Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk, author, and one of the vital influential religious voices of the twentieth century — a person preoccupied with solitude, silence, and the calls for of the inside life.
He’s greatest identified for his religious autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, which traces his stressed youth and eventual conversion to Catholicism.
As I discussed in final week’s Odds and Ends, I just lately re-read this guide and loved it. It’s filled with attention-grabbing religious insights. However I additionally picked up one thing else Merton talked about: a easy, sensible trick for falling asleep.
Thomas Merton’s Trick for Falling Asleep When You Can’t Fall Asleep
Merton found the method throughout his undergraduate years at Columbia College within the mid-Thirties. He was doing what numerous school college students do: looking for himself. He dabbled in Marxism and jazz. He additionally learn a whole bunch of texts on what he loosely referred to as “Oriental mysticism,” or what we now name Japanese philosophy.
Whereas Merton got here to treat most of this part as shallow and misguided, one factor he received out of it caught with him for the remainder of his life: a trick to go to sleep when you may’t go to sleep.
In The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton describes the method thusly:
You lie flat in mattress, and not using a pillow, your arms at your sides, and your legs straight out, and chill out all of your muscle tissue, and say to your self:
‘Now I’ve no ft, now I’ve no ft . . . no legs . . . no knees.’
Principally, you think about your physique disappearing, starting together with your ft and slowly working your means up. You think about every of your physique elements “become air and vanished away” — shins, knees, thighs, hips, stomach, arms, fingers, shoulders, repeating the absence of every half to your self till it genuinely feels “gone.” You retain shifting up your physique till you drift off to sleep.
Merton famous that this system normally labored for him, until he hadn’t fallen asleep by the point he received to his head; when that occurred, “Immediately, chest and abdomen and legs and ft all got here again to life with most exasperating actuality.” Fortuitously, he’d usually be conked out by the point he made his torso “disappear.”
Why Imagining Your Physique Disappearing Can Assist You Fall Asleep
Merton theorized the method labored as a result of it was a kind of auto-suggestion or simply plain outdated muscle leisure. Whenever you’re good and relaxed, you normally go to sleep. He wasn’t incorrect.
Most insomnia isn’t a physique downside. It’s a mind downside. Your thoughts latches onto one thing (like a piece e mail, a dialog that went poorly, no matter) and begins chewing on it. The more durable you attempt to cease ruminating, the louder the psychological chatter will get.
Merton’s method solves this with a form of cognitive sleight of hand. It offers your mind one thing particular and repetitive to do. “I’ve no ft. No ft. No legs.” The duty is participating sufficient to occupy the a part of your thoughts that desires to spin out, however boring sufficient to not hearth you up. You’re crowding out the rumination with out changing it with something that requires precise considering.
There are a few variations on Merton’s method which you could additionally attempt.
I’ve lengthy finished a model of this technique that comes at it from a associated however reverse angle.
After I was a child, I watched a present referred to as Below the Umbrella Tree. One episode featured Gloria the Gopher having issues falling asleep. Her resolution: she went by means of her physique elements one after the other, saying goodnight to every of them. “Time to fall asleep, leg. You’re getting heavier and heavier.” It made an impression on me and I began doing it, and I’ve been utilizing this trick ever since.
I discover imagining that every of my physique elements is getting heavier and heavier simpler to conceptualize than imagining that every half is disappearing. Although I’ve had the identical expertise as Merton: whereas I normally drift off to sleep by the point I get to my torso, if I attain my head, no matter leisure I achieved immediately reverses and I’m unsleeping.
You may as well attempt the strategy that was taught to Naval aviators throughout WWII, which could clear up the issue Merton and I’ve encountered. With this system, you think about every of your physique elements going completely lax and limp, beginning together with your head as a substitute of your ft; you first chill out your scalp, brow, jaw, and even your tongue, lips, and eyes, earlier than you begin shifting down your physique.
All of those approaches get you to the identical sleep-inducing place: a relaxed physique and thoughts. Experiment and see which one works for you; you’ll be sleeping with the beatific stillness of a monk very quickly.