Getting a Better Night's Sleep Paradigm
Excerpt from "Help for Insomnia: Yet Another use for Mindfulness," by Shinzen Young, August, 8, 2013:
Insomnia by Tony HuynhDifficulty falling asleep or staying asleep is a very common complaint. Mindfulness can help but one must first radically revision the nature of the problem.
People tend to get into a negative feedback loop with insomnia: Not getting to sleep leads to worry, leads to further difficulty sleeping, leads to more worry, leads to...
What to do?
One possibility is to start thinking about the night in a different way. This is a conceptual reframing, a profoundly different paradigm regarding the issue of sleep.
The normal paradigm is:
"I have to get a good night's sleep or I'll be a mess tomorrow."
The new paradigm is:
"If I get a good night's rest, I'll be fine tomorrow."
Amazingly, it's possible to get a good night's rest without necessarily sleeping much or at all.