Breaking the Cycle of Insomnia – Embracing the Arms of Sleep

by Richard Flanagan

My name is Richard and I’m an insomniac. Or at least I was. Now I sleep, pretty much, through the night – an extremely positive change that I attribute, largely, to regular doses of meditation (no, not medication – meditation).

My particular brand of insomnia was the kind that prevented me from getting to sleep in the first place. I could easily doze off while sitting downstairs watching the television and a quick afternoon nap required no effort at all, but once I’d taken the short journey up the stairs and into bed…

‘Wakey, wakey, rise and shine’. Let the night time regime begin: turn onto your left side, now onto your right side, think about where you should hang that picture, consider how dangerous it is for a sloth to go to the toilet, look at the clock…

What!? It’s 02.30. I need to be up and about in four hours.

But my eyes are wide open. My heart rate has increased and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. My sweat glands are secreting. It’s just too hot in here…

The next couple of hours would then be spent worrying about how little time I had left to sleep and how bad I would feel at work the next day. Usually, I didn’t end up feeling that bad, but I wasn’t nearly as good as I could have been and my anxiety levels would be heightened.

As well as having insomnia I’ve also suffered with Social Anxiety (and it seems likely that the two are linked), for which I received treatment. To cut a long story short, I was treated with anti-depressants, counselling, group therapy and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). Shortly after finishing my course of CBT I found that the anxiety had improved dramatically while the insomnia, on the other hand, stubbornly persisted. I tried all sorts of techniques and made all sorts of changes to help me get to sleep, but none of them really worked in any significant way. I stopped watching TV in the bedroom, I got a blackout blind, I went to bed later, I went to bed earlier, I stopped drinking caffeine in the evening, I started using ear plugs and I tried to change my expectations – by telling myself that it didn’t really matter if I was still awake; I would be tired the next day but, so what? The latter two did actually have some effect. The ear plugs helped me get to sleep earlier some of the time and the reassessment of my expectations made the experience of insomnia more bearable, but still it persisted.

Throughout this period, I started to look into meditation. Inspired by the guided relaxation sessions I had taken part in during my group therapy, I sought out (mainly Buddhist) books on mindfulness and meditation and started to attend my local Soto Zen meditation group.

Meditation and mindfulness not only complemented the techniques I used to resolve my anxiety, they also became worthwhile activities in their own right. I enjoyed them and, although I couldn’t initially be sure if there was any benefit, they didn’t seem to cause any harm. I meditated on a daily basis for the next few years until, for some reason I can’t remember, I stopped. After about two weeks or so of not doing any meditation I noticed two things. Firstly, I was beginning to feel increasingly ‘jittery’; not anxious as I had been before, just jittery. Secondly, my insomnia returned with a vengeance.

These realisations prompted me to start my regular meditation practice once again, and sure enough, the insomnia ceased. This time it happened quickly and, as such, was more noticeable. This pattern has occurred several times since then and each time the same thing happens: meditation stops – insomnia returns, meditation starts – insomnia ceases. This is in no way scientific, but anecdotally it seems to strongly indicate that, for me at least, meditation cures insomnia.

I’m not entirely sure why this might be, having only noticed the correlation by accident, but there are some aspects of my practice that seem relevant. My general meditation routine consists of sitting for 15-30 minutes in the evening, immediately before bed, and I alternate between three meditation techniques: focusing on the breath (Anapanasati), sitting and staring at a wall (Soto Zazen), and mentally noting whatever arises (Mahasi Vipassana, which I’ve written about this in greater detail on the Middle Way Society website). Often, when I have been meditating for longer than 20 minutes or so, I experience a distinct psychological and physical shift. Arising around the top of my head, a wave of fuzzy warmth radiates throughout my body and with this comes a level of focused relaxation that I don’t encounter at any other time. As I only tend to sit for a maximum of 30 minutes, on a regular basis, this effect only constitutes around 10 minutes of my daily practice but lasts, in a milder form, until I have brushed my teeth and got into bed. It seems likely that this level of relaxation would be beneficial for someone who finds getting to sleep somewhat of a challenge.

In her Harvard Health Blog article ‘Mindfulness meditation helps fight insomnia, improves sleep’ (produced by the Medical School of Harvard University), Julie Corliss (medical author and executive editor of the Harvard Heart Letter) describes how mindfulness meditation is one of a variety of means by which an individual can elicit the ‘relaxation response’. This ‘state’, which is described as ‘a deep physiological shift in the body that’s the opposite of the stress response’ sounds remarkably similar to my own experience. According to Corliss, sleep disorders are closely related to stress (which is unsurprising), and by engaging in 20 minutes of meditation a day (also reflecting my experience) stress can be reduced and insomnia can be overcome.

That’s not to say I experience this ‘relaxation response’ every time, nor that relaxation should be the goal of meditation. Meditating to relax tends to have a similar effect to trying to get to sleep. It’s more the case that relaxation can be a welcome by-product of meditation.

My routine of going to sleep is now very different from the nightmare described above. I still have to turn over a few times and I might have a little think about something. However, this does not last long. Sometimes I might focus on my breath, or bodily sensations and sometimes I might not; either way my adrenal systems remain very much subdued. Gone are the hours of ‘trying’ to get to sleep, my heart rate remains at a sensible level and my eyes remain closed. If I’m too hot I open a window or set up a fan. I don’t know how long it takes me to get to sleep as I’m no longer focused on it, but I know that it takes a lot less time than it used to. I’ve often said, to those who have asked me about it, that even if meditation had no other beneficial effect (I think it does), I would continue to do it just for the effect it’s had on the quality of my sleep. Also, I‘ve recently noticed that, even when I do go a short period without meditating, the insomnia doesn’t return and so what once seemed to be a temporary effect, that was only maintained with regular practice, has now become longer lasting.

If you are unlucky enough to suffer from insomnia and you don’t meditate regularly then I would recommend giving it a go. I don’t know if my experience is a common one (although the article cited above would suggest it is), but there doesn’t seem much to lose in trying. If it works then that’s clearly great, but even if it doesn’t then meditation has many other benefits that make it a worthwhile activity. I suspect that it doesn’t matter which technique you use (I don’t notice a difference between the three that I use), but I would recommend seeking advice if you are inexperienced. There are plenty of resources available, online or otherwise, and there is a good chance that you may have meditation group nearby.

Richard is an Operating Department Practitioner who works for his local NHS trust in Shropshire, UK.

For more of Richard’s excellent writing: http://www.middlewaysociety.org/author/richard/

Julia Corliss’s Harvard Health article on mindfulness and sleep can be found here: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/mindfulness-meditation-helps-fight-insomnia-improves-sleep-201502187726