Overcoming Insomnia

Overcoming Insomnia

Regardless of age, insomnia is a widespread issue—whether you’ve suffered from it every night of your life, or only on an irregular basis. Regardless of how often it occurs though, insomnia can have a very real impact on your life, ultimately affecting your productivity, performance, and even your quality of life.

Here at Advanced Family Medicine, we can provide you with many different methods of treating your insomnia, including sleep hygiene, behavioral modifications, and medications. However, what if you’re looking for a more natural approach to your insomnia?

In this post, we’ll discuss an often overlooked method of achieving sleep for those who suffer from insomnia: meditation.

How Can You Help Your Insomnia without Medication?

If you’ve suffered from insomnia for any amount of time, you know how it feels when you go to bed. You may be (and often are) completely exhausted as you pull the covers up to your chin, but your anxiety about not being able to go to sleep is the primary cause of your insomnia. In other words, the harder to you try to fall asleep, the more “wound up” you become about not doing so, which ultimately leads you into a vicious cycle of trying to fight against your body in the quest for a restful night’s sleep.

As a part of modern living, most of us are so busy with our hectic daily routine that we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to take a moment for ourselves; to let our minds, our egos, and our worries go. In other words, we don’t just let ourselves “be.” And if we do this throughout the day, we have a tendency to experience difficulty falling asleep at night because we lack the proper toolset to calm our minds.

As such, after you climb in bed tonight, take a few moments to try and center your mind while connecting to your soul, higher self, or however you choose to think of it. But we understand that, like any new skill you’re trying to learn, you may initially experience some resistance from your mind. After all, it’s been conditioned to function in a certain way from sunup to sundown, and it may take some practice before you find yourself truly centered.

Changing Your Perspective About Insomnia

After a bit of practice, since you’ll be focused on reaching your “inner self” instead of forcing yourself to fall asleep, you might come to view your ability to stay awake at night as a blessing instead of a curse. And the good news is that, while extraordinarily beneficial, this doesn’t have to be complicated. In other words, you can just focus on your breathing, or you can perform visual exercises, such as sending light/energy to person who needs healing, meditating on symbols, repeating a mantra, saying a prayer etc.

Often times, the paradox of insomnia is that as soon as you “let it go” and relax your mind, you just might find that you fall asleep much more easily.

Need Help with Your Insomnia?

If so, call the professionals at Advanced Family Medicine today at (425) 453-6838. We’ll work diligently to find a solution that works for you!