Insomnia, especially long-term insomnia, is tough. Whether you can’t fall asleep, wake in the middle of the night, or wake too early in the morning, recurring sleeplessness wears on the nerves and emotions.
 
Sometimes the reason for a bad night’s sleep is clearly connected to anxiety or anticipation over what’s happening in your life. For example, there may be an upcoming event, a significant life change, or a big decision to make.

However, when the reasons are not as obvious or when insomnia persists, that’s an indicator of deeper issues that we may be having trouble facing. During the day while our egos are alert, our defenses may consciously or unconsciously block difficult things from our awareness. When let go into sleep our defenses go to sleep as well, and blocked issues have the chance to bubble up to the surface of consciousness.​

Treating Insomnia
As I’ve endeavored to face fears and follow my heart, I’ve spent some dark hours awake and alone in the middle of the night in various states of anxiety and acceptance.  
 
It’s natural to want to “cure” insomnia as quickly as possible, since a restful night’s sleep is right up there with air, water, shelter, and food on the list of fundamental human needs. Bedtime routines and sleep hygiene can help, as well as listening to a calming meditation before bed. The Internet offers many suggestions and resources. Alternatively, there are a wide variety of pills available.
 
Of the various over-the-counter remedies such as melatonin, Advil-PM, and Valerian, melatonin has given the best results for me. Because it’s non-habit forming, unlike most prescription sleep aids, I don’t worry about the side effects. Yoga Nidra recordings have also been a go-to aid to relax me back to sleep.
 
But at a certain point my sleep aids failed to work, and this pushed me to look for a deeper self-healing approach.
 
Turning to Intuition
In dealing with insomnia, I’ve had to accept how strong my fears can be and how supremely gentle, compassionate, and creative my approach must be in uncovering them.

After raging against the symptom and not making progress, I finally got to a place where surrender became the only option. With surrender, my perspective changed—I found gratitude for my symptoms, and a new level of humility.  It became apparent that having this experience was necessary to inspire me to change.
 
At the suggestion of a trusted practitioner, I decided to practice what I preach: see my insomnia as a mirror, turn on the receptivity of my intuitive self, and listen and learn.
 
Here are the suggested intuitive practice steps that I have found helpful.
 
Steps for Intuitive Practice
1. Accept and Surrender

• Accept that there is something you are afraid or unwilling to see. Accept that physical well-being depends on finding courage to go deeper and see what’s there.
• Surrender to the insomnia. If you use sleep aids, for 1–2 days a week you may choose to put them aside and commit to being present with what happens, using the steps below. However, if you use prescription sleep aids that may be combined with anti-depressants or any other medication, please check with your doctor before making any changes.
• Vow to go through the process with compassion and gentleness. This includes cutting yourself slack in your waking life on days when you don’t get much rest. Create a cushion of space and time to allow healing to take place. For example, if you normally have your daily activities planned back-to-back, consider scheduling less. If you are a parent, arrange for a few extra hours of child care to allow for rest during the day. If this seems completely undoable, then your daily routine could be the first place to investigate for the source of your sleep issues.

 
2. Celebrate

• Have an internal celebration, knowing that the release of whatever is causing your insomnia holds the key to potentially deep and significant healing in your life. If it wasn’t a big deal, it wouldn’t be hidden this deep. Know that the “dark” part of what is being brought to light is wrapped around a strength or innate gift. When you bring that part of yourself out of the dark, the gifts that are associated with it will be freed as well.

 
3. Organize

• Keep a journal and pen next to your bed.
• If you share your bed, find a small source of light, such as a headlamp, that you can turn on at night without waking your bed mate.

 
4. Notice and Write
When you wake up in the night, pay attention to what is in your awareness. Collect this awareness in a semi-waking state, then sit up and write down what you noticed. For example,

• If you wake from a dream, note the subject/theme/symbol/character in your dream.
• If you wake with a thought or feeling, note what or who you are thinking about. (For example, a song lyric or a memory that has emotional significance)
• If you lay in bed unable to get to sleep, note the thoughts in your head. Drop out of your mind and into your heart, feel into your body. What is the predominant sensation or emotion? Sit up and write it down.

