Seeking satisfying sleep
It’s 3 a.m. You’re awake again, staring at the clock and realizing that you have to get out of bed in a short amount of time to get ready for work. You know that you have to sleep – that you can’t function without it. But you still just can’t get to sleep.
You can’t really go a day without suffering from the effects insomnia. This is why people are willing to do almost anything to get a full night of sleep. Even people who normally don’t resort to taking pharmaceuticals will take sleeping pills to get the rest they need. You may have tried pills, but may have also tried a different bed, going to sleep super early, taking different sleeping herbs, drinking alcohol or working yourself so hard that you just collapse at the end of your day.
The problem with all of these solutions is that they actually set you up for worse sleeping problems in the future. Not only that, but they sap your vitality and open you up to all sorts of other health problems. Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix to a sleeping problem. You are going to need a full body solution, because it’s a full body problem.
- First, you need to establish a solid rhythm in your life. Most often, people with insomnia allow it to disrupt the rhythm of their entire life. You need to set up a regular bed time and waking time. This may seem a little counter-intuitive. If you don’t get enough sleep, you should sleep in, right? But constantly switching your body’s cycles only perpetuates the problem. If you sleep later in the day you will have a harder time getting to bed at night. If you set the alarm for six, get up at six.
- Second, you need to nourish every cell of your body at the deepest level. Often insomnia can be traced back to nutritional deficiencies. While I don’t think that it’s necessarily important to get a blood test to find out where your deficiency is, having a healthful, whole foods diet and appropriate supplementation for your situation can help to get at the root of chronic sleeping problems.
- Third, you need to investigate and understand what may have caused the sleeping problem in the first place. While this won’t apply to everyone, sometimes a person develops a sleeping problem due to some life event that disrupted them emotionally or mentally. For example, moving to a different house that has unfamiliar sounds can get someone into a disrupted sleep rhythm. If any of these emotional or mental disruptions are still in existence, finding ways of removing them can be helpful.
Sleeping never came easy to Eric. He discovered the steps above to be quite helpful in his own efforts to get better sleep. He also learned particular techniques and methods in Chinese Medicine to nourish the body. In particular, he finds that a combination of regular acupuncture, a customized Chinese herbal formula, and a daily Qi Gong practice is a great base of support for recovery from chronic sleeping problems. He is committed to helping his patients follow a similarly beneficial path. Eric graduated with honors from the National College of Natural Medicine and has been working with people suffering from sleeping problems since his days as a student.
