How Do I Turn My Brain Off at Night?

28 May

People often ask: How to Fall Asleep?

Sometimes the problem is not that you cannot sleep or cannot turn something off. Problem is that somewhere inside, you are still trying to be in control.

You have finished work. The messages have been answered. The lights are off. Your head is on the pillow. Technically, the day is over. Internally, however, the office remains very much open. A conversation is being rewritten. Tomorrow's schedule is being reorganised. And then your unpaid intern appears. He has unlimited confidence, almost no supervision and a remarkable talent for sending messages at 2:17 a.m.:

Quick question: What if…? Have we considered…? Something feels off… Perhaps first we should… And because you are awake, you answer. One thought becomes five. Five become an entire presentation. So naturally you conclude: I cannot sleep because I am overthinking. Sometimes, yes. But sometimes something else is happening. You are overthinking because your whole system is still behaving as though there is something to do.

Give me a second..

I once had a client who came to me for sessions to solve his extreme anxiety. We began working with the anxiety, but as our sessions continued, something else appeared: he could hardly sleep. (Sleep deprivation can increase anxiety and emotional reactivity and poor sleep is strongly associated with anxiety disorders) At first glance, there was nothing particularly mysterious about it. His mind was busy. He was thinking and worrying constantly. One thought led to another, and night seemed to provide the perfect empty space for all of them to arrive. But eventually I realised that there was something more interesting happening.

He was not allowing himself to fall asleep.

Somewhere inside, he felt that he had to remain alert. He needed to know what was happening. He needed to be available. He needed to remain in control. Even sleep had somehow become something that required supervision. During one of our sessions, when I could see how exhausted he was, I told him:

You can sleep now. I am here. I am watching everything around you. You don't need to.

And he fell asleep in a second, like he would be switched off. He slept like a bear for two hours - so we spent this session sleeping. I remember thinking how beautifully simple it was. His body knew perfectly well how to sleep. What he had difficulty doing was giving himself permission to stop being in control. And I think this is worth considering if you are one of those people lying in bed asking: Why can’t I turn my brain off? Perhaps your brain is not the only place to look. And perhaps, somewhere inside, you don’t actually allow yourself to switch off. Your body may be exhausted and sleep-deprived, but your mind — like a good soldier — keeps everyone awake because it has received its orders: stay in control, stay watching.

Your body has a vote

We often speak about an overactive mind as though the mind exists somewhere separately from the rest of us. It doesn't. The body is constantly providing information. Notice what happens when you are under pressure during the day. The jaw tightens, the shoulders rise, the abdomen is held, breathing changes, attention becomes sharp, body prepares to respond…all of this is useful when you have to be sharp and focused.

The difficulty comes when the meeting ended six hours ago but the body has not received the memo. You may be lying beautifully still underneath your duvet while internally you and your internal intern are on duty.

Worry is an activated body with a microphone in your head.

A tense body creates a subtle feeling that you should still be performing—that there is something to solve, prepare for, anticipate or control. So you keep thinking because everything inside you is still communicating: Stay ready. And then we make an understandable mistake. We try to solve the problem with more thinking. But you cannot think yourself into sleep. The whole system needs to experience that nothing is required of it anymore. And here we might have a slight problem, if technique that is provided later does not work on you, it may simply mean that alertness has become your habitual state. Your system has practised being “on” for so long that a few minutes of relaxation are no longer enough. In that case, stronger tools, repetition and more time may be needed for the body to rediscover what genuine relaxation feels like. The good news? Patterns can change. The less convenient news? Nobody can practise relaxation for you. Medication may help some people sleep, but it does not necessarily teach the body how to leave a deeply established pattern of alertness. That is something the system learns through repeted experience. And another piece of good news: you don't necessarily have to figure out how to do that alone. If this sounds familiar, explore my private retreat or Yoga Therapy Program How to Fall Asleep — The Art of Switching Off, created for people who are tired of being tired and want to rediscover what deep relaxation actually feels like.

We have become very good at being alert and at control

There is another part of this that I think we don't discuss enough. Modern life quietly rewards alertness. Respond quickly. Know what is happening. Keep up. Be reachable. Make decisions. Be productive. And somehow we have begun treating the opposite state almost suspiciously. Doing nothing feels lazy and not controlling everything means that you will miss out. But …why? Eating slowly feels indulgent, an afternoon without an objective feels unproductive. Even relaxation has become another project. But just because the world moves quickly, it does not mean that you have to move all the time. You are allowed to sleep, eat slowly at the table, enjoy something without turning it into an achievement. You are even allowed to stare at the wall and do absolutely nothing.

