Thread: Running out of ideas

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I, too, am not a fan of being awake at night. In fact I blew 1/2 a night of sleep just last night after not being able to get back to sleep on a WBTB.

This is a bit off-topic but I used to have insomnia quite often especially from trying to LD and I think the main reason is feeling tension, physical or mental (usually linked together). It's also really normal for most people to not even realise how tense they are, I didn't realise it until I started doing Tai Chi (which emphasises relaxation for martial art, note: relaxed doesn't mean limp) and then it took some time before I started feeling all the tensed up areas of my body, in other words it took developing some body awareness and correct movement.

Anyway my point is try to loosen up physically and you might be surprised how quickly it fixes insomnia. I'm not saying to do Tai Chi (you would need to find a good teacher, too many money grubbing phonies around, same with yoga unfortunately, if you come across a real expert you should consider yourself extremely lucky though) but a couple of things you could do would be:

- Hot bath.

- If you can get into a proper meditation posture, like half-lotus (I still can't do full-lotus, actually even half-lotus kills me after 10 minutes) but regardless it's infinitely more relaxing to do a proper poster on a hard floor even if it's only for 5-10 minutes than on a chair in my experience. Don't force anything and you should never, ever feel pressure in your knees.

- Do Zhan Zhuang!



Zhan Zhuang is martial art standing practice (most commonly seen as horse stance in movies where the master forces the student to stand for hours to build up leg strength, but the stances vary) and it builds body awareness, relaxation and also strength. No need to worry about the strength part but removing that body tension is really important, so if you can't get to sleep try standing for 20 minutes and concentrate on releasing tension wherever you feel it. I almost guarantee if you do Zhan Zhuang every day (gasp!) for at least 10 minutes after some time you won't even remember what insomnia is.


Now back to our regular broadcast.

Originally Posted by Memm

This is a bit off-topic but I used to have insomnia quite often especially from trying to LD and I think the main reason is feeling tension, physical or mental (usually linked together). It's also really normal for most people to not even realise how tense they are, I didn't realise it until I started doing Tai Chi (which emphasises relaxation for martial art, note: relaxed doesn't mean limp) and then it took some time before I started feeling all the tensed up areas of my body, in other words it took developing some body awareness and correct movement.

Anyway my point is try to loosen up physically and you might be surprised how quickly it fixes insomnia. I'm not saying to do Tai Chi (you would need to find a good teacher, too many money grubbing phonies around, same with yoga unfortunately, if you come across a real expert you should consider yourself extremely lucky though) but a couple of things you could do would be:

- Hot bath.

- If you can get into a proper meditation posture, like half-lotus (I still can't do full-lotus, actually even half-lotus kills me after 10 minutes) but regardless it's infinitely more relaxing to do a proper poster on a hard floor even if it's only for 5-10 minutes than on a chair in my experience. Don't force anything and you should never, ever feel pressure in your knees.

- Do Zhan Zhuang!



Zhan Zhuang is martial art standing practice (most commonly seen as horse stance in movies where the master forces the student to stand for hours to build up leg strength, but the stances vary) and it builds body awareness, relaxation and also strength. No need to worry about the strength part but removing that body tension is really important, so if you can't get to sleep try standing for 20 minutes and concentrate on releasing tension wherever you feel it. I almost guarantee if you do Zhan Zhuang every day (gasp!) for at least 10 minutes after some time you won't even remember what insomnia is.


Now back to our regular broadcast.

Getting back to sleep is *never* off topic on this board in my book! My issue is not bed-time insomnia, but WBTB time, especially after strong intention setting and MILD-like visualizations. I'm afraid that if I did standing exercisse in the middle of the night it would energize me too much. I am in fact more tuned in to body (especially jaw/face) tension, but I probably can do more and get more in tune. Thanks for the references, if you have any more you could PM them to me, thanks!