Posts Tagged ‘insomnia’

I’m pleased to announce my new course is now live: Mindfulness for Sleep & Insomnia.

Sleep is a tricky subject because the expectation of our ability to sleep has a big impact on whether we can. That means that sometimes simple tricks can work – but they can also disappear again just as fast. This course takes a different approach. It will change your relationship with sleep so that you stop seeing it as the enemy, and thus avoid activating your body’s stress response.

Preview the course or watch the trailer below.

One of the major factors that influence insomnia is emotion and expectation. If you think you should be able to sleep, you are going to struggle. If you have little expectation of sleep, you actually find it easier.

Storms and Nisbett demonstrated this in a study where they gave two groups a placebo. The first group were told they had been given caffeine pills while the second group were told they had been given relaxation pills. The first group found it easy to get to sleep while the second group found it harder.

This came up in a group discussion recently where someone suggested a great tactic for being the effect: try to stay awake. She found that if she stopped trying to sleep and started trying to stay awake, she fell asleep pretty quickly. With the results of the above study, perhaps we should not be suprised.