Our physiology includes mechanisms for mobilisation and mechanisms associated with rest, recovery and digestion. We need to use both.

Use It or Lose It

There is a simple principle in the body: what you practise, you become better at. If most of your day is spent rushing, thinking, solving & controlling, your system becomes exceptionally good at being alert. The pathways and physiological responses you use repeatedly become familiar and easier to activate. And here comes the other part: relaxation also needs to be used.

If you rarely experience genuine physical relaxation (not entertainment, distraction or scrolling) that gives release of muscular tension, quieter breathing and reduced vigilance, then moving into that state may become increasingly unfamiliar. This is one reason someone can be completely exhausted and still unable to fall asleep. The body is tired, but it has become very well practised at staying on duty. Think of it almost like a path through a forest. Walk the same path every day and it becomes clear and effortless to follow. Ignore another path long enough and eventually you can barely see where it begins.

Your nervous system learns through repetition. It is the same reason you need to progressively lift heavier weights if you want to build muscle, and why repeating the same yoga practice can become increasingly effective over time: the body learns the practice, adapts to it and becomes better at producing the response you are training. Relaxation works in the same way. The more often your body experiences genuine relaxation, the more familiar that state becomes — and the easier it becomes to return to it when you need it.

(For example, while I am writing this Insight — for the second day in a row — I have already started feeling sleepy simply from thinking about what I want to include in it. Yesterday, I began writing in the evening and eventually had to go to bed because just thinking and writing about sleep was making me sleepy, so I could not finish. I fell asleep, slept well and woke up very early this morning, thank to the idea to write about sleep. This is how surprisingly simple these associations can become once the body has learned them. But I had to learn relaxation too. When I was still immersed in my career, I did not think of myself as particularly tense. It was simply my normal state. Only after leaving that environment — and almost a year later — did I begin to understand how much tension I had actually been carrying, how harsh and direct I was, just as my body tension and when I noticed that, I felt ashamed of how blind I have been for so many years. Today, the association has become so familiar that even spending an evening writing about sleep seems to remind my body what comes next.)

First, one has to recognise what tension feels like. Then one has to learn what relaxation feels like. And perhaps most importantly, I one has to realise that it is actually allowed to relax.

Therefore: The body learns what we repeatedly teach it.

Practise alertness all day, every day, and alertness becomes easy to access. Practise genuine relaxation regularly, and the transition towards rest becomes more familiar. This is the deeper meaning of “use it or lose it.” You do not literally lose your ability to relax, but you can become so unaccustomed to the state that reaching it no longer feels natural or know. And that is why relaxation should not only begin when you desperately need to sleep.

Practise relaxation while you are awake, so your body recognises the road when it is time to sleep.

To fall asleep you need to be able to relax your body (here and now) and mind will follow

Relaxation is not the same as entertainment. This also raises a surprisingly useful question: What actually relaxes you? Genuine relaxation releases the jaw, shoulders, abdomen, face and legs, while naturally allowing the breath to become slower, softer and longer.

Before sleep, instead of asking only, “What do I enjoy?”, try asking: “What makes me less interested in doing, thinking, watching and responding?” The transition into sleep is, in a sense, a movement from Rajas (in a yogic sense) towards Tamas — from doing towards non-doing, from stimulation towards withdrawal, from holding on towards letting go. And perhaps that is why genuine relaxation can initially feel almost boring. Boredom may simply be the moment when the mind is finally running out of things to do.

Now, give it a thought: What makes my body release and your breath become quieter without forcing it? What genuinely makes me soften?

My client had to learn relaxation before he could trust sleep

With the client I mentioned earlier, who joined Yoga Therapy Program, “How to Fall Asleep,” we did not simply talk about sleep. We worked with his state of anxiety and taught his body a sense of relaxation that he could return to at night in bed. We learned to find associations he could recall once in bed — thoughts and sensations that would bring back the same sense of calm he experienced during our sessions through Yoga Nidra, breath practices and head Marma massage. We used yogic counselling and talked about his relationship with control, responsibility and relaxation itself. Gradually, relaxation became something he could experience rather than something he intellectually understood he should be doing. And this distinction matters, because You can understand perfectly well that you need to relax and still have absolutely no idea what relaxation feels like in your body and on many occasions the body has to rediscover it.

The lesson was not: I must become better at sleeping.

It was closer to: I can stop being alert and the world remains perfectly fine.

So what can you actually do tonight?

