So you want to get to sleep?

So you want to get to sleep?

I recently received a message from one of    my  Deep Sleep participants saying that even      though she found the Yoga that we did at the    workshop relaxing , and while she still    continues to do the Yoga, it doesn’t seem to      help her to sleep any better.

And I thought ‘yep, that’s about right’

The Yoga poses that we do at the workshops are relaxing and do calm the body

But they are only an entry way into the deeper stages of what we need to do to find deep, restful sleep.      ( I have already written about  this, and about my own experience on my website)

The deeper layers of our psyches, and therefore of our bodies and our nervous systems, need to be accessed through the further practices of Embodied Awareness and the different Insight meditations that we practice on the workshops – we have to find a way to penetrate the thoughts, feelings, beliefs and emotions that are currently keeping our minds in a spin, and therefore our nervous systems racing all the while  praying for sleep to come.

The practices that I teach are a step-by-step guide – one leads to the next, taking us deeper into letting go.

It’s like we are peeling off an onion – the first layer we peel off is the physical holdings and tight, grumpy spots  and this layer is  quite amenable to letting go through the twisting, stretching and opening that occurs when we take time to do the poses.

But if we stop there we will forever feel like we are going around in circles, endlessly having to calm ourselves down by repeatedly practicing our Yoga  poses.

There is no way out of this endless mind spin except to address the mental and emotional layers also.    This is why I have a multi-layered and multi-therapy approach to the work – no one thing on it’s own will have an ongoing and effective result.

The mental and emotional layers are like the deeper layers at the core of our beings – they are our conditioned responses, our habitual reactions, our learnt behaviours – if we stay just addressing the physical layers well then we just keep on peeling off the outside of the onion over and over, never learning new ways to respond so that our nervous systems don’t get hijacked into being ‘on alert’ the whole time

So you want to get to sleep?

Do your Yoga poses until you feel the ‘surface’ thoughts beginning to calm down, then drop your attention deeper using the tools of Embodied Awareness to get to  the nitty, gritty of what’s really keeping you awake at night.

Sometimes we’re afraid to go a bit deeper, and if you’re like me, will want to shove all the uncomfortable feelings under the carpet.

But, I know when I do access the real emotion underneath , it is often such a relief to have finally met what is bugging me,  that I find myself wondering what the big fuss was all about.

Try it yourself – you may be pleasantly surprised that  the scary monsters are just emotions and thoughts that are really just allies in getting you to pay attention to what is trying to happen or make itself known to you.

I have just added an audio recording of one of my Embodied Awareness and Insight Meditations  for you to purchase on my site.

They will act as your guide to dropping below the surface thoughts and turning down the constant buzz in our minds and in our nervous systems.

Where are our feelings? Are they in a safe deposit box at Chase Manhattan Bank? Unfortunately not; they’re in the body, and it is in the body that we can experience them and through the body that we can express them. If we live in our heads all the time, denigrating everything below the neck, it’s only a matter of time before we will find ourselves in line at pharmacy with a prescription for Prozac.
Repressing feelings is a one-way ticket to depression and loneliness.

~ Gabrielle Roth ~

As sensitive human beings, we may often be asked to meet very vivid waves of feeling and sensation in our bodies and in our tender hearts. When we learn to stay with our present experience – rather than engage in habitual responses of fight, flight, freeze – and start to bring acceptance and kindness into these waves, we may discover that they are not harming us.

Slow way down. And offer a home for the sweet and fierce allies of wholeness. As you would a precious little baby who appeared on your doorstep, offer safe passage for the emissaries of integration. They have not come to hurt you, but to reveal how whole and how majestic you truly are.

Yes the waves may be intense, as they are sure to illuminate buried vulnerabilities, but just underneath the story and the narrative they dwell as simple movements of raw energy. When you allow your awareness and your warmth to surround and enter inside the special visitors of your nervous system, you unlock the secret cavern to the intimacy and the aliveness you have been so deeply longing for.

