It’s the end of February and Spring is beckoning. Yesterday I saw early cherry blossom on the trees and purple crocuses peeping through the soil and I felt hope.
Yes, it’s been an intense start to the year and there continues to be a great deal of uncertainty, chaos and fear. Have you felt it? What is happening out there in the world stirs up anxiety and this can show up in your sleep – especially if you are a Sensitive sleeper. I explored ‘sensitivity and sleep’ in this month’s deep dive webinar when we looked at how Eckart Tolle’s ‘pain body’ can become a reservoir for negative emotions and how, if we don’t find helpful ways of dissolving this ‘stuckness’, it spills over into your sleep. The feedback from this webinar was overwhelmingly positive and if you want to watch or listen to the replay, you can access it here.
But just for the purposes of this blog, I want to offer you some reassurance that not all the anxiety that appears at night is personal. Let me say that again:
Not all the anxiety that you are feeling at night is personal. Some of it doesn’t belong to you.
Whose Anxiety are You Feeling?
Tolle also talks about the ‘collective pain body’ in which the weight of the world is held – the grief and loss, loneliness, fear, and worry… Of course, we all have things to worry about – I certainly have my fair share as I navigate these sandwich years as a single parent. However, now I am sleeping even more deeply through and despite all of the chaos because I have learnt how to shield myself from some of this ‘impersonal pain’ and not take it to bed with me.
I have also learnt not to take the pain of my loved ones to bed with me – this is a hard one and probably life’s work for me and you too, I imagine. We care. We love. We don’t want those we love to suffer but carrying their pain to bed with us stops us restoring ourselves. Conversely, when we restore ourselves, we have more to give to those around us – I believe this is commonly referred to as the ‘Oxygen Mask Theory’.
If, like me, you are a sensitive human being, you could be taking the pain of the others to bed with you. It might stop you falling asleep. It might wake you in the early hours or it hits you first thing in the morning. We each have our own nocturnal pain body pattern.
So, I want to offer you a way through this – one that I share with my clients as well as practicing myself when those ‘anxiety rushes’ hit me at night or morning (or both if it’s really bad).
How To Manage Your Mind For Sleep
- Guard your mind and your pain body – what do you read, watch, imbibe before you go to bed? Is your inbox or social media creating the perfect bedtime story for you? Is numbing out with another episode of that boxset or that glass of wine stuffing simply stuffing it back in? Are the Trump/Musk conversations that you’re having or listening to triggering your nightmares?!
- Meet the pain – allow yourself to feel it and then release it. Cry those tears – ‘ugly cry’ if you can! The scientific benefits of lachrymal release are well documented. If you can’t cry, then at least sigh it out, dance it out, shake it out. Don’t take it to bed with you.
- Hold space wisely – how are you holding space for your loved ones? Examine your boundaries. Are they clean or entangled? Let me give you an example here. My daughter is currently dealing with a horrible situation at work that’s causing her some anxiety. It’s been going on for over a week. I can feel her pain and last night, I was standing beside her in the kitchen, and I was feeling almost sick. I asked her how she was feeling in that moment and she said, ‘sick in my stomach’. I told her I was feeling the same and we did this thing we do in which we cut the chords from each other. We often do it because we’re aware that we love each other so much that it can tip into getting somewhat energetically entangled. I show people how to do this in my sessions and I will be sharing the exercise in my next webinar which I’d love you to join on 18th March at 1.30pm GMT.
- Inner safety lies within – I invite you to start looking for safety in a different place. For too long we’ve looked out there for our answers. It is time to start looking within. More than ever, with all the chaos around us, we need to cultivate the ability to do this.
Again, I’ll be focusing on the many ways we can tap into inner safety on 18th March but for now, here’s a simple exercise (and one that I have been reminding my daughter to do too):
Right now, wherever you are, stop and feel your feet on the ground.
Read this now then try it: close your eyes, breathe in for three and out for five, silently count those numbers as you breathe. Simple – in for three, out for five. Do this for a minute or so.
How do you feel now?
Simply do this when you feel the fear/worry/guilt/anger/frustration (substitute your own) bubble up. Don’t get caught up in thoughts, dramas, stories about why you’re feeling what you’re feeling. Simply allow yourself to feel it…and breathe.
The more you do this, the more you will come to realise that right here, right now, in your body, in your breath, resides true safety.
The more you do this, the more you will start to recognise a connection being made with a place within you. I’m not going to label this place. I leave it to you to find your own label.
What I do know is that this place is free of the noise of opinion all around us. It’s free of the divisiveness, fear and blame. It holds solace and peace. It holds inner safety. And you can come here anytime you choose.
I recommend you come here first thing in the morning, before you open your eyes, before you look at your phone – just take three breaths – in for three, out for five. Do it a few times during the day, before you go to sleep. Then notice how differently your day unfolds. You can definitely do this in bed at night too – simply place your hands over your belly, or one over your heart and the other over your belly. Feel the weight of your hands bringing you back into your body. Whisper silently to yourself as if soothing a small child ‘I am safe. I am safe in my body. I am safe in my life.’
You really are safe. That ‘old’ reptilian hunter gatherer part of your brain might not want you to think so. Politicians might not want you to think so. But right here, right now, in this present moment – you are safe.
In a world that can feel overwhelming and unsafe, inner safety resides within us all. We just must reach in and find it.
You can read more about this in my fourth book, Finding Inner Safety and/or attend my live session on March 18. I’d love to see you there but if you can’t attend live, as always, there will be a lifetime access replay.
In the meantime, take care of you and your loved ones. There is so much we can be doing to enable ourselves to thrive right now. Breathe well, eat and drink well, move well, sleep well, live well and love well and the magnificent 70 odd trillion cells that make up your intelligent body won’t have any choice but to thrive. And, if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, spring is almost sprung so keep looking out for those glimmers and glimpses of hope coming through soil. They are our way through the darkness.
With love
Nerina x
