Finding a hobby that helps you to sleep better seems like such a minor thing – except for people who struggle with crappy sleep. For them it’s a literal lifesaver because sleeping problems suck bad.
In our fast-paced lives, more and more of us are catching the insomniac bug. I’ll take a wild guess that it’s probably something to do with these three words: devices, stress and busy.
We’re always switched ON,
and it can be really hard to switch back off.
My sleeping problems were almost as old as I was.
Thanks to my cranking addiction issues, from the ages of 15-40 I rarely slept naturally.
I either passed out stoned every night, drunk, or after being awake for days on meth *shudder*.
But my sleep issues went back further than my addictions. I was plagued by nightmares for years. Every night my dreams revolved around the theme of hell, the end of the world, the apocalypse or the third world war. And they invoked terror in me because dreams feel real.
I reason I had these dreams, was I had a belief system installed (a ‘program’) which was a control tactic of the sect I was born and raised in.
If you did not ‘obey’ (the bible, the pastor, your elders, your husband, etc), when the world ended and Jesus returned, only his sheep (yep I was a sheep) would be saved. Everyone else would burn in hell, screaming in agony with their flesh melting off for all of eternity. Jesus and his flock of ‘chosen ones’ however, wouldn’t have one hair on the head singed. I swear just typing this sounds mental, yet this was my reality.
When I got out at 15 with my sister, we became ‘unsaved’ backsliders. Backsliders were the evilest of Satan’s tribe and we cursed and disowned. We were thrown out of the garden like Eve for munching on her apple. And my nightmares began. Good times these were.
During my waking hours I learned how to shove this ‘program’ away from my conscious mind (with distraction/avoidance and addiction), but every night it came for me in my dreams.
I dealt with this by developing a heavy weed addiction. Weed stopped me remembering my dreams and it knocked me out.
So I began ripping bongs like my life depended on it.
I used to smoke bongs to get to sleep, and I’d wake up during the night and smoke cones. I’d smoke bongs before work (when I had a job). I’d be pulling cones even if I had bronchitis and I got highly anxious if I couldn’t get it.
I wasn’t able to sleep without weed. It wasn’t quality sleep either, just a stoned knockout kind of thing. And I did this for over 20 years.
I also used alcohol on a daily basis to pass out (unless I was ridiculously hung over). I was also a meth addict who stayed awake for days at a time. Then eventually, often at the point of weird surreal delirium, you’d pass out.
So that was my unhealthy relationship with sleep…wedged in there among all that embarrassing raw detail.
Sleep and I never had a healthy relationship until around three years ago.
These days I don’t use anything to get to sleep, except reading and sometimes a little bit of ASMR to wind down (can’t believe I actually just outed myself there).
I find it pretty easy to sleep – which is absolutely due to my healthy lifestyle and the fact that I’ve cleared out all the shadows in my subconscious which fueled my nightmares. Sleep and I have a great relationship these days.
It's commonly accepted that mindfulness, meditation and relaxation practices can help you to sleep better.
There are tons of highly respected articles and studies on how meditation practices help you sleep better. Mindful drawing helps in exactly the same way – it helps you sleep better simply because it calms your body and mind. It helps it you to unwind.
Good quality sleep just isn’t something which would be kinda nice to have, it’s probably the most important foundation of a healthy life. Your body restores itself and heals in sleep mode. Your mood the next day is better, and you can go about your day functioning in peak performance, which you simply cannot do without a good night’s sleep.
Another way to sleep better, is to play, and tap into laughter more. Genuine laughter means you’re more relaxed rather than uptight and stressed, and this means you’ll sleep better.
Mindful drawing helps you tap into the playful, creative big kid in you.
Never let this kid die, because they day you do you’ll begin to age FAST – starting from the inside out. But you can reconnect with the playful kid inside you any time you choose.
Our inner kid often (understandably) gets buried underneath the heavies of life, but dig that kid back out!
It doesn’t mean you become childish or immature, and don’t fathom the weight or depth of life at all. It means you’re just tapping into all facets of the exquisite being that you are. Wise you, serious mature you, and playful joyful kid YOU – all facets of you exist in the same energetic space.
At the other end of the sleep scale, people with depression and low lifeforce find it easy to oversleep.
Sadness and depression are slow, heavy, low frequencies, and this equals oversleep (and also low gamma waves).
I did this for around a year. I didn’t want to get out of bed to face the day. My life sucked at that stage, I had nothing to look forward to. I was stuck in groundhog day down at rock bottom.
Mindful drawing can help lift depression by bringing joy and spark back. This raises your lifeforce which raises high-frequency gamma waves, which raises your vibration. You feel lighter and less heavy, and if you give it time AND do the work, there is every chance soon you’ll be springing out of bed in the morning.
There’s a wealth of information on the internet about how mindful practices help you to sleep better. But to get anything out of them you have to do the work. There’s no way around it. But mindful drawing, is fun. I can teach you how to do it here.
Mindful drawing for an hour in the afternoon will relax you. It’ll help you unwind. And when you slow your mind down, you slow your brainwaves down, which slows your nervous system and your heart rate down.
It’ll help unplug you from your devices, manage stress and take a step back from the busyness of the day. All this means you’ll have a far better night’s sleep.
