Tag: meditation techniques

Meditation for Sleep | How Meditation Fights The War Within

Sleep issues are on the rise

When I was a teenager it was much more easy for me to feel better when I had no sleep the other night. Nowadays it is simply unbearable. If I did not have a proper 7.5 or better 8 hours of sleep, I feel cranky and tired. When I had only a few hours of rest and that’s it, I become less than a human as I am so irritable, whiny and other quite nasty things.

When I’ve experienced that severe sleep deprivation the last time, I did not abandon my usual morning meditation ritual. Thankfully, this experience was pleasant, even though it was still very hard to concentrate. Yet when I’ve finished, I felt much better. I was more centred, composed and ready to react in a non-violent way towards myself or others. So here is your tip number one – to get on with your meditation practice even though it might be the case of making a much greater effort at the start. Your synergy of mind-body will thank you for that and you will feel better.

Though the main thing is not to get to the point of sleep deprivation, don’t you think?

First of all, we already know about some quick and easy tools on how to prevent bad sleep. We should stay away from blue light. Say no to the LCD screen on tablets, phones and laptops – it suppresses melatonin production. Stay cool – melatonin cools the body by several degrees. Do not overheat your bedroom. Avoid alcohol. For many people, these simple actions would be life-changing. Yet what about those millions of people who cannot get asleep because of internal rumination and worrying?

Meditation for sleep is a proven tool on how to get a night of better sleep and relax into it.

Why meditation is great for sleep?

Prolonged exposure to stress hormones (especially cortisol) destroys healthy muscles, bones, cells, and weakens the immune system. Awareness is important because the unconscious stress can lead to poor sleep, indigestion, chronic head and backaches, heart attacks. When our health deteriorates, we become more fearful and the situation becomes a vicious circle (taken from“Practical Zen” by Julian Daizan Skinner with Sarah Blades)

Ahimsa Meditation would like to serve everyone who is on the journey to eradicate the war within.  Albert Tobler and Susann Hermann explained this “war within” as our difficulties, doubts, irritation, frustrations, distractions. They have stated in their book “The rough guide to mindfulness” that around one in four adults suffers from nocturnal rumination. This means there are so many of us who are not being able to sleep due to worrying. Sleep disorder must be one of the most prevalent endemic diseases of the 21st century. More and more of us find it difficult to switch off.

Meditation is able to help us cultivate our mind and become emotionally stronger and more stable. This means we can cope with difficulties, stress factors, frustration and just that enormous stress on a daily basis much better.

Meditation for sleep

Let’s outline some very straightforward steps on how you can start meditating yourself to sleep.

  • Get yourself ready in bed, preferably lie on your back with your arms on the sides. Do all need preparations in advance, so you can do your 10-15 minute meditation and almost immediately go to sleep without any need to stand up and do some chores.
  • Take a few really deep breaths. You can place your palms on your belly and see how deep breathing makes them go up and down, slowly but deeply. It should make you feel relaxed very quickly.
  • Close your eyes and start paying attention to sounds, smells and breathing. You are relaxing into a state of awareness but also tranquillity.
  • Without making any judgment, make a mental note of how your body feels.
  • As with a basic practice, start performing a body scan. Yet with this meditation for sleep practice, you are going to make it a centre stage. Begin from a very top of your head and very slowly go down by paying attention to the smallest parts of your body. You are just being attentive to all the little details you are never so curious about during the day.
  • If it helps to sustain this body scan, try a visualization technique where you imagine yourself covering your body with a very healthy ointment. You simply visualize applying it on your ears, lips, shoulders, nails and so on. This is completely optional, you can opt for a more basic mental scan. See what will work better for you.
  • You are not doing it just to finish with your toes and stop. You can then go up and see how every little piece of you relaxes into bed, how your arms become just a bit heavier, how your chest relaxes and you feel a lot of calm and relaxation.
  • Continue very slowly until you feel you are ready to drip off. Just observe your meditation, your breathing and your body. Let it simply flow.

Enjoy your sleep.

meditation for sleep: instructions and guide

Still not working: are there other meditation techniques for sleep?