Write as many plain details as you can. Don’t worry if they don’t make sense or seem random. When you are fully awake later on you can begin to connect the dots. Write down the time of night with each entry and leave journal space for later reflection. Do this each time you wake up or can’t get to sleep.
 
5. Reflect
Set aside time during the day to review your notes. In your waking state write your impressions in the blank space after each entry. Here are some tips to make this meaningful:

• Look at the information through the lens of metaphor. The deepest parts of our consciousness speak to us in metaphors, archetypes, and symbols. Drop your literal interpretation and look for what the messages represent or symbolize in your life.
• Meditate on a character or memory or concept from your notes. Ask the question, “Why is this person/place/experience in my awareness at night when I am trying to sleep?” Then be quiet and allow images, words, or knowing to come.
• Dialogue with a character or image in your dream. Use a pen and paper. Select the character and write its name on top of the page with your dominant hand and set the intention to let the character speak through you. With your non-dominant hand write a question, such as, “Why are you in my dream?” Then put the pen in your dominant hand, relax, and listen for the voice of the character, writing down whatever messages or images you get.
• Notice if the time of your insomnia has a pattern, like waking up each night at 3:00am. Reference the Chinese Five Element Time Table (below) which maps the elements and body meridians onto the 24-hour day. Find the element that governs the hour(s) of your insomnia and read about its qualities, especially the emotion associated with that element.

 
6. See Patterns/Make Choices

• Every few days or each week, take inventory of the messages and patterns. Notice if you begin to receive more awarenesses in your waking day.
• Consciously slow down and allow yourself to feel the feelings associated with your awarenesses. These can be difficult feelings, such as loneliness, grief, anxiety, fear, or shame. As the feelings come to the surface, the wounds and patterns they are linked to can begin to heal.
• When issues are very deep, it can be tough to get to them on your own since the defensive ego works very hard to keep us “safe” in the familiar and protect us from seeing what is in the shadow, or the unconscious. You may choose to work with a trusted therapist, energy healer, or intuitive counselor to support your exploration and help bring an objective perspective.

 
My Results
I’m grateful to say that implementing this approach has improved my sleep and provided healing insight in my waking life. Although there may still be some wakeful nights, I no longer go to bed with anxiety about insomnia. I’ve come to appreciate the opportunity to walk through the doorway of my inner awareness when it opens, even when it looks dark.
 
May you sleep and dream well.
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Chinese Five Element Time Table

The repeated violent events of recent weeks have been heartbreaking, frightening, and confusing. It’s easy to become overwhelmed trying to process and understand what’s happening in the world. We want to do something that can help, but wonder what we could possibly to do help make real change.
 
If you believe, or are willing to consider, that we are all connected and creating our reality, then there are things you can do right now in your own inner world to make a difference. Here’s one way: 
 
Make a commitment, to the best of your ability, to disengage yourself from all forms of attack.
 
Attack?
 
You attack every day. I attack every day. We do it rarely in our actions, sometimes in our speech, and regularly in our thoughts.
 
Any blameful statement or thought about yourself or another person is a form of attack.
 
Any time you feel righteous in judging or punishing yourself or someone else because they did wrong, that is a form of attack.
 
The shooters all felt righteous or justified in their actions. We know they were not thinking correctly. We know they were lost when they made those choices. This is clear to us.
 
But some things are not as clear to us. Though we are not murderers or bombers, we may still hold violent beliefs. We may believe in punishment, retaliation, and revenge on people who wrong us. We may believe that it’s normal and even healthy to counter attack someone who has attacked us. In our culture, these types of beliefs are status quo, politically and socially. In many circles, this way of thinking is accepted as normal.
 
This is where we have a blind spot.
 
