.

Leseprobe

MINDFULNESSand SLEEP

MINDFULNESSand SLEEP

How to improve your sleep quality through practicing mindfulness

Anna Black

FOR PIP—AWAKE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD

Published in 2018 by CICO Books

An imprint of Ryland Peters & Small Ltd

20–21 Jockey’s Fields 341 E 116th St

London WC1R 4BW New York, NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text © Anna Black 2018

Design and illustration © CICO Books 2018

The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78249-560-4

eISBN: 978-1-78249-772-1

Printed in China

Editor: Rosie Fairhead

Designer: Emily Breen

Illustrator: Clare Nicholas

Commissioning editor: Kristine Pidkameny

Senior editor: Carmel Edmonds

Art director: Sally Powell

Production manager: Gordana Simakovic

Publishing manager: Penny Craig

Publisher: Cindy Richards

Please note: If you are having a sustained period of difficulty sleeping, you should always visit your physician for advice.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF THIS BOOK

CHAPTER 1

ALL ABOUT SLEEP

CHAPTER 2

INTRODUCING MINDFULNESS

CHAPTER 3

THE PRACTICES

CHAPTER 4

YOUR SLEEP DIARY

INDEX

RESOURCES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Most people will at some point experience periods when they find it difficult to sleep. It is most often triggered by a stressful event, but it can also be caused by illness, whether physical or psychological. While some illnesses can cause insomnia, sleep and the physiological functions of the body are so intertwined that many medical conditions can also be exacerbated by, or be a result of, sleep deprivation.

I was always someone who fell asleep within minutes of putting my head on the pillow. If I did wake in the night it was for so brief a time that it didn’t affect my sleep quality negatively. I would sympathize with those friends who recounted tales of troubled nights, but I had no real understanding of how debilitating broken nights and sleep deprivation can be. Then everything changed. A combination of hitting my late forties and undertaking stressful building works on my home meant that I joined the millions who have trouble sleeping. And it is millions.

When I first started experiencing problems sleeping, I became interested in what was happening. Sometimes I would struggle to fall asleep as I found myself reviewing the latest building dramas of the day, and it would take an hour or two for me to fall asleep. At other times, I fell asleep quickly but then woke up because I was too hot (the night sweats of the menopause kicking in), and once awake I found myself thinking—and quickly became caught up in a spiral of “what if” and “if only” thoughts accompanied by physical feelings of tension in my shoulders and neck, and a sick sensation in the pit of my stomach. As well as thinking about what went on during the day, I would worry about why I wasn’t asleep yet, totting up how many hours I already had slept (or not) and trying to guess how it would affect me the next day. I was now very much awake, and it would be a couple of hours before I would fall asleep again, often just before my alarm sounded. The common thread was always “thinking.” My thoughts would keep me in a state of alertness—mentally and physically—that was the opposite of the sleep state.

I began to pay attention to what happened. I noticed that if I caught myself hovering around that moment of awakening, I could sometimes lull myself back to sleep by repeating “not thinking, sleeping” to myself as a form of mantra. To catch that moment was tricky, though. I knew from my mindfulness practice how turning my attention to the body is particularly helpful when I am caught up in a cycle of negative thinking. Although there is a meditation practice called the Body Scan, which focuses the attention on the body (see page 68), I didn’t want to get into the habit of doing that in order to fall asleep, so I started listening to a guided Yoga Nidra practice. Yoga Nidra is a meditation that is designed to promote deep rest and relaxation, and it became my go-to practice. I would do it when I went to bed and also in the middle of the night when I woke up. Sometimes I fell asleep during it, but at other times I was still awake at the end and that was okay. Even if I was awake I felt calm, relaxed, and rested. Realizing that I could achieve this despite being awake stopped me feeling the pressure to fall asleep. My whole relationship with sleeping shifted and I found myself welcoming those awake times as an opportunity to practice. I probably wasn’t getting any more sleep during this time, but the lack didn’t feel so depleting, so overall I felt as if I was getting enough good-quality rest. What I was experiencing is supported by the research into mindfulness and sleep (see page 53).

What is Yoga Nidra?

Yoga Nidra is a traditional yoga practice designed to induce relaxation—physically, mentally, and emotionally. It has been described as “deep relaxation with inner awareness” (Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Yoga Nidra, 1976). Yoga Nidra is a systematic practice, usually between 20 and 50 minutes long, that involves first setting an intention or resolve before scanning through different body parts, followed by awareness of breath, feelings, and emotions, and a visualization. In order to relax fully, it is best done following guided instructions. As with the Body Scan on page 68, the intention is not to fall asleep. Many versions are available online, in apps, and as CDs, and I recommend exploring and finding one you like in terms of duration, content, and voice.