Perhaps your immediate, lived experience – in all its intensity, rawness, and naked luminosity – need not be understood, transformed, cured, fixed, or ‘let go.’ Dare to see that it need not even be ‘healed,’ but finally held.

And I thought ‘yep, that’s about right’

The Yoga poses that we do at the workshops are relaxing and do calm the body

But they are only an entry way into the deeper stages of what we need to do to find deep, restful sleep.      ( I have already written about  this, and about my own experience on my website)

The deeper layers of our psyches, and therefore of our bodies and our nervous systems, need to be accessed through the further practices of Embodied Awareness and the different Insight meditations that we practice on the workshops – we have to find a way to penetrate the thoughts, feelings, beliefs and emotions that are currently keeping our minds in a spin, and therefore our nervous systems racing all the while  praying for sleep to come.

The practices that I teach are a step-by-step guide – one leads to the next, taking us deeper into letting go.

It’s like we are peeling off an onion – the first layer we peel off is the physical holdings and tight, grumpy spots  and this layer is  quite amenable to letting go through the twisting, stretching and opening that occurs when we take time to do the poses.

But if we stop there we will forever feel like we are going around in circles, endlessly having to calm ourselves down by repeatedly practicing our Yoga  poses.

There is no way out of this endless mind spin except to address the mental and emotional layers also.    This is why I have a multi-layered and multi-therapy approach to the work – no one thing on it’s own will have an ongoing and effective result.

The mental and emotional layers are like the deeper layers at the core of our beings – they are our conditioned responses, our habitual reactions, our learnt behaviours – if we stay just addressing the physical layers well then we just keep on peeling off the outside of the onion over and over, never learning new ways to respond so that our nervous systems don’t get hijacked into being ‘on alert’ the whole time

So you want to get to sleep?

Do your Yoga poses until you feel the ‘surface’ thoughts beginning to calm down, then drop your attention deeper using the tools of Embodied Awareness to get to  the nitty, gritty of what’s really keeping you awake at night.

Sometimes we’re afraid to go a bit deeper, and if you’re like me, will want to shove all the uncomfortable feelings under the carpet.

But, I know when I do access the real emotion underneath , it is often such a relief to have finally met what is bugging me,  that I find myself wondering what the big fuss was all about.

Try it yourself – you may be pleasantly surprised that  the scary monsters are just emotions and thoughts that are really just allies in getting you to pay attention to what is trying to happen or make itself known to you.

I have just added an audio recording of one of my Embodied Awareness and Insight Meditations  for you to purchase on my site.

They will act as your guide to dropping below the surface thoughts and turning down the constant buzz in our minds and in our nervous systems.

Where are our feelings? Are they in a safe deposit box at Chase Manhattan Bank? Unfortunately not; they’re in the body, and it is in the body that we can experience them and through the body that we can express them. If we live in our heads all the time, denigrating everything below the neck, it’s only a matter of time before we will find ourselves in line at pharmacy with a prescription for Prozac.
Repressing feelings is a one-way ticket to depression and loneliness.

~ Gabrielle Roth ~

As sensitive human beings, we may often be asked to meet very vivid waves of feeling and sensation in our bodies and in our tender hearts. When we learn to stay with our present experience – rather than engage in habitual responses of fight, flight, freeze – and start to bring acceptance and kindness into these waves, we may discover that they are not harming us.

Slow way down. And offer a home for the sweet and fierce allies of wholeness. As you would a precious little baby who appeared on your doorstep, offer safe passage for the emissaries of integration. They have not come to hurt you, but to reveal how whole and how majestic you truly are.

Yes the waves may be intense, as they are sure to illuminate buried vulnerabilities, but just underneath the story and the narrative they dwell as simple movements of raw energy. When you allow your awareness and your warmth to surround and enter inside the special visitors of your nervous system, you unlock the secret cavern to the intimacy and the aliveness you have been so deeply longing for.

Perhaps your immediate, lived experience – in all its intensity, rawness, and naked luminosity – need not be understood, transformed, cured, fixed, or ‘let go.’ Dare to see that it need not even be ‘healed,’ but finally held.

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