The other day I felt really tired towards early evening. And I let myself feel it. I had come back from the Universal Medicine Retreat 2013 in Hoi An, Vietnam a couple of days earlier and had generally been sleeping more than usual and been more willing and able to feel what was actually going on in my body. And here I was, on a Wednesday evening, sometime between 7 and 8pm and I could feel a quite lovely tiredness after my working day. There was no weariness or exhaustion, no stress or duress, just an easygoing tiredness. My body felt warm, it felt like me and it felt right, familiar and quite lovely in its own way. An early night was definitely on the cards.
Nothing much to write home about then – except for one thing: sometime between 8:00 and 8:30 I would have to check my emails again! I was waiting for an answer from interstate that would determine whether I needed to set my alarm or not for early the next morning to work on a couple of texts that had to go out before I went to work.
I did what I usually do as far as my evening routine is concerned, and then back to the laptop – within 20 minutes and a few more emails I found out that there was more to do than I had anticipated and that there were actually three texts, two of which had to be back the following day. So I decided to do the practical thing and set my alarm.
No big deal – until I checked in with my body again: I had already become aware of the fact that the warm tired feeling wasn’t there anymore. All I could feel was that my head had become the most prominent part of me. I also became aware of an anticipatory feeling of being rushed sometime in the future (tomorrow), plus a hint of potential overwhelm and a real pressure around the assumed possibility of not being able to meet these new deadlines. And somewhere lay waiting a whole barrage of thoughts about all the other things I had to do and somehow squeeze into the next day, and subsequent days.
In other words, I wasn’t connected to my body anymore. If I wanted to sleep and sleep well I needed to reconnect. I could feel that these thought processes / emotions were slightly above and ahead of my body like a bank of fog: it felt really strange but it was very real. And it felt cold. It was hard to believe how cold it felt. I had to keep checking: it was definitely cold. And I couldn’t feel the tiredness anymore, just this immaterial and disengaged, cold and somehow empty blur.
I was just about to go to bed, but how could I settle and go to sleep? I knew that my body must still be tired but I couldn’t feel it anymore. It was amazing to observe how my head was running the show and feeding me this weird and unreal state of disembodied, strained and cold alertness. Had I not let myself feel the warm and very real physical tiredness before, I could have easily fooled myself into believing that I wasn’t tired at all.
So I went to bed knowing this was not an evening for catch-up TV or other things. I needed to just get into bed and reconnect – I knew that my body must still be tired, but I had just lost touch with it and the tiredness.
What happened next? I just ever so slightly started feeling my body again; I was also aware of my expectation of meeting that warm and real tiredness again and then… I woke up an hour before my alarm went off the next morning and easily did all I had to do before going to work.
Big deal? Yes, for me it was a big deal – an amazing experience of the truth of my body and the disengaged coldness of an otherwise different choice.
But wait, there is more: I got my friend Katerina to read a draft of this blog and she wanted to know what happened after the semicolon and before I woke up the next morning!?
Well, it was just so simple and straightforward that I am nearly at a loss as to how to describe it. All I know is that I wasn’t telling myself off for having lost the connection and I certainly didn’t try to re-connect. All I did was trust the knowing that my body and the tiredness had to still be there. I just put a few feelers out, felt what I could feel, which was quite subtle, and gave what was there permission to be there. And before I knew it I had fallen asleep. Very simple and oh, so profound.
By Gabriele Conrad, Goonellabah, Australia
881 Comments
I love the picture to this blog, it says it all. To be that surrendered in the body to allow a true sleep, that is gorgeous.
I was holding a 4-month-old baby the other day for nearly two hours, listened to their breath and felt the suppleness and ease of the body and how innocently and beautifully we sleep when we are young. The Way of The Livingness is a wonderful support to get back to that ease and surrender.
Walking before going to bed is also a great wind down tool that allows us to deepen in our connection and feel complete in the day so we can rest deeply.
One of the problems with ill mental health is that people are not getting a good nights sleep and there is exhaustion in their body, when tired it is easier for us to not be ourselves and fall pray to the energies around us.
Simply listening to our bodies are resting when tired is a huge step towards positive mental health.
It is well worth listening to the intelligence of our whole body rather than running on worries, beliefs or ideals that disregard the whole of who we are.
“And I let myself feel it.” Six simple, but very powerful words, words many of us don’t use often enough. How often are we really tired but don’t let ourselves feel it? Too often, I can honestly say from my own experience. But when I do allow myself to feel the tiredness, feeling how my body is asking to stop and rest, I know how important it is to acknowledge the valuable message it is giving me, for saying yes to stopping and resting is simply an honouring of this very wise vehicle which supports me through each and every day, and night, of my life.
Nothing comes from nothing and therefore, how we move during the day affects how we sleep at night. Poor sleep does not just happen out of the blue and nor is it up to good or bad luck; responsibility and honesty are the important energetic factors in this equation.
So many people have sleeping problems, but few relate it to how they live during the day. When we are connected to our body during the day the chances are we listen more to our body by resting when we need to rest but also the quality of our sleep is much deeper.
I never used to consider it was how I lived during my day that was the reason I often struggled to go to sleep. But coming to this realisation has totally changed the way I am living and if I lay my head on the pillow and sleep is elusive it doesn’t take long to see that I hadn’t stopped any time during the course of the day to see how I was feeling. Taking mini stops during the day to check in with my body has made such a difference to the ease of going to sleep and the subsequent quality of my sleep.
That way, the whole day and its rhythm become a rehearsal and foundation for our sleep and the possibility if not likelihood of it being restorative rather than just a semi-comatose state of utter exhaustion.
When we are complete in our day it is simple to surrender to go into repose and then fall asleep.
How often do we fool ourselves and don’t listen to what our body communicates because we are not present anymore or enough in our body. That is why I could think I was not tired and go to bed too late and do other things my body didn’t like which I thought at that point in time were allright for me to do.
What a beautiful written piece of experience. How much can we learn from this and how much do we effectively know inside out, but struggle to live with ? How great is it to actually come back to a place, in this case your body, and bring yourself back to the connection (love) we come from. How truly wonderful is that?
The messages, the feedback are always there – we are inseparable from it and yet, we turn the other way, ignore and belittle it, pretend it doesn’t exist or doesn’t support, try to destroy and root it out. What do we get out of it?
When we berate ourselves for what we are not doing, we are confirming patterns of behaviour that have been with us since childhood – this I am not good enough and I have to get better. The fact you didn’t go there, you simply clocked that there was a difference in your body and deepened the relationship with what that difference was changed the pattern of behaviour. Very inspiring.
“I also became aware of an anticipatory feeling of being rushed sometime in the future (tomorrow)” I Love this subtle yet powerful realisation. How many of us have this living in our bodies without even clocking it?