Insomnia can cause you to toss and turn throughout the night. It can lead you to waking up even if you do manage to fall asleep. Struggling with this annoying problem can drain your energy and make you feel a deep fatigue.
When you experience insomnia, it can affect your ability to concentrate on even simple tasks. It can raise your risk of having a serious accident, doing poorly at work, having problems in your relationships and even make you physically sick.
Not only will you feel the effects of insomnia physically, but it can affect you mentally, too. Insomnia is known to cause depression. Thankfully, mindfulness can put an end to insomnia and help you to get the sleep that you need.
The way that mindfulness helps is that it eliminates the myriad of thoughts that run through your mind. Unfortunately, unlike toys that can make irritating noise, but thankfully have an off button, your mind doesn’t have that.
This is known as being unable to turn your mind off. It’s why you can’t sleep. When your mind can’t rest, neither can your body. What mindfulness teaches for insomnia is that person experiencing it should practice concentrating on breathing techniques.
Not only can mindfulness help you get rid of insomnia, but it will enable you to feel well rested because mindfulness calms the entire body. It does this by lowering the stress level and raising the sleep inducing hormone, melatonin.
Because mindfulness is not addicting like over the counter sleep medications are, many doctors are now suggesting that people who struggle with insomnia turn to treatments like mindfulness.
The steps that you’ll need to take to get a good night’s sleep using mindfulness are simple. First, you need to make sure that you’re comfortable. You also need to make sure that you have quiet around you.
Don’t have a television or music playing in the background. Make sure you’re away from any bright lights, because bright lights stimulate the brain. Once you’re in place, sit quietly.
Secondly, focus your attention on how your body is feeling. You’ll notice that you feel stressed or tensed. Concentrate on drawing in breaths and as you breathe out, mentally let the stress go.
You should inhale and exhale for a count of five breaths. Third, focus on the sensations that you’re experiencing through your senses. What you hear, smell and feel. Concentrate on these senses for a count of five.
As thoughts run through your head, let them. Don’t judge them because this is what can cause you to tense up. Refocus your attention on the sensations. Remain in this exercise until you feel completely relaxed and ready for sleep.
