Internal Voice
How is your internal voice? By that I mean how to you talk to yourself throughout the day? When you are running late for work - or, if you are never late for work, when you drop your toast butter side down onto the cat's back - how do you speak to yourself? Do you say things like, "Stupid idiot?" Or maybe, "I should have been more careful, what a fool?"
Or do you silently whine, "Why me? Why dot these things always happen to me? Buses always drive off just as I'm getting to them. It's not fair."
Or does your inner voice calmly say something along the line of, "You hate being late, and you wish you'd got up a few minute earlier and not been in such a rush. And because you are normally on time the boss will understand, so there's no need to worry."
Or maybe, on different days your inner voice may be any one of these three. On Day 3 of this blog, I wrote about how Paul McKenna says to notice the tone of voice with which you speak to yourself. Too often we stir ourselves up by internally beating ourselves up and that makes it very hard to sleep. But we can also learn to use tone of voice to promote sleep. Talk to yourself quietly, in a slow monotone, and you will grow calmer.
Day/Night 9
This is what I did when I woke this morning some time after 5. I also simply noticed what was around me: the feel of the bedcovers, the breath going in and out of my body, and so on. Although this exercise is in McKenna's book, it's similar to one I've used for a while and have even taught it to my children. Although just noticing what's around you is very calming, and brings you back to the present instead of racing off into some imaginary scary future, adding the monotone sleepy voice to the noticing certainly helped me get back to sleep quicker than I have in the past.
I still check the clock when I wake up in the night, though I only check it on waking up, and then not again. Actually for the past few nights I haven't stayed awake long enough to check it again. This time I didn't even need to play the CD to fall asleep again.
But, McKenna warns several times in I Can Make You Sleep that you should not stop doing the exercises or listening to the CD just because things have improved. It takes 2 months before you can truly know your sleep pattern is corrected, and I am still a long way from there.
Or does your inner voice calmly say something along the line of, "You hate being late, and you wish you'd got up a few minute earlier and not been in such a rush. And because you are normally on time the boss will understand, so there's no need to worry."
Or maybe, on different days your inner voice may be any one of these three. On Day 3 of this blog, I wrote about how Paul McKenna says to notice the tone of voice with which you speak to yourself. Too often we stir ourselves up by internally beating ourselves up and that makes it very hard to sleep. But we can also learn to use tone of voice to promote sleep. Talk to yourself quietly, in a slow monotone, and you will grow calmer.
Day/Night 9
This is what I did when I woke this morning some time after 5. I also simply noticed what was around me: the feel of the bedcovers, the breath going in and out of my body, and so on. Although this exercise is in McKenna's book, it's similar to one I've used for a while and have even taught it to my children. Although just noticing what's around you is very calming, and brings you back to the present instead of racing off into some imaginary scary future, adding the monotone sleepy voice to the noticing certainly helped me get back to sleep quicker than I have in the past.
I still check the clock when I wake up in the night, though I only check it on waking up, and then not again. Actually for the past few nights I haven't stayed awake long enough to check it again. This time I didn't even need to play the CD to fall asleep again.
But, McKenna warns several times in I Can Make You Sleep that you should not stop doing the exercises or listening to the CD just because things have improved. It takes 2 months before you can truly know your sleep pattern is corrected, and I am still a long way from there.
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