Free Your Mind

I seem to know a lot of quotes in relation to this topic. But my goal isn't to give you those. Look them up yourself. But after another bout with restlessness amounting in a horrid night of lack of sleep, I realized that is it time for a change.

While my last month begins along side the rattling, screeching tracks of the EL, I am choosing not to choose public transportation as a source for my nightmares and gappy sleep. I may be proven wrong come October, but we'll see about that.

And with the turn of a new lease bringing an early birthday gift from my parents, I am also choosing not to blame my less than comfortable, squeaking, sagging bed. It may very well change my sleeping patterns, but that isn't what I want to focus on. (I realize that the combination of a new bed and no train eliminates the 'control' for the ensuing experiment. But this isn't science class. This is my life. So any success will be welcomed.)

So ignoring the train (ha) and bed, I addressed something that has been a relative constant in my life, thus a problem that will not change with my residence or nightly resting place. I have an active mind. It's fast paced. It's a product of our generation. It's a product of high speed internet and immediate text messages. My generation has an attention span that can only be measured in nanoseconds. And all that training keeps my thoughts rolling through more often than the locomotives at Belmont Station. When I lay awake, and I've said this before, my thoughts plague me. Things I wanted to say but didn't. Situations that get played out in my head. Scary influences from TV shows or movies (Side note, I'm sick of watching True Blood before bed. Messed up 'dreams.') Blasts from the past. Jarring conversations. Extreme heat. Everything. These things follow one after another. a high turnover rate procession of jagged images and upsetting thoughts that do their best to keep me awake. My brain is too active for my body to rest. This past Sunday was the worst. And so it lead me to try and fix this. Here's what I came up with.

I have been reduced to laying on my back, repeating long inhales through my nose followed by slow exhales through my mouth, trying to, and I quote, 'find my breath.' It's Always Sunny fans, rejoice. This is what I found on the 'internet' and was the closest mixture of yoga, meditation, zen, and humorous TV show references that I could scrounge up. My way of doing this was to actually imagine air particles as something of color that you can see. And I imagined these little green particles entering my nasal cavity, flowing down the back of my esophagus, and circulating into my lungs. Then I watched those particles calmly exit my body and disperse in front of my face. I felt better. I felt relaxed. And I slept better. I still had a long, complicated dream involving old friends, upcoming events, and people still on my mind, but at least I wasn't too tired when I woke up. And it wasn't a nightmare that startled me awake. I guess that's a good start. Maybe in October, I'll finally be able to enjoy a full night's sleep.