[boli]

I keep having this belief that I will self-sabotage my sleep. Anybody knows how I can defeat that?

[Chee2308]

How do you self-sabotage your sleep?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 1 months ago by Chee2308.

[boli]

Well when I meditate to relax and release negative pent up emotions my mind brings up this thought “I won’t sleep after this”. There is fear behind that and it’s attached to the outcome. I hate it, I’m tired of it.

[Chee2308]

Well why do you meditate? Is it only to sleep better or because you truly enjoy it? If it’s solely to sleep better, how does meditation help in that sense? If you meditate but don’t really enjoy it, that’s just torture. Might as well do anything else that you truly enjoy which really helps to get sleep off your mind for a bit. Then you have a better chance of practicing real mindfulness, where you are wholly engaged at the task at hand and can’t think of anything else including sleep. Of course sleep thoughts will always creep back and that’s okay (always allow this to happen), then gently refocus your attention back on the task. Ultimately, you want to be at a place where you enjoy what you are doing and truly live the life you want. Sleep doesn’t need any kind of assistance or intervention from you at all. It just happens when you’ve been up long enough, regardless of what you have been thinking or doing. Good luck.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 1 months ago by Chee2308.

[boli]

My meditation is called Letting go. I use that technique to help me clear up my pent up emotions and become more emotionally free. I use it to remove any fears/trauma from the past. It’s a healing process. I enjoy it. The only thing with that technique that worries me is that it will let go of my ability to sleep. My mind is so afraid of that that it actually tries to let go of the ability to sleep and then I get scared. I asked my coach about it and other classmates and they said that the body can’t let go of the ability to sleep. Thanks for the reassurance from that last sentence.

[Chee2308]

Can your body let go of the ability to breathe or eat? What makes sleep special that this ability needs to be protected??

[Jeff_Nero]

Hi there,

The trick with meditation is that you fully allow your body and your thoughts to do as they wish without judgement, and without ‘following’ the thought.

I did the same – I initially started meditation to help me sleep and to relax etc, but I realised along the journey that that’s not really what meditation is for, it’s actually a way for you to accept your thoughts, whether they are positive, negative, intrusive, conscious or subconscious (auromatic). In your case you’re having an intrusive and negative thought ‘I won’t sleep after this’. The problem here isn’t the thought itself, a thought isn’t reality. It’s just a thought that would come and go on its own if you let it be. You don’t need to analyse the thought, believe it, follow it or interperate it as negative, its just a thought. Once you truly accept you have no control over them, you begin to relax and your mind let’s it go. Think of all thoughts as traffic in a traffic jam, if you’re involved with a traffic jam it is frustrating and upsetting at times, but if you simply observe it from a bridge for example, it’s actually quite soothing and not a problem because you aren’t identifying yourself with the traffic jam. Or like clouds in the sky that show up in various shapes, sizes, and produce nice or awful weather, just let it pass. Your goal should not be to rid yourself of thoughts, it’s quite the opposite, welcome them and you begin to break the chain of negativity and automatic negative reaction. Please note, this takes a lot of time and practice.

[Chee2308]

Cultivate yourself as such:
Let the seen remains seen, the heard remains heard and the thought remains thought.

Meaning: Whatever you see, hear or feel does not translate into further action or hopefully further feelings. There is no sense of wanting to change or improve anything. You are happy with things the way they are.

As @Jeff_Nero pointed out, you can sort of be that independent person looking at your yourself from outside in. You just observe everything from a distance yet remain unattached and unbiased at the same time. Not being judgmental about anything because this “drama” goes on without requiring any input from you. You just follow the script whichever way it takes you.

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