⁃ How is you relationship to your sleep?
⁃ What ideas do you have that are in the way of an harmonious sleep experience?
⁃ How often are you lying in your bed worrying not getting the rest you need and long for?
As in any other area in life, comparing yourself to a norm or an ideal gets you stuck and drains your energy and wellbeing.
Now is the time to color outside the lines under the moonlight!
What ideas do you have that are in the way of an harmonious sleep experience?
How often are you lying in your bed worrying not getting the rest you need and long for?
As in any other area in life, comparing yourself to a norm or an ideal gets you stuck and drains your energy and wellbeing.
Now is the time to color outside the lines under the moonlight!
Comparison to a norm gets you stuck
Ruler of your own story
Believing that you should fall asleep right away, sleep without any moments of waking throughout the night and wake up clear and fresh, ready to jump into your day are affirmations that can poison your relationship to your sleep. I know, I’ve done that for a long time, experiencing difficulties to get asleep, waking up and feeling distressed, worrying that I wouldn’t get enough rest if I stayed awake any longer, and feeling tired in the morning, finding it difficult to feel good straight away, longing for that smile on my face as I entered a new day.
I was living in the story telling me THE way good sleep looks like. As my experience differed from that ideal and more and more tensions and unease built up, I was falling in the trap of unconsciously trying to fit into a norm that didn’t reflect my reality.
Unconsciously because I wasn’t aware that a good night sleep could also have as many varietions in form as there are human beings and expressions.
I discovered in a series of short lectures from Jennifer Piercy how I got myself trapped into a mold that didn’t correspond to how I’m naturally and perfectly built.
One big take away for me was hearing about the fact that the idea that night sleep is a one sleep period without awakening until the morning is in fact something that started with the industrial revolution when workers had to go to the factories at a specific time, while before that it was common to understand that we could have a first sleep period with a moment of waking followed by a second sleep period. That was an a-ha moment for me.
I recognized that sleep has it’s ebb and flow and that I didn’t need to monitor or manage those waves, just ease into them. Trusting the perfection and intelligence of my body.
Another golden nugget I got from that series, was about waking up in the morning.
Lately I got very aware of my state of being as I wake up as I was studying Abraham Hicks teachings and hearing how each morning was a new set point for our day.
Hearing the description of awakening as a transition period that is precious and need allowance to be slow instead of the the jump-bright-and-ready-instantly ideal opened a window of fresh air in my psyche. Seeing the slow awakening period as welcome, as a rich in between worlds period where creativity can emerge, and a reconnection with the self, observing what changed in me, allowing the foggy sensation just be was such a liberation, an acknowledgment of the goodness of the way I wake up.
Looking back, I can see how these beliefs around sleep and waking up have been a denial of my natural way, a violation of my own pace, a declaration of unworthiness as I didn’t meet this basic standard that should be there naturally. All this because I didn’t realize how conditioned I had been and that these models or ideals don’t reflect the reality and diversity of being human.
No wonder that this has been undermining my wellbeing: each time we believe that there’s something wrong with us, it undermines our self confidence and drains a lot of lifeforce out of us.
Connecting to nature’s rhythms
Another aspect that also fully resonates, is to reconnect to nature’s rhythms as the sun’s by getting direct sunlight in the morning and avoiding and minimizing artificial lights in the evening to let our natural internal clock calibrate and led us easier into harmonious sleep and wake time.
Radical acceptance – the pathway to self-love and well-being
There are so many areas we carry beliefs and conditioning we don’t even realize we have. How we judge our sleep patterns is one. And here too, we need to remember that we are all unique and comparing ourselves to any norm or standard is the best way to get stuck.
So here too, I invite you to color outside the lines, discover your own natural way, trust the infinite intelligence of your body and be at peace with the way that is your own.
Be unapologetically you!
OF
You can find Jennifer Piercy series “Your Guide to Deeper Sleep” on Insight Timer
Olivia Florian 