The Mindful Approach To Insomnia

This is a comprehensive, 10-lesson course on how to get healthy restful sleep, night after night — according to the gold standard, clinical recommendations. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI) is the most successful behavioral line of treatment for Insomnia, but most people know nothing of the principles and practices taught in CBTI. Many people will benefit from learning the theories and techniques without having to go through formal therapy, and that's why I created this course. Also in this course, you'll learn many wonderful mindfulness-based exercises, meditations, and theories as well as how to apply them to set yourself up for getting healthy sleep, and stopping insomnia in its tracks.

Lección 1: Defining Insomnia

Learn the real definition of insomnia and the most significant tool used in behavioral therapy for insomnia -- the sleep diary. In this lesson, you'll learn a simple way to use a sleep diary if you want to get a better sense of your sleep efficiency baseline. Enjoy Lesson 1!

Lección 2: Introducing Mindfulness & Healthy Sleep Habits

In this lesson, we begin with a nice relaxing mindful meditation. Next we move onto some clinically recommended healthy sleep habits AKA good sleep hygiene. Enjoy!

Lección 3: The Three P Model of Insomnia

First we start off with another guided mindful meditation. Next we cover the "3 P Model" of insomnia, laying out what makes people susceptible insomnia, how it develops, and what tends to make it worse. With a better understanding of this model of insomnia, you'll be more prepared to nip it in the bud if you start sleeping poorly or if you already are.

Lección 4: Identifying Sleepiness vs Fatigue

Once again, we begin by building up our mindfulness practice with a meditation. Then, for further context, and to enrich your understanding, we move on to the 7 foundations of mindfulness. Finally, we wrap up by identifying the important difference between genuine sleepiness, and the state of fatigue.

Lección 5: Sleep Drive & The Body Scan

Today we learn a classic mindful exercise ; the body scan meditation. Then fittingly, we segue into one of the body's main sleep regulators; sleep drive AKA sleep appetite.

Lección 6: Awareness of Thoughts & Circadian Rhythm

Beginning with this new meditation, you'll learn to cultivate mindful awareness of thoughts, as well as some simple recommendations for what to do with thoughts. Next you'll learn about one of the main biological drivers for sleep -- your circadian rhythm.

Lección 7: Mindful Acceptance & Proactive Worrying

We begin with a meditation in which you'll practice the mindful act of acceptance. Learning and practicing acceptance can be relaxing and bring about the peace of mind necessary for getting restful sleep. We also learn a very simple, yet powerful technique for managing concerns, worries, problems, etc.

Lección 8: Breathing Space & Sleep Efficiency

Returning to the breathing space meditation, we start off with something familiar. It's useful to practice the same form of meditation a few times so it becomes less effortful and more second-nature. After the meditation, we move on to a term called sleep efficiency which is really the most important 'personal stat' to keep track of if you're concerned about your sleep.

Lección 9: Relaxation Techniques & Sleep Consolidation

We skip the mindful meditation for good reasons in this lesson. Instead you'll learn how to override your stress response at the physical level and induce a relaxing state. Then, we cover today's insomnia topic -- sleep consolidation which is, getting one long, uninterrupted block of sleep.

Lección 10: Concluding The Course

In this final lesson of the course, we start with one last mindful meditation. Next we cover some of the most important concepts, theories, and techniques covered in this ten day course. We wrap with some advice for how to use your new skillset to manage or prevent insomnia.

Reviews

Just what I needed. I love your approach. I'll be going through the course again and again. There is a lot of content to digest. This will be a regular "go to" for me. Thank you Jason!

Inspiring and full of useful exercizes and tips.
Clear and gentle guiding with a pace that suited me well.
I've listened to some other sleep courses here on IT and I think this one summarized all of them in a good way.
🙏

I learned a lot from this course. It was very informative and helpful for me, Thank you

Jason,

I cannot thank you enough for this course. For me personally it was a refresher and review of many proven techniques I learned from my CBTI therapist combined with Mindfulness techniques with which I’m familiar.

I suffered some trauma which required more than a simple 8-week course of CBTI to help me begin to resolve my sleep issues. I had to interrupt work with my therapist due to financial reasons during the pandemic. I turned to Insight Timer to help my sleep issues and to learn more about meditation.

Being able to work on my own with your guidance has shifted and improved my sleep habits very much. In addition to that, since I know what to do and believe in this work, I feel confident to meet the goals I have set for myself using the techniques you reintroduced.

Insomniacs,
Give this course a try if you are stuck. Not everything is easy or feel-good, however, most methodologies that are effective require some welcome discomfort to learn a new way. And discipline is needed. That being said, the work is temporary and it requires dedicated time and intention.

I am so relieved to be on the road to complete recovery from my sleep issues after some really troubling weeks of late.

With gratitude and admiration,
Hannah

I found the course very informative. Thank you for putting it all together. There was a good balance between mindfulness practice and education.

Found this course really helpful and informative. I’ve started to implement some of the techniques and I’m feeling the benefits already. I’m looking forward to having a solid uninterrupted sleep! Thank you for making that possible 🙏🏽💚

Beautifully presented course - and so needed. Insomnia is such a struggle for so many. Thank you for providing this information in such a digestible format.

It is loaded with information and strategies for overcoming insomnia. I have incorporated most of what I learned in my sleep routine. I am very thankful for the teacher for sharing his knowledge. My insomnia has indeed improve since I started this course; not only because of this course, but the course gave me behavioural strategies that I combineren with a plant-based remedy. I stopped taking the herbal remedie half way the course (I did not do the course in 10 days but rather 20).

Thank you for this informative course. I had 10 hours sleep last night which was really restorative as I have a cold and need to recuperate. Many of the ideas were already familiar to me but it was good to be reminded of the importance of, for example, sleep hygiene. I’m so grateful to have found mindfulness as it has supported me for many years now. The connection between mindfulness and sleep is well explained and I will be using your suggestions to help me get a good night’s sleep every night 🙏🏼💕

Jason is very knowledgeable, well prepared and organized and has a great voice and delivery for lessons and meditations. He just needs to pause longer during meditations when he asks us to notice thoughts or emotions.

I like Jason’s courses a lot. They are never JUST about the topic. He gives you very interesting information and ideas about insomnia - stuff you didn’t know you didn’t know - but also interesting insights all around the periphery of the subject.

I almost didn’t take the course because I didn’t feel like I had insomnia, but I have been genuinely captivated by the information and Jason’s story telling abilities. I looked forward to hearing each lesson….

It’s a good one. Press play.