Dr. Patricia Carrington explains why, in many instances, meditating helps insomnia and other sleep problems.
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This audio clip is excerpted from Dr. Patricia Carrington’s Learn to Meditate Course
Now another area that seems to respond very well to meditation is insomnia. As you probably know, if you’re tense, it’s often difficult to get to sleep, to stay asleep, or to have a comfortable, restful sleep, even if you manage not to wake up. So that one of the results of meditation that many people find extremely useful is that it tends to normalize sleep patterns.
Again, of course, it doesn’t always do this, but a person who has learned to meditate will often report that a previously unacceptable sleep pattern has changed, often dramatically, after they commenced meditating.
This means that a person who wasn’t able to get to sleep at night without great difficulty And delay, may now be able to fall asleep quickly, and sleep more restfully, and for longer hours, once they start meditation.
And, on the other hand, some people who regularly oversleep, and find it very difficult to get up in the morning, often report that, after starting to meditate, they now need less sleep.
So then, what meditation seems to do is not to increase or decrease sleep, but to normalize it; bring it into a better balance. As a matter of fact, on many levels, this is what meditation does. It seems to have a regulatory function so that the meditative system achieves a better balance and it functions more smoothly.