Add concentration on breathing part. If you feel that your body scan isn’t working for you today, simply start focusing and counting your breathing. The monotony of the process and a very simple flow will calm you and aid your sleep. See our basic meditation practice to guide you on how to concentrate on your breathing.

Try Metta or Loving-Kindness practice. It has been also proven to further relax our consciousness that everything will be alright (it is as it is, right?). You can try and incorporate this practice too to help with your sleep. Additional kindness and compassion to yourself and others is just that bit that will make a lot of difference. See our recommendations on how to practice loving-kindness meditation here.

We wish you to have a great sleep today. Continue with your meditation practice, develop it and have better sleep every day.

6 Types of Meditation to Master | Meditation Techniques

Different types of meditation

Concentration meditation on breathing is a foundation of meditation practice. However, there are a few more techniques or types of meditation you can add to it to make practice your own.

Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson in their amazing book “The Science of Meditation” suggested the following three different types of meditation: attentional (that’s what we suggested as our basic meditation practice), constructive (see our loving-kindness practice) and deconstructive (see our vipassana instructions or tailored practices to help with depression, PTSD and anxiety).

The following tools simply allow you to curiously attend to meditation practice depending on your need at the present moment. For example, for some fidgety types a movement meditation may be needed, for those who are too harsh on themselves – compassionate practice, and so on.

Madonna Gauding in her book “The Meditation Bible” suggested that all techniques could be somehow classified as focusing, thinking, visualizing or experiencing. Clearly, she means our concentration meditation on breathing as a good example of focusing practice, whereas thinking and experiencing are major characteristics of vipassana meditation. You can use a visualizing technique as an additional tool to your own meditation practice.

List of additional meditation techniques

Please have a look at our list of auxiliary meditation techniques and we welcome your feedback. What works for you? How do you combine different elements for yourself?

Body scan – you can incorporate this into your daily practice directly at the beginning of the meditation after you’ve settled your body and mind.

Meditation begins by asking us to rest our minds in our bodies, as we rest our bodies on a cushion. And to pay deliberate attention to, rather than ignore, the shifting sensations of the physical organism.

These sensations can be subtle, but by spending time with them we start to see two important things:

1) the inner experience is changing incessantly;

2) we are driven out of the present moment by our likes and dislikes (taken from “Advice not given” by Dr Mark Epstein).

Noting technique. Every time thoughts and feelings carry you away from breathing, it is beneficial to make a mental note about it. After that, you can non-judgmentally put a mark whether that was a feeling or thinking. Note whether it was positive, negative or neutral.

Movement meditation. You can be mindful not only when waiting and standing, but when walking or extending this practice over a more prolonged time. For that, you need to establish a space outside or a path and make time for an undisturbed waking practice.

Acceptance (of pain) and compassion – it starts from yourself and then extends to your family, friends, acquaintances, people you do not like or indifferent to and then the whole world.

Compassion to yourself is an incredibly valuable skill to train. Many people are resigned to the way they speak to themselves. We can take our stories seriously, but not to take them for granted. “Just because you think it, doesn’t make it true.” (Mark Epstein “Advice not given”)

Breathing anchor helps to train compassion

You realize that you are not your thoughts. They come and go and you don’t nee top push yourself for that.

Dr Epstein in the same book agreed with the above. ‘Meditation suggests that we stay with our raw material of a given experience longer than we used to, and question our secondary add-ons. One’s story never changes if it is simply ignored; it just lies in wait, ready to return with the vengeance. You can take responsibility for the way you are talking to yourself, not to give thoughts a free pass. When one learns to observe the addictive and self-perpetuating nature of many of our thoughts, their dominance diminishes. Refreshed by this discovery, the mind senses relief.’

Eating and drinking meditation – being completely present at the moment you need to fully experience the sensations, realise how you like them and simply be.   

Yoga meditation – combines still poses and also vinyasa practice when you combine it with mindful movement.

6 types of meditation you can master today

Meditation techniques further develop your meditation practice

As you can see, this short list of additional meditation techniques is nothing extraordinary. Yet it offers you a possibility to approach meditation with a different standpoint or even from a beginner’s view. It’s very valuable as you will develop your practice your own way.  It allows you to cultivate your mind how you need it yourself. No-one can do it for you. You will find simplicity and a lot of beauty in this practice and we welcome you to develop it.

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