Can Violence Create Peace?
In response to our grief and sadness over the violence we’ve seen and felt, we may talk and gather to promote peace. If at the same time we harbor hateful, judgmental, or vengeful thoughts about the gunmen, the police, or anyone involved, we are perpetuating the very energy we desire to stop.
 
If it’s okay to attack certain people at certain times but not okay to attack other people, then which people get attacked and when is a subjective decision that’s rationalized through whatever belief system we’re operating under at the moment. This approach relies on vilifying the “other” to justify overtaking and dominating the things that scare or threaten us. This may seem to work to control conflict in the short term, but over time the energy of violence continues to build.
 
Today we find ourselves in a violent and volatile situation wondering how we got here.
 
Until we can reconsider counterattack as a go-to response to feeling vulnerable, how can peace begin to grow around us?
 
We Are Creators
We are all individuals contributing to the collective tone and mood of our country and world—as creators.  Our daily thoughts and words have physical power. Can we find the courage to look within ourselves for the hidden places where we may be perpetuating the very things we fear?
 
Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed this so eloquently when he spoke about how darkness cannot drive out darkness. Hate + hate = only more hate. If we want less hate and violence in the world (and if you are still reading, I believe you do) we need not wait for law enforcement or government to bring it to us. We can choose to reduce the hate that comes out of us as individuals.
 
Notice your reaction as you read the next sentences.
 
I am never justified in attacking anyone or anything. When I feel the desire to attack as a path toward safety or justice, I am not seeing things clearly.
 
The No-Attack Diet
I invite you to participate in this exercise as a humble but powerful gesture to honor the people who have been attacked, hurt, or killed in the past weeks and months. 

1. Consider that judgmental or blameful thoughts and word are forms of energetic attack.
   
   
2. Become willing to stop attacking with your energy.
   
   
3. Raise your awareness to witness your own judgmental and blameful words and thoughts. This could range from careless gossiping at work to blameful posts on social media to angry rants about a political candidate.
   
   
4. When you witness yourself engaging in these forms of attack, choose to stop as soon as you can find the awareness to do so.
   
   If you are speaking, stop talking and let there be silence. If the people around seem confused, you might simply say, "On second thought, I don't want to go down that road. Let's change the subject."
   
   If you are thinking, change your thought as fast as you can. Pick an alternate thought as a go-to so that you are ready. For example, “If I find myself having judgmental thoughts, I will quickly switch my thoughts to the weather, my dog, or what’s for lunch.
   
   
5. For one day endeavor to stop all forms of hating and judging. Apply this exercise to all people and things, both good and bad, right and wrong, loved and feared, beautiful and ugly, friends and foes. If you do this earnestly, you may find it very challenging. Embrace the challenge and honor your efforts.
   ​
6. Refocus your attention on what you do want to see and create in your life. Use your time and energy to envision that reality.

We can reduce hate and judgment in the world by reducing it in ourselves. Not only do we have the power to do something, we are the only ones who have power over what we create as individuals.  Don’t minimize your individual thoughts and words as insignificant— they contain the power of creation. This matters—and if you make a change, it will make a difference.

​The Energy of Resistance
I’m sure you can think of a few things in the world and in yourself that you’d like to change or eliminate—painful events, uncomfortable situations, and destructive behaviors. The irony is that the more we resist or attack the things we perceive as negative or harmful, the more they persist. When you resist or attack something—a person, a policy, or a rule—you are trying to push it away or destroy it. This requires an investment of energy.
 
Energy is energy. In its raw form energy is neither positive nor negative—it’s pure power and potential. When you hate or resist something, you are giving it power and potential. This is why it is actually very hard to get away from something you strongly resist. In fact, resistance creates the opposite affect—the resisted person, place, or thing actually becomes more dominant in your life and your mind. Can you recall a time when you experienced this?
 
