Next time you find yourself trying to unwind in bed, imagine your inner child blowing bubbles. Purse your lips round, and gently/slowly blow as you exhale. Exhale to where there is almost no more air in your lungs, but not till it hurts.
Blow bubbles to sleep.
Visualize the clear bubbles, with the reflexion of your inner child or a happy childhood moment. If your mind is racing or if you have a mind consuming thought, don’t block it. Accept the thought. Visualize the thought. Put the vision on the ring of where you blow the bubbles, and blow it away. You may need to blow it away several times. Set the intent to blow it away a number of times, 10, 20, 50, or maybe even a hundred times. Key Tip: Count backwards!
Calming the Heart Calms the Mind!
When you are anxious, your heart races and so does your mind.
When you are calm, your heart calms and so does your mind.
When you inhale, your heart rate is variable.
When you exhale, your heart rate slows.
When you take a mere 30 seconds to a minute and you spend more time exhaling, the heart calms and so does the mind. You may feel drowsy or dizzy, that is your mind calming. If you feel dizzy, slow it down and take some regular breaths in between.
Does This Really Work?
Question: Have you ever gone to the doctor feeling ill and they prescribed you a chicken? No.
Then why do you feel good when you are sick and you are given hot chicken soup?
It is the deep exhalations as you blooowww and see the steam blow away.
Why would one drink warm milk as opposed to cold milk to sleep? Deep exhalations.
This may be why smoking is a hard habit to quit, if it’s the only source of deep exhalations then one indeed loses a source of stress management.
Power of Imagination!
Your Left hemisphere of your brain is your Language area and it Likes words. It is the source of racing thoughts. Your Right hemisphere of your brain is imaginative, creative, compassionate, and has visual-spacial centers. When a kid hears a story and they see the pictures, they pause in trance. When you imagine the bubbles, you turn down the chatter of Left brain as you allow your Right brain to be imaginative and give yourself compassion.
Why Count!
Counting sets an intent to focus. It provides a goal, and if your mind races from the task you can allow yourself to come back to the number you left off at. It also serves as a mantra, something you say either out loud or in your mind, repetitively.
Why does the military have a common chant when they march? Because singing scares bad guys? No. The repetitive mantra sets intent to focus, and it keeps one’s mind away from monitoring their fatigue.
Why Count Backwards?
Counting backwards is calming. That’s why on a long bus ride you sing 99 bottles of Root-Beer on the wall. Opposite, counting up is alerting. Counting beyond a certain number you gain more awareness of how long you have been awake. Agitating. And agitation causes your heart to speed, and mind to race.
What if you get to zero? Do it again. Count backwards. And don’t count how many times you have done this.
What if one finds themselves saying:
“I can’t do that.”
“I can’t relax.”
“My mind never stops.”
Those ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts) are a different topic for a different day.
It may take time to learn the relaxation response, and there may be more appropriate individualized treatments.
You can learn more about using relaxations responses for sleep on The Sleep Diet, A Novel Approach To Insomnia.
