The teaching in one sentence
Hi friend,
I create quite a lot of content around the topic of insomnia but I noticed I don’t have the summary of it. What is this path about? I can imagine the face of a classic go-getter who is just embarking upon the journey: “So what I am supposed to do?? Just tell me!“
The teaching is super simple if you wrap it up in one sentence. But simple doesn’t mean easy. So here it goes:
Understand what is happening and back off of sleep.
That’s it. That’s the message that I put in every post or the video. Now let’s zoom in a little bit.
What does “Understand what is happening“ mean?
Education. Knowing what insomnia is, what hyperarousal is, where it comes from, how fears are formed and how they interfere with sleep, identifying our current beliefs about sleep so that we can challenge them. Understanding how sleep works and how it is not in anyone’s control. It is the willingness to look inside of our fears and honestly try to understand the situation without running away from it. Only education allows us to separate ourselves from our thoughts because these thoughts are what led us to insomnia. Not the initial sleep disruption that happened a month or a year ago. That event (or a series of events) has nothing to do with the current situation anymore, it is what we think about that disruption that keeps us awake now.
My work is mostly about the education. As someone who’s gone though this in the past, I’m sharing what I learned about this topic throughout my journey.
Once we understand what the heck is going on, we move on to the next step…
What does “Back off“ mean?
The biggest spoiler ever: we can’t fix sleep. Sleep will fix itself the moment we back off of it and let it do its job. Our bodies know how to sleep, whether we have insomnia or not.
We, rational beings, are not allowed to the parts of our brains that are responsible for sleep and we will never be. Sleep happens on its own and we can’t comprehend all the mechanics of it – let’s leave that “magic“ be.
What we work on is getting better and better at spotting any efforts to fix sleep, because these efforts are what stand in the way.
Like a water pipe that is filled with the rocks and other garbage. We find the garbage and remove it so that the water can flow freely. We don’t touch the water, we just remove the garbage. At first, it is easy to spot the big pieces and take them away. But as we move on, the garbage particles become smaller and less noticeable – so do our efforts. But eventually we clean the pipe and forget about it. That’s how the sleep is “fixed“
Hope this analogy makes sense :)
What’s new 👀
Since the last letter I’ve posted some good stuff you might want to check out if you still haven’t.
🍰 Article: Cheat days: a smoother path to effortless sleep – new concept you might like.
🤔 Article: Things everyone need to know before embarking on insomnia recovery journey – people wrote me that this article helped them gain more clarity.
∞ Video: How to break a double vicious cycle. Three key steps. – if you feel stuck in a loop.
🙋♀️ Video: How my insomnia recovery looked like. The path of ups and downs – finally decided to share my story and even drew a timeline of my recovery.
⁉️ Video: On exposure to fear, hyperarousal and a snoring partner. Insomnia Q&A – 6 questions, 6 answers.
See you next week 🥰
Ali
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