An active mind can keep you awake well past your bedtime, but a simple meditation technique can help you forget the stress of the day, relax and fall asleep faster.
After a long day of work it’s not always the case that my mind and body agree that it’s time to wind down and get some sleep. Usually at about 11 PM my body is tired but when I lie down to sleep my mind keeps at a constant whirr. This battle between mind and body is the recipe for insomnia.
Several months ago - and many restless nights later - I decided enough is enough and conceived a way to help me relax my mind and fall asleep faster. I recollected a meditation exercise I learned about 15 years ago while taking classes in Vadha (an Indian form of karate).
It’s a simple meditation that helps you take all of the energy in your body, focus it and then let it explode out of you into space. In karate class, we used it as a way to focus energy for things like breaking wood, bricks or cinderblocks. (OK, I used it for the wood, my instructor took on the bricks and cinderblocks.) I found that it was also a great way to focus all of my energy at the end of the day and release it, so both my mind and my body were relaxed. My instructor always had us visualize our energy as blue, so in keeping with that tradition I’ll do the same here.
(I should note that I’m no expert and I don’t consider this meditation per se, but instead a simple trick to relax my mind at the end of a busy day.)
Here are the steps to relax your mind using Blue Energy:
Imagine your body filled with a blue gas, swarming all around, fillng up every part of you.
Starting with your toes, to your feet and up your legs, slowly gather up all of this energy from each leg — feeling your toes, feet and legs relax as the energy leaves — and center it in your stomach area.
Do the same for your arms — slowly pulling the blue energy from the finger tips, hands, arms, shoulder and down into your stomach, letting it join the rest, creating an even larger ball of blue energy.
Again, pull the energy down from your head, neck and chest and add it to the spinning ball of blue energy that now fills your stomach area.
This ball of blue energy now contains everything — all of your worries, stresses and fears — and with it all together, shoot it out of the top of your head, through the wall, outside, and straight up into the sky. Watch it shoot past the tree tops, through the clouds and into space.
Feel your body relaxed and empty. Now, you’re ready to sleep.
This simple exercise helps me relax my mind and body simultaneously, which allows me to fall asleep faster after a stressful day. Give it a try and leave your relaxation suggestions in the comments.
Ryan Irelan, web geek and orange freak, writes at ryanirelan.com and works as a Web Producer for Airbag Industries.