An extreme example of this is family feuds. Two or more families decide they hate each other. They engage in an ongoing tit-for-tat war that lasts generations, never letting the other go and becoming completely entwined in their fates. Their hatred binds them together—perhaps even more deeply than families bound by love. We sometimes say “they love to hate each other” because we can sense the negative pleasure in their struggle and resistance.
 
We create similar types of energetic feuds in our lives and our society. A few examples are the war on drugs, the fight against cancer, and the race against hate. Each of these efforts comes from a seed of positive intention, but when the effort is turned into a fight against what is not wanted it can create the opposite effect.

​We have grown accustomed to--and so good at—fighting things, so it will take a deepening of awareness and intention to see that a different approach can be more productive.
 
The Energy of Creation
The energetic reality is what we resist, we attract and what we fight, we feed. Knowing this we can begin to see the consequence of fighting against things we don’t want, instead of letting go, standing our ground, and refocusing our attention on what we do want. For example, what if the month of October was changed from "Breast Cancer Awareness Month" to “Breast Health Awareness Month”? Can you feel how the energy changes as the focus changes?
 
This does not mean we lay down and let harmful people, places, and things have their way with us. Setting firm boundaries is a healthy thing and is very different from resistance. In fact, when we resist something we are breaking down healthy boundaries by pushing our energy out instead of containing our energy within ourselves, where it has all its power.
 
Resistance paralyzes our creative energy. With our attention focused on what we don’t want to experience, we have little energy and space to focus on what we do want create. And herein may lie the key to understanding why resistance is such a popular reaction.
 
For many of us, the decision to identify and move toward our desires takes much more courage and maturity than the choice to pick a fight, dig in our heels, and cycle in resistance and struggle. When you refocus attention on what you do want, you are taking responsibility for your decisions, setting your sights on a new vision, putting yourself out there, taking chances, and stretching out of your comfort zone.
 
Figuring out what we are willing to commit to and move toward in our lives is not usually easy. Realizing and categorizing what we don’t want is often the first step in this process, and we may spend some time exploring this step. The trick is to avoid building up a resistance that keeps you running away from something instead of running toward your desires.
 
Try This!
Take a moment to think of one thing you are resisting, or energetically running away from. Maybe it’s a job that no longer engages you or a relationship that is draining. Take a deep breath, and in your mind’s eye visualize yourself calling back all the resistance energy you have invested in this person or situation. Feel the energy coming back in to your body, filling you up. You may notice your body relax as you release.
 
Now drop your attention down out of your mind and into your heart. Take a breath and ask yourself, “If I don’t want this, what is it that I do desire?” Continue to breath and listen/see/feel/know what comes up. You might take a few minutes to journal about your experience. How does your body feel as you let go of resistance and open to your true desires? Do you feel free, excited, angry, nervous, fearful, unsure? Notice whatever comes up and let it be. As you do this you’re introducing to your energy system a new, creative pathway of possibilities.
 
You can use this approach anytime you feel a resistance reaction coming on.

“Happy is the heart that still feels pain”
from “Everybody” by Ingrid Michaelson

When we close our hearts to ourselves
Your heart center feels deeply whatever is going on within and around you. It is a dynamic energy center, opening and closing to allow or reduce the flow of energy (and awareness).

When we experience pain or hurt, one way to escape the uncomfortable feeling is to close the heart. We do this unconsciously out of habit. It’s common in our culture as a learned way of dealing with pain. But you can also choose to consciously hold the heart open during difficult experiences. When you do this you open to transform, connect, and even flourish in the face of pain.

For example, when going through the grief of losing a loved one, if you can hold your heart open through the experience you will learn, grow, and develop depth of connection with yourself and your loved ones. These types of growth experience are what change our lives. 

However when you close your heart to yourself, difficult situations can turn into experiences of apathy, isolation, depression, or desperation. 

Think about a difficult situation in which you or the people around you were closed and disconnected. (Some of us may experience this commonly at home or at work!) Then think of a situation where you or the people around you were open to feeling and connecting through the process. Which one was more fulfilling? More transformative? Which one was more painful?

