There's a misunderstanding that invariably happens whenever I advise someone who is having difficulty sleeping,
Either not able to get to sleep or getting woken up in the middle of the night and unable to get back to sleep.
Because of their tinnitus.
When I advise them to meditate at such times.
Through their own silent meditation or through listening to a meditation tape.
They invariably come back with one of two reports.
One is the meditation helped them calm down and they could sleep.
Or two,
The meditation did not help them calm down and they could not sleep.
Both?
Report.
Represent.
A fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of meditation in general.
As well as my advice in that situation.
So in both of those reports,
A meditation was used to change the present moment experience.
The experience was unsatisfactory.
I'm going to meditate and make it satisfactory.
Meditation.
Mindfulness is never about changing the present moment experience.
It's about.
Learning to be with.
And okay with the present moment experience,
Whatever it is.
Because the alternative,
Rejecting it,
Pushing away from it,
Is always worse.
And this becomes pretty apparent when it comes to sleep.
All right,
The.
.
.
Desire to sleep.
If you really want to sleep,
Please.
.
.
And you're not sleeping.
Wanting to change that state.
Is about the worst thing you could possibly do if you really want to get to sleep.
And everyone has this experience.
Of really wanting to get to sleep so bad,
That just makes the.
.
.
Anxiety about sleep worse and you drive yourself into a vicious loop.
So,
Meditation is not about.
.
.
Changing that experience of being anxious about sleep.
Not about changing the experience of not getting to sleep to one of sleep.
It's about learning to be with the experience,
Present moment experience of not sleeping.
Observing that.
Rather than being triggered by it,
Being anxious about it.
Being worried,
But just observing,
Oh,
I can't sleep.
What's that like?
I observe worry.
I observe maybe my heart is racing a little quicker.
Can I just observe those things without wanting to change anything,
But just observe it?
That's the practice.
It's about embracing the present moment as it is.
Not trying to change it.
And it doesn't mean we always.
Sit in unpleasant moments.
If you're stuck in a traffic jam or approaching a traffic jam and your Google Maps tells you to take an alternate route,
You take the alternate route because there's no point in suffering when you don't have to.
But when you're sleeping,
There's no good off ramp.
When you're not sleeping,
Rather,
There's no good off-ramp.
A sleeping pill might help in the short term,
But that's not a long-term solution.
Wanting it to be different than there are,
That's not going to really work.
That's just going to make things worse.
So what we do when it can't be changed in a way that's skillful,
Because taking a sleeping pill is not a skillful long-term solution,
Or drinking or some other habit which is not going to be good for us.
Is we observe what's going on with a curiosity.
And a calmness which we can achieve through practice,
Just observing our situation and not trying to change it.
And that does a couple of different things.
First,
If you're just observing the breath,
Which meditation is observing the breath,
The thought arises,
You let it go,
Come back to the breath,
Right?
If you're really meditating,
You're not lost in a loop of thought.
You can,
At least for a good amount of the time,
Focus on the present moment of your breath and maybe your body's a little triggered or I'm excited.
But you're not imposing these thoughts upon yourself.
Oh,
I can't sleep.
This is terrible.
What am I going to do?
If you're following the breath or following your guided practice,
Those thoughts are going to dissipate and trouble you a lot less.
So,
At the very least,
We suffer less.
When we engage in meditation practice.
This is what mindfulness is.
It's the best way to be with,
The most skillful way to be with the invariably unpleasant things of life.
Not only with sleep but with all of life,
Including tinnitus.
But in this video,
We're just talking about sleep.
So you're going to suffer less.
Then if you obsess about the situation and get into this unending loop of worry and anxiety.
So you suffer less.
And that,
Unlike relaxing.
.
.
But you can't control your ability to relax and fall asleep.
But just observing thoughts,
That's something we can control.
That's something with practice we get really good at.
John Kabat-Zinn says you don't have to sit in a cave for 30 years to find out that you can develop this capacity to observe your thoughts,
Let them go and come back to the present moment,
Which when you're lying there is the breath.
Or the present,
The guided meditation practice if you're using that,
Which is fine as well.
So,
We suffer less if we meditate.
It's not about relaxing or not relaxing,
Getting to sleep or not getting to sleep.
First thing.
Second thing.
Is we actually know meditation,
One of the things it does is is Clean out.
The glymphatic system,
Not the lymphatic system,
The glymphatic system,
Which is the system relatively recently discovered that cleans out the crud of our brain at night.
And when we sleep less,
Less of the crud gets cleaned out and that's not a good thing.
Fortunately,
What the research suggests is that meditation is really good,
As good as sleep,
As cleaning out the glymphatic system.
And so it is as restorative in many ways as actually sleeping.
So you can reside with that knowledge as you meditate.
And finally,
And this is what,
You know,
You all know that when you can stop worrying about not sleeping,
That's your best chance at getting to sleep.
If you're worrying about sleeping,
You know,
Game's over.
You're not going back.
Without some artificial help.
If you can just say,
Follow the breath.
I'm getting some restoration,
Lighten up.
That's your best bet of falling asleep.
Now,
Whether it happens or not,
It's outside of your control and you don't want to get invested in it.
Again,
That's about results.
Meditation is just about being with the present moment.
And when you're not sleeping,
You're not sleeping,
So be with yourself not sleeping.
And you can just,
As I said,
Practice a breath meditation following the breath.
You can listen to guided practices,
Which I often do.
I have some guided practices set aside for when I can't sleep that I find soothing.
You may even find music or something to assist you in the guided practice,
Especially the guided practice by yourself can be difficult with tinnitus,
So some sound or ocean sound or something.
To enhance or help the meditation along.
That's my advice when you are having difficulty sleeping because of your tinnitus.
To meditate.
Not to try that you're going to fail if you don't fall asleep or succeed if you do fall asleep.
You meditate because it's a skillful thing to do.
You meditate because the present moment is there and you might as well learn to experience it as it is right now because this is a skill we want to evolve not only with our sleep but with our tinnitus and with our life in general.
Learning to be with whatever is arising.
And this is what mindfulness is.
The goal of meditation is mindfulness.
Of meditation,
Mindfulness,
Is non-judgmental present moment awareness,
Simply accepting the present moment as it is,
Not needing it to be any different than it is right now.
I've had many videos about carrying this conception over to tinnitus,
How this can change our whole way of relating to tinnitus.
But for now,
Let's just try to work with applying this.
Bringing this forward in sleep.
See how it goes.
I hope that helps.
Take care.
See you later
