HOW TO STOP NIGHT-TIME WAKENING

SOME people get to sleep easily but wake up during the night, their minds racing, and find it difficult to get back to sleep.

This can be caused by your unconscious mind processing a worry or perhaps an idea or dilemma and then wanting to share its conclusions with your conscious mind. Until you’ve worked this through, you will struggle to go back to sleep.

The following exercise gives your unconscious mind an opportunity to communicate with you through symbolism. As you become aware of the symbols, tension is released.

You don’t need to understand them, just let them be processed by both parts of your mind — you can use this exercise when you first get into bed, but it is particularly useful when you have awoken in the middle of the night.

READ this exercise through carefully before doing it.

1. Imagine you are sitting in the middle of an auditorium. In front of you the curtains of the theatre are closed.

2. Invite your unconscious to use the stage to show you whatever it wants.

3. Watch the curtains of the theatre draw back and see what appears. Sometimes an image or some action will arrive straight away, sometimes the stage will be completely dark at the beginning.

4. If it starts off completely dark, just keep watching and let the imagery develop as slowly as it wishes. Let your unconscious mind release any tension by communicating with you by sending a symbol. It may be a chicken, a missile, an orange. It doesn’t matter. Just acknowledge the symbol and let the lights fade.

5. Keep watching. Let another image arise. There is no need to understand or interpret what you see. Equally, if you do get some meaning from it, that is fine too. Just let your unconscious show you as much as it wishes.

6. If you feel that your mind is especially active you can now combine this with image-streaming — that means describing what you are seeing with your internal voice in a gentle monotone. Or you can simply carry on watching, a silent observer, as you drift into sleep.