Unquiet Slumbers: The Stress of Sleep

Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
Thomas Dekker

The inability to have restorative sleep is the result of taking stress to bed with you. With a few exceptions, such as sleep apnea or a large animal on your chest, most sleep disturbances are simply daytime disturbances that want to stay up all night and party. During my personal struggles with anxiety, bedtime was something to dread. The desire and need for sleep stood there like the twisted opening of a Halloween fun house just daring me to step inside. Nightly, I lived with the basic truth that if you want to destroy sleep, start thinking about it. Obsession breeds exasperation, and exasperation is not a good bed partner. Exasperation hogs the covers and has very cold feet.

The subtle trick that the mind plays on itself during the dark hours is to convince itself that it can now solve the problems that eluded it during the day. The brain begins to lay out ideas like Reese’s Pieces in front of E.T. The promise is "just one more and then you can rest easy, you will have figured this out." The "this" can be anything from restructuring your stock portfolio to planning the layout of your garden. The mind’s efforts would be comical if a sense of humor wasn’t one of the first things to go when you are really tired. Attempts to stop the dripping faucet of thought usually end up the way most amateur plumping projects do; a bigger mess to deal with than when you started.

It is a huge irony that most of us sleepwalk through our waking hours only to feel so completely wired during the period where we actually give ourselves permission to be unconscious. This twist of the natural order is behind the no-sleep cycle. The key to a good night’s sleep is tied directly to the quality of your waking hours. While many of us roll out of bed, very few take the next step of conscious awareness. The great teacher Anthony de Mello was famous for chiding his listeners to "wake up!" His message was that many of us slumber through our daily lives and then wonder why we find ourselves in such dire straits. If we can introduce even a modicum of mindfulness to the daylight hours—really participate in the act of living, moment by moment—our night hours can only respond positively. If one has been truly present in the events of the day, there is no need for the mind to try to balance things out at night.

Waking up to your life is not a mental process, it is a spiritual one. This means allowing your entire being to experience the wonder of the world around you. Resist the urge to figure out everything; you are way too tired for that. A mindful day does not stir up the mind to such a frantic pace that it continues to whir throughout the night. When you put the body to rest at the end of a mindful day, the brain rests easy after being allowed to carry on its usual functions without the constant ego interruption . When you stop getting into bed with every unresolved issue, every nagging concern and every constant reminder that there was something you could or should have done, you will finally rest in peace.

The next time you find your mind tossing and turning under the blankets of unquiet slumbers, turn your attention to your breathing. When you focus on this natural process, the raging river of thoughts slows down to a trickle. If the mind shows up with the critique of "that breathing sounds a little irregular to me, I’m sure it’s a sign of a lung disease that needs to be checked out on Web MD" it simply means that your attention has drifted away. Bring it back to your breath and the next thing you know you will be throwing your pillow at the alarm clock as it tries to motivate you to start your day. Or, in my case, you will find a dog on your chest who is eagerly awaiting your conscious presence to come and fill her food bowl.

Forget Me Not: The Stress of Memory

The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel Johnson

Neitzsche wrote "many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good." The American writer Elbert Hubbard said "a retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness." Then there is yours truly who only this morning said "Honey, I can’t remember where I left my keys."

When it comes to destructive stress, memory often serves as both the gasoline and the match. It does not take long for the glowing embers of "what used to be" to flare to a three-alarm inferno of "my best days are behind me." As a therapist, I have watched in amazement as clients struggled to put out these fires while diligently refueling them at the same time. As a recovering anxiety junkie, I have become quite familiar with this rekindling process and have spent many sleepless nights trying to roast marshmallows over the coals of endless worries.

Memory and stress are intertwined because the mind is a huge filing cabinet that stores away every experience we have. Not only does it download the sights, sounds and smells of all that happens in our lives, it also records the emotional reactions we have while events are taking place. All of this is extremely useful in managing our daily lives. Because of this vast storehouse of information we are able to move through life without having to relearn everything from scratch. This is very helpful when it comes to remembering your spouse’s name, remembering your spouse’s birthday, remembering the anniversary of when you and your spouse got married, remembering to pick up that item at the store that your spouse told you to pick up on your way home, and so on.

