You can not fall asleep? This is how meditation helps!
Step 1: Switch off the alarm
It takes twenty minutes. But what about twenty minutes against a night that begins only after we have rolled back and forth for a felt eternity? Or in which we wake up after a few troubled hours and just can not stop the train of thought that is racing through our heads? After twenty minutes, methods such as autogenic training or progressive muscle relaxation according to Jacobson trigger a deep relaxation response: All bodily processes controlled by the autonomic nervous system calm down. The blood pressure decreases demonstrably, the musculature becomes noticeably looser, heart and breathing rhythm become calmer. New studies by scientists from Seoul (Korea) and Ankara (Turkey) show effects even in people who find it particularly difficult to sleep well: neurodermatitis patients, for example, or breast cancer patients.
"No matter how you relax, whether with music, with beautiful images that you create in mind, with muscle relaxation or breathing exercise: The stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline are thereby broken down - and they are real awakens ", so the general practitioner Ralf Maria Hölker from the Cologne Institute for Stress Reduction. He has developed a CD that specifically helps to relax breathing and musculature. It's best to do the exercises right before bedtime. The spoken instructions and music pieces help to make the responsibility for the course of the exercise and the duration easy. How much that can be achieved was demonstrated by a survey of 445 GPs who tested the CD with patients: 74 percent rated it as an effective sleep aid. It is best to practice several times a week, then in the optimal case, the so-called anchoring occurs: "Then you will calm down even at the moment, by inserting the CD." To continue: Dr. Ralf Maria Hölker: "Paths to Relaxation + Healthy Sleep", audio CD, 14.95 euros
2nd step: Scan instead of swallowing
A similar effect has also the so-called Body-Scan (Instructions Body-Scan see last page). An exercise that is often used as an introduction to meditation, where the body is systematically traced from head to toe. Body-Scan is part of the so-called Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR). These are the very popular courses that have been developed by the American professor of medicine Jon Kabat-Zinn in the late 1970s. It has long been known that MBSR can effectively reduce stress. New is the realization of how much the method brings with sleep problems: According to a recent study by the University of Minnesota An eight-week meditation or mindfulness training is as good for insomnia as taking sleeping pills over eight weeks and then as needed.
Step 3: Practice mindfulness
Also Dr. Inka Tuin, head of the psychosomatic sleep outpatient department at the University of Mainz, uses mindfulness training to help sleepers sleep well. "But it's not all about relaxation," says the psychotherapist: "Mindfulness is an attitude that disturbs your thoughts, feelings and physical sensations." The eight-week program she offers includes guided meditations, yoga sequences, and everyday exercises, such as eating mindfully, chewing, tasting, swallowing - a kind of alternative to multi-tasking our everyday lives.
All elements are about learning to bring the attention back to the present moment again and again. And to accept the bodily sensations, thoughts and feelings we perceive - by treating them with benevolent attention rather than judging or changing them. Through this we recognize over time: what I perceive now is just a thought or a feeling, and that passes. That's not me. That's how distance builds up. With more distance to disturbing feelings, not only do we get better through a bad night, we also find life less stressful, sleep better - and wake up more rested.
Body scan: a MBSR bodyguard by Jon Kabat-Zinn
1. Take about 30 minutes. 2. Come to rest, breathe deeply into the abdomen, and feel the abdominal wall rise and fall slightly with each breath. 3. Now turn your attention to the left foot. Imagine that you "breathe" to the toes. Feel the big toe, the little one, the toes in between.Register all sensations and tensions: Are your toes warm or cold, do you suddenly start to tingle? Whatever sensations arise - you just perceive them. Then imagine that exhaling releases all feelings and tensions. 4. In this way, you gradually draw your attention to the sole of the foot, instep, ankle, lower leg, knee, thigh, groin. 5. To do this, wipe off your entire body: right foot to groin, abdomen, buttocks and pelvis, spine from bottom to top, left hand to shoulder, right hand to shoulder, neck, neck, face, head. 6. At the end of the exercise you will feel your breathing again and then slowly return to the everyday reality. To continue: CD with accompanying book by Jon Kabat-Zinn: "Stress Management through the Practice of Mindfulness", Arbor Verlag, 19,90 Euro
