How to deal with insomnia: My husband hardly ever snores, BUT….

How does one deal with insomnia?

I’ve been going through a little bit of a wild transformative/alignment seeking/self-reflective/personal-discovery/creative phase lately. It’s been weird and wonderful and INSIGHTFUL and AHA! moments and emotions. And yesterday in a particular wild rush of the feels, husband and I invented the Octopus dance. (Actually, to be fair, he invented it, I just followed along)

It. WAS. SO. GREAT.

But I guess you had to be there.

So anyway, I’ve begun to notice a pattern. Every time I move through some kind of shift or through some kind of learning or blockage, or am in a phase that feels particularly creative, I just don’t sleep.

The first time this happened for an extended period of time (that prompted me to get {horrific} sleeping tablets from a stranger who couldn’t speak english) I was in South Korea transitioning out of a pretty destructive relationship. The second time I noticed this pattern of not sleeping was moving to London right after getting married, new place, new husband, loads of creative ideas and things to do in my head… and now suddenly it feels like I’m entering into another one of those phases (heaven help us).

I haven’t had one of these insomnia phases for a LONG time, and I credit meditation and yoga largely to that, but over the past few nights I’ve seemed to swing back into my insomniac ways for some reason, (even in spite of the fact that the husband and I have embarked on a meditation mission together, (Day 10: can I get a high-five?).

So last night I was lying in bed, having gone to bed early, 9:30pm early – (which is EARLY for people like me) on account of having a sleepless night the night before and within a few minutes of finishing our meditation, I could hear The Warr already fast asleep.

Now, my husband rarely snores.

Like, maybe in our 5 years of marriage he’s snored probably around 4 times. WHICH IS A VERY LUCKY THING.

Last night, however, was one of those rare snoring occasions.

yay self.

Now, for whatever reason, there is something psychologically very challenging about having someone next to you fast asleep when you are *trying* to fast sleep.

And then when said person (speaking from a hypothetical point of view, obviously) starts snoring, it is a little bit like a trumpet.

A little trumpet of “look how I am SOOO sleeping” 

This trumpet will drive you mad,

hypothetically (obviously).

 

 

Ok fine. Let’s just say it wasn’t hypothetical and let’s just say this was me last night.

The problem is, the more you focus on “THE THING” the more “THE THING” becomes “A THING”.

 

You guys.

So there I was lying there focusing on “THE THING” (aka the “I’m-SO-asleep trumpet”)

when I remembered some of the stuff I’ve been working through this past little while.

Something that has come up again and again is:

What you appreciate, appreciates.

So here I was appreciating/noticing/focusing on the “I’m-so-asleep trumpet” and all it was doing was growing louder and louder.

(And making me want to throw daggers out my fire-rimmed-non-sleeping-eye-balls)

So I stopped and thought to myself,

“I really appreciate having my husband who I love very much lying next to me right now.”

And then, you guys –

Like freaken MAGICAL UNIVERSE SPARKLES the trumpeting literally stopped  – OUT OF NOWHERE.

it just randomly stopped.

 

Me silently to husband in head: I REALLY LOVE YOU.

Unfortunately though, this trumpeting wasn’t the reason I wasn’t falling asleep – so I lay awake for a few hours staring into the dark when I eventually got out of bed to go to the lounge to read my book.

I mean, I did contemplate switching the bedside light on –

“Oh, sorry – did this bright light shining directly in your face wake you up? My bad”

But then decided against it because the smug-trumpeting had already stopped.

Eventually I came back to bed after an hour or so – and lay around.

Now I know the theory: the more you TRY and sleep, the harder it is to sleep. You’ve gotta NOT try and sleep, just play it totally cool and let the sleep find you.

SO there I was pretending to not care if I ever fell asleep ever again in my life –

BUT the problem is, that deep down, you fucking do care if you don’t fall asleep, because if you don’t fucking sleep you’re going to be fucking tired in the morning when your spritely-trumpet man wakes up for his morning gym.

So anyway, you just lie there and pretend to not care about sleep.

(BUT YOU REALLY, LIKE REALLY REALLLY, DO)

* * * * *

So anyway sometime circa 4am I must’ve fallen asleep and then in the morning husband came to wake me up and the first thing I thought was, “I didn’t get enough sleep”, which is something that I’ve also been thinking and starting to reprogram this week.

We wake up and immediately everything is set to “not enough” – “I didn’t get enough sleep”

Which, since I had closed my eyes again and was undecided about going to the 6:30am yoga class (on account of not having slept very well) quickly became, “there’s not enough time”.

I’ve been reprogramming these things in the last little while – especially with the phrase, “not enough”

So I said to myself, “I did get enough sleep” and “there is enough time to still get to yoga”.

This is continuous work and the mind will always slip back into usual patterns, especially when we are energetically or emotionally low.

Which is exactly what happened about 60 mins into the yoga class (yes, I went, and had 6 mins to spare – after a 2 min chat in reception) when suddenly my mind began again with,

“I don’t have enough energy for the rest of this hot class”

So I paused and reprogrammed myself to think and internally say

“I have enough energy to stay in this hot room”

“I have enough.”

So anyway, that’s my long rambling tangent for you today with a tiny little nugget of some of the things I’ve been rumbling with in this little while:

Appreciating what you want to appreciate.

and

Starting each day with

“Enough”

I can’t wait to share more of this journey.

x

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