Let’s talk about sleep! This morning, I had another great night’s sleep. It reminded me of this essay that I wrote a couple of years ago. It was originally published in Medium by Namaste Now! Back in the day, when Medium did this sort of thing, it was boosted.
A huge shoutout to Vidya Sury for making a home for my reflective writing in Namaste Now!
If you like the story below and want it “human” boosted, please share this Substack version with a friend who could use some help getting a solid night’s sleep.
I used to be able to doze anywhere. Once, I fell asleep on the set of a TV commercial featuring Marisa Tomei. Lights, cameras, and action surrounded me, but that didn’t stop me from snoozing away. I was twenty-something and a deer in headlights working props in New York City. I just ran out of steam. The crew must have felt sorry for me to let me go like that.
My second most memorable respite was on a wall along a city sidewalk in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was 1993, and I had just completed a multi-day ride from New Jersey to Maine and then to Milwaukee to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Harley-Davidson. I was in a sea of a hundred thousand bikers, roaring motorcycles, and bands playing street stages. They had no chance against my sleep superpowers.
Neither did three of my peers in graduate school. The four of us were packed into a room at the Hyatt in Atlanta for a conference. If you recall the hotel scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles — it was double that. Two twin beds and four grown man-boys, one of whom was snoring his face off. They were beating me with pillows to wake up, but to no avail.
I’m not sure when I lost this special gift. Maybe when we got Gus, the dog, my powers somehow transferred to him. He’s the new sleep genius in town — ready, willing, and able to drift off to a slumber amid a five-alarm fire. As for me, that blaze is burning in my brain. Getting enough quality rest became a significant hurdle.
I never had to do anything special to fall asleep. I didn’t count sheep. I didn’t need a white noise machine, earplugs, a dark room, or eye covering. I also wasn’t into religion, so I didn’t have a ritual of saying prayers at night.
Today, things look a lot different. You’ll find me with a heating pad on my lower back, doing crazy things like flossing before bed and requiring a CPAP to make it through the night without being recorded on the Richter scale. Instead of finding me dead asleep, I’m lying in bed thinking. I hope my son made it home safely. I have to work on the taxes. I should get up and respond to that email I looked at before bed. I shouldn’t read emails so soon before bed. I wonder how my uncle is doing. I should call my dad tomorrow.
With all this extra time awake in bed, I decided to start meditating a few years ago. The thing is, it wasn’t meditation. I was doing thought experiments. What is the relationship between motion and time? Is time all in our minds? What happens when we die? What is real?
That was all kinds of fun and much better than thinking about work and taxes. I generated poetry. I learned things about myself and the world around me. And all this lying awake didn’t seem so bad. I was able to cherish the time instead of wishing I was asleep. I was grateful. I get to be here, totally relaxed, in the safety and comfort of my home, with a wonderful wife by my side and Gus, the dog, at the foot of the bed.
It was all fun and games until Tomorrow-Andrew had to deal with the reality of minimal shuteye. It turns out that sleep is vital for things like having a rational conversation and paying attention to anything. I used to believe I was a lousy reader. I repeatedly read the same paragraph, trying to comprehend it, and then my eyes would grow heavy. I’d have to quit reading or fall asleep. I was just exhausted. I had no idea I was a good reader. I just needed a sound night to recover.
My current sleep hack is an unexpected evolution of these nightly thought experiments, learning about different meditation techniques, and incorporating lessons from my professional life. I cannot remember the details of how each element came together, but the result is a nightly routine that has helped me fall asleep quickly. When I wake up in the middle of the night and devolve into a spinning mind distracted by work or worry — the method helps me quickly get back to sleep.
This is my nightly prayer:
Rapid body scan relaxation meditation
One statement of gratitude from today
A daily rose-thorn-bud retrospective
Metta meditation
That’s it.
In practice, a guided body scan moves through every part of the body. Relax the right toes. Relax the right foot. Relax the right lower leg. Relax the right knee. On and on, it goes to the crown of the head and the left side of the body. I find it difficult to guide myself and find the tension. Rather, without words, I seek the parts of my body that are stiff. Relax the mouth. Let your jaw rest and the pressure in your mouth go. Breathe through your nose. Open your hands. Let your feet fall to the side.
Once I feel like a peaceful puddle in bed, I move on to a statement of gratitude from today. I’m grateful for the family dinner we had tonight.
I usually can’t help myself, so I’ll go on to say a few more things I’m thankful for from the day. It’s hard to boil it down to just one thing. But my goal is to move through the whole routine before falling asleep. If I dwell on one thing, like gratitude, for too long, it becomes a wakeful wormhole. When I move quickly through the routine, I fall asleep before finishing.
On good days, I’m out before I get to the gratitude. Most days, I fall asleep somewhere in the middle of the retrospective. Some days, I’m doing Metta. Those days are few and far between, so much so that I try to find time to do Metta during the day. It’s become somewhat of a race. Can I get through the whole enchilada before falling asleep?
If I get past that statement of gratitude and am still awake, it’s time for the retrospective. I use a method called rose-thorn-bud, which I learned in product development. We would have a pile of sticky notes and give each a color. Roses are red, thorns are yellow, and buds are green. The color choice makes sorting easy after the group exercise. Roses represent things that went well, thorns represent things that went awry, and buds represent opportunities for improvement.
For my nightly routine, this is an individual activity without sticky notes. To keep it quick, I limit it to one thing from today. Rose? Hmmm… I’m proud of myself for finding time to read today. Thorn? Let’s see… I didn’t do a good job listening to Abby while hanging out and making dinner. I was distracted with my phone. Tomorrow, I’ll put it in the office for dinner. Bud? I didn’t know what to expect from the coffee-outside bike ride. I liked it a lot. I’m going to invest more time into that.
In rare circumstances, I am still awake after the retrospective, so I move on to the Metta meditation. This is a loving-kindness mantra that begins with the self. May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease. Then, the meditation moves on to my closest loved ones. It then extends to family and friends, neighbors, and people with whom I have challenging relationships. It culminates in reaching all people, beings, and things everywhere.
Thank you for reading. May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you be happy. May you live with ease. And may you sleep with ease.
Thank you for reading.
Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.
— Andrew
Amazing what we have to do to get a few minutes of extra good sleep these days!