Insomnia is a symptom which is also responsible for many ailments in the physical body. When one is suffering from insomnia one should understand that one has something wrong in one’s body, and later this will develop into something else. The digestive system is upset by insomnia. Then there are diseases due to malnutrition. Those people who are not able to sleep properly often have a bad liver. In the course of time, insomnia disturbs the normal function of the system and when the nervous system is disturbed you are not able to cope with your day-to-day work. You get tired and exhausted.
In the modern system, when one is suffering from insomnia one is usually given sleeping pills. The sleeping pills give relief no doubt, but they do not eradicate the cause of the problem. Quite often the malfunctioning of hormones in the body is responsible for insomnia. For example, if there is malfunctioning of the adrenal gland then you suffer from anxiety neurosis. Many times you will have noticed that when you are worried about some aspect of your life, then you have the symptoms of insomnia. Therefore, it is very necessary that people must know how to sleep well naturally. In this respect, yoga plays a vital role.
There are many practices of yoga which lead to a good sleep. In the brain there are frequencies known as brain waves. At different times these waves keep on changing. You have delta waves, theta waves, alpha and beta waves and these waves indicate the electrical frequencies operating inside the brain. It is necessary to bring down the high frequency of the brain, especially at night. When the frequencies in the brain become minimal then there is minimal activity in the body and the consumption of oxygen also falls to a minimum. When you sleep well you conserve more energy for the next day. When you cannot sleep in the night you are using oxygen, therefore the oxygen will be depleted when you are supposed to work. If you read the scientific manuals on yoga you will come to realize one important point: in yoga you use minimum oxygen.
In yoga, sleep is considered to be very important because according to yogic philosophy, sleep is not a passive state. During deep sleep the individual becomes very dynamic on the unconscious plane and he is very close to his inner being. That is the exact reason why sleep gives you so much energy, so much freshness and so much bliss. In deep sleep there is only a veil between you and your inner being, therefore you must know how to sleep well. It is precisely for this reason that yoga has designed certain disciplines.
Empty Stomach
The first discipline in yoga regarding insomnia is that you should not sleep with a loaded stomach. When you go to bed, your stomach must be empty. If there is food in the stomach at night then there is the possibility of hyper-acidity and fermentation. As a result of the presence of food in the stomach, you have strange schizophrenic dreams which disturb the sleep. Therefore, the minimum time difference suggested in yoga between your dinner and going to bed is three hours. This difference of three hours is for vegetarians. For non-vegetarians it should be more than three; it should be five hours.
Left Side
The second discipline is when you go to bed, you must lie down on your left. Some people prefer to sleep fat on the back, others prefer to sleep on the right and many people sleep on the stomach. These three positions are not regarded as scientific. Except in exceptional cases you should try to avoid these three. Those who are suffering from slipped disc or sciatica, should sleep on the stomach, but for the average person it should be on the left side because that works the heart to the minimum.
Mantra
The third discipline is, before going to bed, you must sit down for ten to twenty minutes. Even if you are tired, you must sit down before sleeping. It is not only for those who are suffering from insomnia, it is meant all of us, even for me, because when you go to bed the subconscious mind comes into the forefront. You begin to worry at that time. You begin to remember all that is not necessary. You make castles in the air. You get into impossible fantasies. So much so that you cannot sleep and you go on changing your position: right, left and both, then get up for a while and smoke a little and then take a little tea or coffee. Then it is two o’clock in the morning. This happens with most people. Nobody wants it but still they have it because they do not know that sleep is a mental condition affecting the body. Sleep is not a physiological condition affecting the mind. Sleep is a mental condition, and the concentration should be in the form of a mantra. You must repeat your mantra and if you do not have a mantra chant Om, as Om is the universal sound. Or you can just chant Jesus, Jesus. Or you can go on chanting Guru, Guru. Whatever it is you must have a name which will create tranquillity, peace and unity in the mind before you are about to sleep. It is also good to have a small mala of twenty-seven beads without a stop in between. Usually the malas have a stop in between, called sumeru, ‘the top’, but the malas which you use in the night before going to bed should not have that interruption.
Yoga Nidra
Now, there is a fourth important discipline, the practice known as yoga nidra. It is one of the most powerful methods ever known to mankind. Before I go on to tell you about yoga nidra, I will tell you something else. In 1968 I approached the government of India for a research grant. They granted me money for research for a period of five years. During this period we taught yoga nidra to more than one thousand patients suffering from coronary diseases. You will be surprised to know that the results were fantastic and they were beyond even my expectations. I have a good friend in India. He is an eminent cardiologist and he teaches yoga to his patients who are suffering from hypertension. During the course of his profession he has found that yoga nidra has been able to help these people immensely.
The practice of yoga nidra can be done first with the help of a teacher. What is the practice of yoga nidra? In the physical body you have many parts like the thumb and the fingers, the lips and the nose, the hip and waist, your big and small toes. You have seventy-six centres in the external body. These centres have a counterpart in the gyrus of the brain and when you think about one, then the second or third part of the body, a certain sensation is created. This sensation is in the form of a feeling and is carried to the remotest centre in the brain gyrus. As soon as this sensation is communicated to the brain gyrus, relaxation takes place immediately. It is not necessary to even concentrate on the organs; it is enough if you just feel them.
This practice was discovered by me while studying tantra. In those days I used to practise the tantric rituals and in these tantric rituals that I was performing there were many things that I could not understand. One of the rituals is, you touch the thumb, second finger, third finger, fourth finger, fifth finger, palm, right eye, left eye, nose and I did not know why I was to practise this. Whenever I used to practise the feeling of the different parts of the body according to the tantric ritual, I used to feel a sort of drowsiness as if I had taken a sleeping pill.
I then studied biology, anatomy, and the medical sciences and I realized that it was necessary for me to tell people that by thinking of the different organs in the body you can create tranquillity and sleep in your body. There is a simple experiment you can do by yourself. Lie down in the pose of relaxation and keep on thinking of your ten fingers, then ten toes and other organs of the body one by one. You will never know when you finished them. This is the practice of yoga nidra.
Trataka
Before you practise yoga nidra there is another important practice which I want to suggest for the people who are suffering from insomnia. Before you go to bed at night, light a candle so that the fame of the candle is not much higher than the level of your eyes, and the fame of the candle should not flicker. You gaze at the fame of the candle without blinking the eyes for as long as possible, then close the eyes. After closing your eyes concentrate on the mid-eyebrow centre and try to visualize the counter-effect of the light on the retina. Do it a few times, then practise your japa, practise your mantra. Then lie down fat on your back and practise a little bit of yoga nidra and you’ll have sound sleep. I hope my reply to your question will help you.
1 October 1982, Hotel Nepheli, Thessaloniki, Greece