Meditation for Sleeping

Q: "Can I use meditation to help me fall asleep at night? What, exactly, would I do? And can you suggest a meditation for when I wake up at night and can't get back to sleep?"
A: Some requirements learned from meditating can be applied to sleeping, and it is easy to pass from meditation into sleep.

One requirement is relaxation. Even though you are lying still, you may not be relaxed. It is known that you have to tense a muscle to relax it. The quick method is to tense every muscle you can, all at once, hold that tension strongly for a few seconds, and then abruptly release. The muscles you used will switch from tension into deep relaxation. The long method, called Nidra Yoga, is to do this tense-and-release exercise with one muscle group at a time, working up from the toes, feet, ankles, calves, etc. Your mind also needs to relax, and the same principle can be applied. Reading, counting sheep, or any concentration, will tense the mind, after which it will flip into a greater relaxation. I recommend concentrating on your heartbeat, which you can easily feel, lying in bed, and which is good for your heart as well.

Troubling thoughts may arise in your mind when you relax. Lying in bed, you tend to think of your challenges, whereas during the day, you feel more confidence and power, and the anxieties of the night seem distant. It's an issue of faith, that tomorrow you will have help to solve what you cannot solve now. It's not that the nightime problems are unrealistic. You want to be grateful for the warnings, then remind yourself that you have unseen resources suficient to answer them. Breathe out your problems, breathe into your inner refuge where you are safe from troubles.

Another requirement for sleep is a long or heavy exhalation. If you're lying awake at night and your partner is lying next to you, you can observe the various forms of the "sleepy breath." By reproducing the sleepy breath, you'll reproduce the sleepy state. In one form, the breath drains completely out and is then motionless for a long time. A long inhalation turns into a short exhalation that once again stops. This is called the "death breath," because for a part of every breath cycle, you could think the person has died. Suddenly they come back to life and take a breath, and then are still again. A preferred form is the sigh, where a heavy exhalation, usually audible, is followed immediately by an inhalation. You give away your breath, inhaling only so you can exhale again.

Which nostril you're breathing through is also important. If you lay on your right side, your sinuses will drain to the right and in a few minutes you'll be breathing through your left nostril. That is conducive to a passive condition and will help you fall asleep. In the middle of the night turn yourself over to the left side so you breathe through the right nostril, which will gather your strength for the coming day and help you get up in the morning. But if you can't get back to sleep on your left side, return to the right.

Don't ignore the environmental factors as well. You should mentally check off your body's needs: "Am I too hot or too cold?" "Am I thirsty?" "Is my bladder full?" Satisfy your body's objections first, then deal with your mind.

By Puran Bair, author of "Living from the Heart" (Random House, 1998)
© 1998 by The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc.
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