Making the choice
Although we reference the heart fondly in our culture, we don’t get much instruction or explicit role modeling on how to embrace life through the heart. In some circles, having an open heart might be seen as weak. Or for those of us who have been hurt and learned to shut down, it may even be seen as stupid or careless.

How do you change this pattern? First, be open to the concept that the pain of an open heart is much less than the pain of a closed heart. Then the challenge becomes more internal—how do we keep our hearts open in face of our own self-judgment?

When things are going well and outer life reinforces our idealized self-image, we tend to feel more open. But when we experience failure, rejection, or loneliness the tendency is to close the heart to self to avoid seeing and feeling what does not match our self-image. As a consequence, we disconnect from self and from intuitive awareness.

When we say someone is bitter or hardened, we are referring to their long-standing choice to close their heart in reaction to some experience. We can intuitively feel how they have shut down the connection and flow in their life. It becomes hard to relate to them. It may even feel unhealthy to be around them. You might have been one of these people at some point in your life. Bitterness in its extreme state reveals what is happening on a more subtle level when we close our hearts temporarily. We are actually cutting off our life force.

Which comes first, the pain or the closing?
So you might say, “When I feel hurt or angry, my heart just naturally closes. It’s hard to help it.” But which really comes first—the ongoing hurt or the heart closing? If you become aware in the moment and choose to keep your heart open, you will feel the hurt but it will continue to flow through without shutting you down. Your energy will expand and your experience can be different.

The heart center
Oh, the heart--an amazingly loyal organ whose steady beat reminds us we are alive. However, when we say, “follow your heart” or “open your heart,” we’re no longer referring to the physical heart. Rather, we are perceiving the energetic heart center that is located in the area of the chest. If you are familiar with the eastern chakra system, the heart center is known as the fourth chakra or heart chakra.

The heart chakra is the center of compassion, love, and connection to self and others. Self-connection is a prerequisite for intuitive awareness, so if you want to grow your intuition, growing your heart connection is a good place to begin.

The heart is sensitive—it feels deeply and these feelings carry information. At the same time the heart is strong and associated with courage and bravery. As a result, open-hearted self-connection allows you to be intuitive, strong, and loving.

What does an open-hearted person look like?
We may associate an open heart with feelings of joy, happiness, playfulness, and fun. While all of these are true and wonderful, there is much more. A person who is committed to living with an open heart will also experience painful feelings, because when the heart is open it’s feeling all that happens in the moment. The more open you are, the more you will feel.

The heart governs our abilities of acceptance, connection, and compassion. So the heart’s role is to enable acceptance of all experiences. All heart-based feelings have value and purpose.

An open-hearted person may look kind and gentle in one situation, but fierce and determined in another. Having an open heart does not make you a push over. Quite the opposite, heart connection gives you access to your personal truth and the resources to manifest it in the world.

Think of leaders who have changed the world. Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of my favorite examples. The path he walked, the commitments he made, and the strength they required were fueled by deep connection to his truth at the heart level. To truly manifest your purpose and your full expression in the world requires your heart. We express this intuitively when we say things like “it’s not for the faint of heart.”

When we are struggling to be decisive and when choices are difficult and unclear, we are told, “follow your heart.” When you are learning to open and follow your heart, it helps to learn how to physically connect to and experience your energetic heart in your body. Try these steps to practice.

    Heart Connection Meditation

1. Sit quietly. Take several deep breaths to relax your body. Close your eyes.
2. Focus your attention on your heart center: the area of your chest behind your sternum.
3. Follow each breathe into your lungs, allowing the breath to soften and awaken your heart center. 
4. Continue this focused breathing for one to five minutes. Allow your heart to open to yourself as much as you are ready to at this time. Gently notice the sensations and emotions, noticing and letting go of any judgment that might come up.
5. End with a smile to yourself. Then go say hello to a friend, neighbor, or loved one.