How are you all doing?
There is a lot of struggle in the world at the moment, both personal and collective. People struggling with grief and loss, upheaval, overwhelm, uncertainty and fear about the future. These are not easy times. I hope this doesn’t sound negative but real and authentic and I’m hoping that I can offer you some solace and comfort in today’s blog.
How do we sleep when we’re in discomfort and pain be it emotional or mental or both? I am deliberately using the words resting in discomfort rather than despite discomfort because this is where the true crux of the matter lies – in being able to accept, surrender to and be with whatever you are facing in life at the moment.
We’re in the midst of another wave of autumn colds, flu, and of course, COVID. I wasn’t immune and found myself laid low last week, facing a few uncomfortable nights. As I tried to rest, feverish, congested, aching, and feeling sorry for myself, it seemed like every possible worry bubbled up into my consciousness. Concerns about my elderly mother, my daughter, friends and family who have recently passed, loneliness, fear, work, my future, the dog, the cat, anything… This is how the mind goes, isn’t it? And lying there in my feverish state, I was a captive audience for its irrational rantings.
But from being forced to lie there in this state something powerful emerged. As I lay there trying to rest as best I could, I noticed that each worrying thought followed a distinct pattern or trajectory – it landed in my mind and then triggered a feeling in my body – often a tightening in my chest and belly. If I tried to push the thought away or distract in some way, the thought became louder (and brought its friends along to the party too!) and my body became more restless and agitated. On the other hand, if I allowed myself to observe the thoughts, breathe into the feelings of tightness and discomfort, the sensations built up to a peak and then dissipated. My breath (stuffed up as I was) became my friend and provided a safe anchor to observe the interplay between my thoughts and how quickly they triggered feelings and sensations in my body. Following the INNNN and OUTTTT slowed things down, stopped me creating yet more stories and dramas and made it safe for me to simply feel and notice, notice and feel. Simply following my breath stopped me ruminating on the past or racing off into the future. It helped me to be here now, and this, in turn, helped me to let go and rest.
You will have heard me say this before, sleep is an act of surrender, a letting go. If we want to get the deepest restoration possible this requires the deepest letting go and surrender even when life is imperfect, especially when life is imperfect. But how do we access it when the discomfort of life makes us rigid in our attempts to control what’s going on out there? (An impossibility by the way).
Befriending Discomfort: A New Approach
I call this ‘resting in discomfort’.
As Eckhard Tolle says ‘Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it’. I know this is tough – trust me, I’ve had my fair share of life events that have felt impossible to accept at the time. It takes practice. And repetition. Over and over again, we keep noticing the thoughts as they arise, breathing into the sensations and feelings. Rinse and repeat until we become pros in the art of surrender. Eventually, instead of trying to escape discomfort, we learn to sit with it and observe it, accept it but not become defined by it. I discussed this with my 20yr old daughter who has experienced migraines since the age of 7. Often her migraines come on during the night and, over time, she has learnt that if she can just be with the pain instead of resisting it or bemoaning ‘I don’t want this pain! Why me?!’ (an understandable response), she is able to rest and eventually sleep and her migraines have shifted from unbearable suffering to discomfort and even, ‘annoying but manageable’. Yes, I am proud of her.
It’s always going to be there – the pain and worry and everything else – and you can’t escape it. Life will continue to bring it. We might take action to ‘positive think’ our way out of it – it’s not so bad, be grateful for what I have, I’m so lucky…I could be so much worse off, they’re still with me even though they’re gone… a lot of toxic positivity that seems rife in today’s ‘woke’ world. We might seek to numb out with Netflix, alcohol, food, sex, drugs (prescription or otherwise) ….whatever else causes us to shut down, not have to feel or think.
The thing is, none of these routes work in the long term and especially when it comes to sleeping deeply. Unmet feelings can become lodged in the body showing up night after night as the most common sleep problems: can’t get to sleep, can’t stay asleep, teeth grinding, restless legs syndrome, nightmares and night terrors, and more.
Observing Your Thoughts and Breathing into Discomfort
So, this is a call for us to get better at resting in discomfort.
Feeling into it, breathing into it.
Hand on belly.
Can you befriend it without needing to go into the story of it?
I hope Jeff Foster’s words offer you as much comfort as they do me: ‘Discomfort may just be our greatest guru, knocking at the door, calling us to the deeper comfort of Home’.
Join My 6-Week Online Programme: Be Your Own Sleep Coach
I will be sharing even more in the deep dive of my 6-week online programme Be Your Own Sleep Coach that commences on 5th November at 6.30pm GMT. I really hope you can join me and if so, please sign up here.
Take care and rest well.
Love
Nerina
