My seven year period of sleepless hell started in the fall of 1991 on a meditation retreat. I took a six-week leave of absence from my publishing job to indulge myself in peace: 17 hours a day of meditation, an hour sitting, an hour walking, meals in between. The setting was western Massachusetts, and the center abutted a nature conservancy where if you sat motionless for a few minutes birds landed on your head and arms and chipmunks ran circles on your lap. Turmoil erupted on the second day: I wasn't sleeping more than 10 minutes at a time. I lasted only two of the four weeks I was meant to be there.
Trying to get back to work wasn't easy. I was dead tired by 4 p.m. every afternoon and could barely keep myself upright at my desk. I took to sneaking out of the office and leaving the light on hoping no one would notice I was gone. A few months later I took a job in San Francisco hoping a change of venue from New York would put me back to sleep. The insomnia followed me to the West Coast and by 1994 had worsened. Pretty soon, the pattern was set--sleep at 11 p.m. wake up at 2 a.m., fall back to sleep from 6 a.m. to maybe 7. I didn't want to become addicted to sleeping pills, I didn't want to go on anti-depressants--I was feeling quasi-psychotic from no sleep.
The biggest challenge became how to pass the time while awake and alone in the middle of the night. Even though I was married by 1994, there's nothing more lonely than lying next to a peacefully snoring sleeper.
The Early Years
I was lucky enough to be a part of the launch of Riverhead Books, but the company was in New York, so I worked remotely from San Francisco, traveling to New York one week per month. Having my office at home proved to be a dangerous thing, as boundaries between the work day and my personal time blurred. My ex-husband was a light sleeper and so instead of worrying about waking him, I went downstairs to my office, did business in Europe and looked at faxes from other insomniacs saying they were awake and ready to work. It was nice to feel connected, but it wasn't necessarily the most productive way to spend the time. I was even more tired and stressed the next day, and I often had to re-do the work I produced during that time. Two to six a.m. aren't necessarily the best hours of clarity when you're already exhausted.
The Middle Years
I decided to try to stay in bed, but with that came its own particular torture. Tossing and turning was out of the question (my ex woke up grumpy and that wasn't fun), so I grabbed my Walkman (pre-iPod days) and listened to music or teachings on meditation. That worked just fine until the tape reached the end and the contraption shut off with a "snap." Then we were both awake and that defeated the purpose.
Respite Years
I set up my own insomnia refuge retreat: installed computer, cable, VCR and internet in one of the guest bedrooms. I re-lived my childhood through "Nick at Nite", recorded "Star Trek" and for the first time got in to "Columbo". Peter Falk cut my insomnia hours often by 25 percent. Oh, and I played with those Chinese iron balls that chime when you roll them in your hands. They were supposed to stimulate some acupuncture points that would make me relax and go to sleep. Didn't work. Neither did melatonin.
Renewed Torture Years
I found myself shivering uncontrollably at night. There was almost nothing I could do to warm up, so the guest bedroom was now loaded with space heaters and we received as a gift a spun silk comforter from China that is way warmer than down. I was beginning to have what I thought were panic attacks at about five every morning (turned out to be digestive distress from a wheat allergy). Got back into yoga at Satchidananda's Integral Yoga, so I started doing that in the middle of the night. Took to hanging upside down from the ladder to the sleeping loft in the guest bedroom. I can't say that I went back to sleep any faster, but I did feel a touch more relaxed.
The End
Began doing meditation practice in the wee hours instead of waiting for my work day to begin. I was so tired that I couldn't focus so it wasn't so productive. But it was listening to the webcasts of Tibetan Lama Gelek Rimpoche in the middle of the night that began to shift things for me. He was speaking about the stages of developing great compassion. The first stage was to recognize that everyone equally wants and deserves happiness and doesn't want suffering.
I started to think about all the other insomniacs like me who were sitting up feeling lonely, depressed, stressed out and wondering how they would function the next day. And then I didn't feel quite so lonely or worried about not sleeping. I started to think further about all the people who were awake in the middle of the night for much more difficult reasons--dire illness, fear of crime on the streets, nowhere to go, starvation, abuse, mental illness, a million reasons that put my yuppie anxiety to shame.
