Review The Day For Better Sleep

Many of us are having trouble getting enough sleep these days. Even if we are currently not going many places and meeting a lot of people during the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still experiencing a lot of stress and disruption, which upsets our minds and unsettles our bodies.

In more normal circumstances walking outside might be a great way to relax in the evening, but even that might not be enough as to allow our body-mind to reach a fully natural balance.

There are also many medical resources for better sleep, of which the most common is the use of various sleeping tablets and herbal remedies. But sleep medications and even medicinal herbs require some caution and care, as they are not always harmless, and the side-effects may differ from person to person.

Some Yoga breathing exercises and meditations may also be useful, as they help balance the blood-flow and deepen the breathing. This is not a visualization technique, nor it is a ritual, but a simple process that may aid your sleep.

There are also shamanic techniques that include breathing, but the core idea remains the same: there is energy locked in stressful or painful events of the day, and the way to release it, is to remember them with a calm mind and a healing intention, maybe even a healing prayer, mantra or meditation.

Recapitulation, as technique taught by Deepak Chopra, is the process of reviewing your day, from beginning to end, every night before you go to sleep. It means to go through the events of the day, and digest mentally what has happened, instead of suppressing your thoughts and feelings. If we try to distract ourselves continuously, we might find we feel tired, but we remain restless.

And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created ~ D.H. Lawrence

If we try to keep busy or suppress our thoughts, to avoid a feeling, it will come back stronger, as anything internal will always do when we intend to hide from it.

Taking a few minutes to work through the day´s events before bedtime, may help empty the mind and calm the body. But the aim is not to engage the mind in a loop of endless self-talk and rehashing worries, but only a way to keep an open ear to oneself, and then to move on. Once you have dealt with it, let it go. For instance while you remember a shocking or frustrating moment of the past day, you might say to yourself, “This too has passed and is part of my learning process.”

If troubled sleep is a common occurrence for you, it will most likely be something you have to do daily, it is better to keep it short, so that you may continue to do it without much resistance from the mind.

A good way to make even better use of this practice is to combine it with gratitude. Gratitude is generally seen as a part of a prayer or meditative discipline, but it doesn´t have to be. One could add it at the end of your daily ‘recapitulation.’

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care. The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath. Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course. Chief nourisher in life’s feast ~ William Shakespeare

Simply find what you feel thankful about for today, even if it is just life itself, or a pleasant memory, or a friend who remembered to call. It can be anything, just something true to yourself that made your day easier, or more joyful.

You may not find many deeply moving reasons for feeling grateful every single day, but there is always something to be thankful for in our lives. Always. It also helps to remember that we are a part of something bigger. Even now, we are in the process of evolving together, to become better, and to renew and reinvent ourselves.