14 ways to go from insomnia to radiating your aliveness.
You are a sun. A sun expresses outwards, it does not seek validation from outside.
I used to suffer with insomnia a lot.
I would lie in bed and ruminate over what had happened and worry about what I would do in the future. I would be like a ball of energy trying not to move.
I’d have negative thoughts which would activate my nervous system which would generate more negative thinking - the mind body loop.
I was like a ball of energy, keeping everything inside. A sun turned inwards.
Let’s fast forward to the opposite. Let’s fast forward to this week.
For the winter solstice (shortest day of the year) I went with a friend to a nature reserve at dawn. We swam in the water and boy did we feel alive. All day I could feel the heat coming off my body. I could feel myself radiating into every conversation. I was alive, a sun of energy radiating out into the world.
Now the cold could have taken our aliveness but it didn’t, we fought back. We swore, we shouted. We went in to the water three times. We won. And we took this winning with us. I can still feel nearly a week later.
We are not meant to hold our energy in all the time. Holding and managing our energy is an inhibition of our aliveness.
Think of yourself as a sun.
Here are more ways to radiate your aliveness (and to therefore sleep better).
Drink ginger shots in the morning.
Wear this Head Cooling Cap. Just to feel FRESH!
Get to a sauna, stay in longer, push yourself, then have a cold shower, repeat.
Stop shallow breathing with the chest. Breath with your belly.
Make sounds without words. Release trauma and stress with Primal Sounds. Be the animal that you are.
When you enter rooms, be like a dog. Bound in, smelling the air! Do not to think about yourself! Do you think a dog thinks about what it looks like when it comes into a room? Walk into rooms with a smile on your face, taking a deep breath in, thinking what's in here for me?
Stop holding back in your day, express, even small talk to strangers.
Express with your face, your arms, take up space in your body, take up space in the room, take up space in life.
Shrug off everything you don’t like…
Stretch. Sigh. Express with your face, your arms, take up space. The sun knows how to take up space, it knows how to express itself.
You don't have to be burning yourself out, but you were born to radiate aliveness, you were born to move and express, communicate and connect, not to hide away. Sometimes the suns energy is very delicate. The amount of sun landing on a leaf, in England, in winter, is very gentle, but constantly an still energy that’s moving outwards.
Take up space with your breath, the sounds, sighing, people have forgotten how to sigh or make sounds with their breath, they've forgotten the power of that, they're trying to be too polite, they're trying to matter to other people too much. A sun radiates heat outwards, other peoples energy just burns up when it gets close.
Read ‘The Conditioned Reflex’ by Andrew Salter, a hypnotherapist from the 50s. It might just inspire you to live fully. Here are some quotes from this fantastic book..
Practice relaxation skills to learn how to work with the nervous system and the emotions. Practice mindfulness to learn how to not engage with negative thoughts.
To summarise these things improved my sleeping and my life:
One. Be a sun radiate energy outwards in the day time.
Two. Free the body, free the breath, freely express emotion - this frees the mind.
Three. Practice mindfulness and relaxation skills to break the negative mind-body feedback loop.
Do reach out to me with any thoughts or questions..