According to the compassion meditation instructions, I started to pray that my suffering might replace theirs. And from Gelek Rimpoche's webcast, I learned that there's a method, called tonglen, in which you breathe in the suffering of others in order to destroy your own self-clinging and breathe out your happiness in the form of light--it reaches other people and turns into whatever they need.
The Dalai Lama says something like if you want to make others happy, have compassion. If you want to make yourself happy, have compassion. It was true. When I shifted my focus away from myself, things got a lot easier. For the first time in all the years I didn't sleep, I had found a productive use of the hours. And it wasn't long before I started sleeping almost like a normal person again.
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Compassion.
Breathing.
To inhale suffering and exhale light.
Both miraculous and human.
Thank you for telling this story. I found it very valuable.
-- Steven Crandell
When I'm trying to get to sleep or when I wake in the middle of the night, My brain/thoughts zip around like those tiny legal fireworks that spin on the ground. I've never thought of meditation until I read the comments here. I didn't know meditation was training, shifting thoughts, being all right with them - because mine zip and bounce around, I thought it would be a waste of my time.
Thanks everyone for the insight. I'm going to explore this - so I can kick the RX/wine 2 a.m. "cure"
my mind to quiet down. My cat thinks they are a toy and she loves to bat them around!
( our guest beroom is occupied this weekend, otherwise thats where I would be...)
nice to know I'm not alone in being sleep challenged...strangly comforting...have a great day!
off even as a child. You are right as prayer and meditation will
take you to sleep. It is a raising of consciousness and letting go.
At Stanford University there is a sleep center which studies sleep in humans and sleeping disorders.
Did you know, please did you know the science of turning on sleep?
In the human brain, and only the human brain, not a cat brain, there is a red nucleus - a nerve center of specialized neurons. Those neurons must be activated in order to trigger sleep. If the red nucleus is damaged, the human, actually some tested animals which is torture, can never sleep.
Sleep is a neurological event which must be TURNED ON. The trigger ON mechanisms are vulnerable to interferences. A human must literally TURN ON the TURN OFF button, so to speak, to begin to sleep.
Forget addictions. Addictions are a propaganda phobia. If you need prescription pharmaceutical agents to restore your health, do it.
Lord, insomnia is agony.
You, Amy, either lack a specific set of human made chemicals to aid in triggering and maintaining thorough sleep, or you have a set of chemicals, one or more, that are blocking the agents that trigger sleep in the human via the brain. This is not personal, political, or a related to intoxication,
it is about brain chemistry.
Without sleep, the kidneys cannot filter, the liver which should be turned off is still on, there is so much more to sleep than mere feeling of restfulness.
Wow. That could keep you up all night.
Talking about this is so helpful because for the inexperienced insomnia, it's easy to be overwhelmed by the desperate thoughts that are a normal side-effect of nightful waking and sleep deprivation.
" for a long time i had trouble going to sleep "
i had insomnia on into my 30's — staying awake all night as alert as any stone — until meditation (getting to really know my own mind) + changes in diet & exercise turned the tide — & i discovered a rhythm to life my body naturally knew — — still have occasional white nights — but have also discovered a binaural beats mix for isomnia, going down into theta then delta that's really a good soporific (besides hylands calm forté) ...
that said — i think your blog is only nominally about insomnia & is more potently about awakening (not sleeping)
what a beautiful text about healing & transformation
i'm very grateful for thus, amy. thank you!
_/|\_
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Be rational.
On another note, the only time I went into a deep profound, not aided by any prescription medicine, was a Vietnamese Buddhist, Teravadan, Buddhist meditation conducted by Thicht Nan Ha and his aide. His aide, a Female Buddhist Teacher gave breathing instructions to a set of people lying on a beautiful wood floor in an auditorium like room. I feel into the deepest sleep of my life, until I noticed an attorney, who was there because of his personal conflicts about working in law, start to snore, loudly.
Guided mediation for relaxation could lead to a profound sleep, letting go, release, and respite.