Memories become a problem when they show up uninvited and then get unruly when asked to leave. Even something as benign as reliving the "glory days" becomes problematic when it takes the place of living in the present moment. Often, psychotherapy will actually reinforce this avoidance of the now by suggesting that we can only understand where we are if we know where we came from. While it may be true that the past is the key to the future, this key only works on the door of the present moment.

"Die to the past everyday, you don’t need it" exhorts Eckhart Tolle. "What?"say the rest of us, "who would I be without the past? I had some good times back then, why would I want to let that go?" The mindful response is that it is the story of yourself that is causing you so much pain, so much stress. Our minds have become so habituated that we barely ever catch a glimpse of what is really going on around us. The world comes at us in all of its glory and we are so busy comparing it to previous experiences that we miss the awe and are left feeling awful.

The art of memory is to use it when needed and not be used by it when not needed. An occasional junket to the past to retrieve a mind tidbit or two is not the problem. It is when we book the holiday cruise to "any time other than now" that we risk getting trapped on Fantasy Island, which ends up feeling like Gilligan’s Island only without the cool coconut shell telephones.

Take some time over the next few days and actively remember to forget something from your past. Or, you can try forgetting to remember something from your past. Either way, you end up at the very place you began when you headed out on the mind trip that is life. Oh, and if you are concerned that you won’t remember the way back, don’t worry, when it comes to your true journey all roads lead to home.

Twisted and Unbent: The Spirit of Yoga

Peace can be reached through meditation on the knowledge which dreams give. Peace can also be reached through concentration upon that which is dearest to the heart.

Patanjali

So there I was, a twisted pretzel of flesh and bone, when the yoga instructor’s reassuring voice reminded me that if I did not breathe soon I risked an aneurysm. "What an irony that would be," I thought to myself, "blowing out brain cells while trying to calm my mind." The fact that I was having this thought was my first clue that I was resisting the very lesson that I had come to learn, which was to use this ancient practice to slow down the racing thoughts in my head. Most everything else I had tried had failed, and even imbibing in a glass of fermented grape juice had lost its magic. Why not try yoga? Sure I hadn’t really stretched a muscle since high school, (pulled a muscle, most certainly) but I was ready to risk days of a sore body if it meant even a brief respite from my restless mind.

Despite my naivety and my frozen shoulder, and mostly because I have access to a wonderfully talented instructor, I ventured forth. I found that the effort did have the benefit of taking my mind off of itself. This relief was incredible and made me eager to return to the yoga mat despite pains in body parts that previously had gone about their business unnoticed. Eager to catch another break from the incessant thought train that had been circling for several weeks, I went headlong into a more advanced yoga class (like a boy who conquers subtraction asking to be taught calculus). I saw this as the ultimate opportunity to force my mind and body to get along again and give me back my sanity, ability to sleep, desire to eat and perhaps even catch a glimpse of the elusive nirvana I had read so much about. If you are thinking "I bet that didn’t work," you are correct. Instead of staying quietly on the sidelines, my mind took on the role of frenetic coach and was determined to win this yoga match. "Come on, powder puff, raise that leg higher," it screamed. "You’re going to let these women show you how it’s done, nancy-boy?" it chided. "I got your nirvana right here," it mocked.

When the session was over, I was drenched. Body and mind, far from being joined, were no longer speaking to each other. It felt good in a "thank God I survived that" kind of way but it was not what I had expected. Or was it? In the silent exhaustion that followed I began to realize that my expectations were the problem. I was thinking about something that I should have simply been experiencing. My brain had stepped in and turned the yoga session into a contest.

Yoga literally means "to join." The union it refers to, I later discovered, is not mind and body. It is essentially joining with the universal or eternal self. This meeting takes place not in the mind but through what the great yoga master, Patanjali, called "the cessation of mind." When the mind is busy working to make the body stretch, bend and breathe with complete focus, it is not able to run down the laundry list of "things I should have done better, things I should never have done at all and things I will do when I finally find the time." Minus this constant chatter, one is able to make contact with one’s true essence, the divine light hidden behind the shroud of thought.