As well as noticing what happened during the night, I also started paying attention to what I was doing in the hours before bedtime. I noticed that those times I had a glass of red wine or two were nights that I really suffered. I noticed that there was an optimum time when I felt sleepy, and if I passed that because I wanted to watch “just another episode” of the latest box set, it would disrupt my body clock and I would be wide awake for a couple of hours more, even if I didn’t want to be. I also noticed that particular activities—for example, becoming engrossed in drawing—would make me hyper-alert and energized, and that would affect my ability to fall asleep. These are just some examples of what I noticed about my habits. I stopped drinking red wine and also took steps to help with the menopause symptoms, benefiting my sleep quality. Of course, sometimes I do still stay up past my “bedtime,” but I appreciate that there will be likely consequences, and so it becomes a conscious choice.

I do still suffer from insomnia from time to time, but I’ve got to know it better. I know that it’s helpful to do certain things and avoid others as a way of increasing my chances of a good night’s sleep. If I have trouble falling asleep or if I wake up, I avoid fighting it and instead see it as an opportunity to practice my mindfulness meditations.

I hope this book will awaken a sense of curiosity about your own relationship to sleep, and encourage you to explore another way of being awake … and asleep.

Anna Black

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF THIS BOOK

This book is not going to fix your sleeping problems, but it will help you understand and manage them. You may have had trouble sleeping for quite a while, or it may be something new for you. Reading this book will not make your insomnia disappear by itself, but you will discover how practicing mindfulness meditation helps to reduce overall stress and changes our perception of difficulties in our life, as well as activating the body’s internal calming response in times of stress. When we feel better able to handle the ups and downs of life, our sleep is more likely to improve.

Sleep is complex; many factors influence it, both within and out of our control, and you can learn more about this in Chapter 1. Then, in Chapter 2, you can gain an understanding of mindfulness, and why trying to meditate to go to sleep is not particularly helpful, because it introduces an attitude of striving for a particular outcome—in this case, falling asleep. We can’t force ourselves to go to sleep—sleep comes over us without us making any effort. Rather than drawing on a bag of techniques to help us “in the moment,” it is more helpful to explore a different way of being throughout our life—awake as well as asleep. Dr. Jason Ong, the developer of MBTI (Mindfulness-based Therapy for Insomnia; see page 55), says that insomnia is a 24-hour condition owing to the far-reaching impact it has on us. It therefore makes sense that our way of approaching it should be a 24-hour one, and cultivating mindfulness meditation is one way to do exactly that. The practices in Chapter 3 are designed to help you do this—you can bring them into everyday life as well as drawing upon them at times when you cannot sleep.

Chapter 4 teaches you how to create a sleep diary to observe what is actually happening when you have trouble sleeping. It encourages an attitude of curiosity, which is a key feature of mindfulness meditation.

Getting help

Whether trouble sleeping is something new or a chronic problem, your first step should be to see your physician. As well as making sure that there is no underlying medical problem, he or she may prescribe sleeping tablets. These can be helpful, but it is important to be aware that they are highly addictive and so they should always be a short-term solution only.

CHAPTER 1

ALL ABOUT SLEEP

This chapter gives you some background on why sleep is so important for physiological as well as performance reasons, and how sleep deprivation can seriously affect our mental and physical health and well-being. I encourage you to read this lightly. Adding worries about the effects of sleep deprivation to your repertoire is not helpful and potentially counterproductive.

The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate why we should prioritize sleep, to understand more about the body’s amazing capacity to self-regulate and find its own rhythms, and to learn new ways that we can support rather than sabotage that.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SLEEP

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE SLEEP?

HOW SLEEP IS REGULATED

WHAT STOPS US FROM SLEEPING?

THE EFFECT OF TECHNOLOGY

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DON’T GET ENOUGH SLEEP?

HOW MUCH SLEEP DO WE NEED?

GOOD SLEEP HYGIENE

THE IMPORTANCE OF SLEEP

We spend about a quarter to a third of our lives asleep, but just because we are not awake doesn’t mean that time is unproductive. The physiological changes that occur when we are asleep determine how well we feel and perform when we are awake.

It’s often said that diet, exercise, and sleep are the three foundational pillars to good health and well-being. While many of us understand the importance of eating a healthy, balanced diet and of keeping fit, we are perhaps less familiar with how important sleep is.

We’ve all experienced the effects of too little sleep: what it means for our mood, focus, and concentration, and also how it affects us physically—we have less energy, and feel tired and groggy. However, the importance of sleep and the consequences of being sleep-deprived go beyond this.

Sleep influences all the major systems in our body, and those systems in turn influence our sleep. Insufficient sleep can disrupt bodily functions that affect how we think and behave, and how we think and behave can disrupt our sleep. Therefore problems with sleeping can quickly become a vicious cycle.

At its simplest, sleep plays an important role in:

• Creating a healthy immune system

• Repairing muscle

• Consolidating learning and memory

• Regulating growth and appetite through the release of certain hormones

• Regulating mood and emotion.