Prepare your bed for sleep

Prepare your bedroom before you get into bed. Change the sheets, air the room, switch everything off, set your alarm and finish washing and getting ready for the night. Once you enter the bed, the day is truly finished. You are safe, at home, noone can distract you. Noone. Its just you here even if there are some family members around, still it is just you. Everything around is just the sound of life.

Prepare your body for sleep

Get into the bed. Now give yourself a moment to actually feel the bed underneath you. Notice the pillow. Is it too high or too firm? Is the mattress comfortable? Feel the sheets and the weight and warmth of the blanket. Everything around your body should feel right for you — the right softness, firmness and temperature. If something is uncomfortable, decide to change it tomarrow, go to shop to buy new pillows, sheets or whatever you want to change. If the pillow feels too high right now, put it aside and perhaps fold part of the blanket underneath your head instead.

Then lie on your back. If you are familiar with yoga, come into Shavasana. Or in other words - let the legs extend comfortably, slightly apart, with the feet naturally falling outwards. Place the arms a little away from the body, palms facing upwards resting in the way that this position feels completely effortless. Adjust the head so that the neck is comfortable. Soften the jaw and let the tongue rest. Close your eyes. Go inside of the body. Give your body permission to sink into the bed beneath you. Now slowly scan the body from the feet upwards. Feel the toes and feet — and let them become heavy. The ankles, calves and knees until you get to the face. Unclench the jaw. Soften the cheeks, the eyes and the forehead. Allow your body permission to become little heavier, let the bed do the holding. (I am sure that just buy reading this you can feel it. So try to feel it as well, when you will be IN your bed. There is nothing complicated about this.)

Prepare your breath for sleep

At the beginning, simply notice your breath. Then begin to watch it softly, as though you were looking at a magical flower hidden behind a delicate, soft veil of mist. You know that you must not remove the mist. There is no need to try. Instead just watch the flower beneath it. Can you notice its shape, a line of a petal, a glimpse of its form appearing through the haze. Watch your breath exactly the same way. Through the veil of gentle mist find somewhere in the body where breathing is easy to notice. Perhaps at the nose, where you can gently feel the air passing through the nostrils. Perhaps in the gentle movement of the abdomen. Observe the process quietly, without interfering with it.

When thinking begins, leave it alone. There is nothing to solve and nothing to finish. Gently return to the task again and again, if you find yourself deep in some thought after a while, just gently come back to the task, first scan the body for any tension you can release, and then notice your breath and start watching it liek you would be waching flower through the veil of soft mist.

Give all of your attention to this task, give all of the world away and become gently absorbed into this task. You have succeeded already when you simply try, nothing else is needed from you.

Back to the breath. In. Out. Nothing interesting is happening. Just watching breath in heavy, tired body.

Do not answer the questions of your intern, in fact, let him bother someone else

This is important. Do not watch your breath for three minutes and then allow unpaid intern to ask: Is it working? Is this how it feels? How long have I been awake? Why am I still conscious? If I fall asleep in seven minutes, how many hours will I get?

Your job is not to make sleep happen. Your job is to stop continually giving yourself reasons to remain awake.

At some point you may realise that you are no longer watching the breath.

Good.

Maybe you forgot the practice.

Maybe you drifted somewhere else.

Maybe you are already asleep.

Perhaps sleep requires a small act of trust

This brings me back to my client. When I told him that I was there and that he could sleep, I wasn't teaching his body how to sleep. His body already knew. What changed was that, for a moment, he no longer believed that he had to watch everything. And perhaps there is something here for many of us, because every night, sleep asks for a peculiar kind of surrender. You have to disappear from the control room for a while and trust that the world can survive your absence, even people who are dependent on you, even if you are a President in the war zone. So perhaps tonight, instead of telling yourself: I have to fall asleep, try: I am allowed to stop now until tomarrow. The day can remain unfinished, some questions can remain unanswered, tomorrow can wait until tomorrow. Your body can become heavy, your breath can come and go without your assistance, and you can allow yourself, very quietly, to disappear into the night.

Falling asleep is remembering that you are allowed to let go.

PRACTICE:

Let the body be heavy.

Watch the breath.

Don't follow every thought.

Don't check for results.

Let go.

P.S. If you recognise that your difficulty is deeper, you are welcome to join me for a private retreat or Yoga Therapy Program How to Fall Asleep — The Art of Letting Go or Anxiety Management. A personalised experience devoted to understanding your own patterns of alertness and rediscovering deep relaxation through yogic practices, breath, sound and deep rest in sleep

This Insight is the property of Yoga Wellness Therapy. Reproduction or republication without prior written permission is prohibited. Author of this Insight is Laura - our Lead Yoga Therapist and Founder

Laura Poca-Rozenbluma