Deepak Chopra | The Warm Milk Journal

The most important insomnia tip: don’t care whether you get to sleep or not

Published June 13, 2012 | By Debra

If we have challenges with insomnia the worst thing we can do to ourselves is worry about not sleeping.

We do not help ourselves by:

dreading bedtime (I used to have a sinking feeling in my gut as bedtime approached at night),

staring at the clock (once we are in bed and the lights are out), or

imagining how awful we are going to feel at work the next day.

Yes, we need to change this habit right away!

Deepak Chopra, in his wonderful book, Restful Sleep, stresses the importance of going to bed with the mental state of “not-minding”.

You can not force yourself to go to sleep. ~ Deepak Chopra

What he recommends we do is cultivate a complete lack of self-consciousness when it comes to getting to sleep. In other words, quit worrying about it, don’t self monitor, don’t start chattering in our minds about our insomnia, and most importantly, don’t watch the clock!

Instead, Dr. Chopra recommends that we simply slip into our beds, get still, and close our eyes. We should not think about whether we are awake or asleep. Just relax.

Even if we are not asleep, we are still enjoying the benefits of resting our bodies and mind while lying there motionless. So, don’t sweat it!

In Peace,

Debra