Patanjali suggested that yoga creates doors and windows within us that allows this divine light to enter. It is not an exercise as much as it is an exaltation; an invitation to a deeper knowing. That it often gets packaged as a new age form of the game Twister, is a function of the Western mind-set that needs to know the rules behind every activity. "Right hand red, left foot green," makes sense to the mind. The goal of trying to stretch oneself to the tipping point fuels the competitive spirit of the ego. The goal of yoga is not to see how far you can extend yourself before you fall, but to get you back on the straight and narrow path you fell from when your egoic mind decided to play hide and seek with itself.

If you get the chance, take a yoga class. Pull on those somewhat tight fitting shorts and throw caution to the wind. The benefits of increased flexibility, balance and muscle tone would be enough for your efforts but you also get increased awareness, balance of mind and spirit and, if you stick with it, the chance to become a metaphysical Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Rebel With A Cause

A rebel is one who trusts nature, not man-made structures, who trusts that if nature is left alone, everything will be beautiful.
Osho

When you step back and consider the mass mentality of our nation, it is easy to see that living mindfully, allowing ourselves to experience the world without the constant interference of thought, is a deviation from the norm. The intellectual life is what most people consider to be normal. This means using our brains to solve problems created by our brains, or, even worse, problems created by the brains of others. It is the pinnacle of nonconformity to drop the habitual thought patterns that dominate our lives and experience peace and connection with the universe in the present moment.

The great irony is that we actually live mindlessly when we allow ourselves to get lost in thought. When we switch to autopilot we allow conditioned brain movements to take the place of true intelligence. Many great teachers saw this as a form of self-hypnosis or even insanity and did their best to point it out. The response they received was often less than enthusiastic. More often than not, the tag of heretic was pinned on them and their words were twisted to conform to something more palatable to the ego. This is the fate of many rebels. This is also the reason that many enlightened souls keep the whole experience to themselves. Perhaps this explains the Tao Te Ching’s contention that "those who speak do not know, and those who know do not speak."

If you are going to experience the healing power of stress, you are going to have to take the leap and be willing to live outside the bounds that society has placed around you and rail against the constraints of your own mental habits. Here are some tips that will be of assistance once you decide to be a rebel with a cause.

1. Expect scorn and doubt. While this may take the form of friends and family telling you that you are nuts to think that you can have a healthy relationship with stress, it will most likely be your own mind that tells you this. Many risk-takers had to overcome personal demons long before the external ones showed up. No matter what you hear, you are not going crazy. You may, however, be going out of your head, and that’s a good thing.

2. Know that you will still feel bad at times and that you may actually feel worse when you begin to break old thinking habits. Any recovering drug addict can tell you that the early phases of recovery are not always filled with peace and well-being. There will be a withdrawal phase as you begin to shift your conscious attention away from thought. You may find that feelings long masked by mind mechanics begin to show up with alarming frequency. The simple process of meditation may bring up a fountain of tears, with perhaps no easily identifiable source. Know that this inner storm will pass.

3. Avoid compulsive advice givers. You will most likely find that everyone around you has their own take on what is best for you. Know that while deviants are sometimes revered, they are more often reviled by those around them. Thus the pressure to conform to the sentiment, "If you ain’t miserable you ain’t one of us." Take the advice of others with grains of salt, perhaps laced around the rim of a margarita glass, if you feel inclined.

4. Forget the lightening bolts and look for the fireflies. You are taking on a process that has millions of years of momentum on its side so don’t expect that the skies will open up and the universe will reveal all of its secrets to you immediately. You will, however, begin to experience little miracles all around you; from no longer being disturbed by the least little thing, to being moved to deep appreciation by the least little thing.

5. Stay the course. Understand that this is not a one-shot deal. You are in this for the long haul and the old pattern of thinking will attempt to steer you off course. Know that you have within you the ultimate GPS for this journey and, despite your feelings to the opposite, you have always been on the road that was meant just for you.