Need more sleep? There are approximately 70 million Americans who suffer from insomnia and over 9 million are on insomnia medication. Many people can develop this problem at due to different reasons, however does one eradicate insomnia at all levels? Sadhguru, yogi, mystic, and the foremost authority on yoga, provides insight into how to holistically handle insomnia.
(Insomnia: The Different Kinds & A Few Solutions – https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Gu-F5-oIpUM)
Sadhguru: Insomnia may be occurring for various reasons. There are some people who are sleeping well but they don’t know that they are sleeping well. There are some people who are not able to sleep well because maybe their body needs a certain amount of rest and they believe it needs more, so they are just working themselves up. I’ve met so many people who are quite okay, but they think they are not sleeping enough because doctor’s prescription of eight hours, they are not sleeping, they are sleeping only four hours. They are well, it’s okay. If you’re well, you are not sleep deprived and you’re sleeping three-four hours a day, it’s perfectly fine, that’s a good condition to be in. Or there are people who are unable to sleep because of their psychological situations. There are certain people who are not able to sleep because of their cellular or genetic situation.
You are not genetically in that state. Or in a cellular way, your body cells will not allow you to sleep for some reason, there are many reasons as to why. So, if you’re not able to sleep, I think you should join our garden department. Entire day, ten hours a day you work outside, you’ll fall asleep, if that doesn’t work, the simpler way is, if you get initiated into the Shambhavi kriya. For most people, Shambhavi does this. Sleep is death. Every day, people are dying for six hours or eight hours or four hours. What’s your choice? Less death or more death per day?Less death is good, isn’t it?
Sleep is a kind of lubrication tool for the system, not enough sleep means everything becomes frictious within you. So, if such frictious situations are happening, there are things to do. Not every human being needs to sleep for the same period of time, it’s a very wrong notion. Different people need different levels of sleep and one aspect of yoga or one focus of yoga is to how to reduce sleep because sleep is skipping life, isn’t it? People say, “I enjoy sleep.” Nobody can enjoy sleep. You enjoy the restfulness that sleep gives you. There is no way to enjoy sleep because in sleep both you and the world are obliterated, that is if you are really sleeping. But when you’re really sleeping, you don’t know what it is, you are not even there.
So you cannot enjoy sleep but the result of sleep is something we enjoy. What sleep does to us in terms of relaxation, in terms of restfulness, in terms of regeneration of the system – that we enjoy. So if your regeneration is really good, it may so happen the volume of sleep that you need will come down dramatically. If the pineal secretions increase. This is generally in India it’s called amrutha or the elixir of life. If amrutha begins to flow, one thing that’ll happen is sleep will go down because sleep is death. If on a certain day, it flows too much, you can’t sleep at all, this is a normal thing. So, for whatever reason you’re sleeping or not sleeping or not sleeping enough, if that’s an issue, you check in the morning how you are. If you’re feeling wonderful and you’re active through the day, forget about sleep. If you can go without sleep and you are very well, what’s the problem? Well, that won’t happen right now but if it happens, what is the issue, I’m asking? Only if you don’t know how to handle life, you want to sleep twelve hours a day, isn’t it? It’s a way of escaping.
Instead of that, at fifty, shoot yourself. Instead of living for hundred years and sleeping for twelve hours a day, live for fifty years and boom. I’m saying it just amounts to that. In a way, unconsciously, you’re trying to commit suicide. If you’re intending to sleep long without purpose, in a way it’s a suicide. You need the rest and you sleep, that’s fine, body needs rest.
Sadhguru will be personally offering Inner Engineering in Toronto, October 14th – 15th at the The International Centre. As Sadhguru rarely conducts this program, this is a unique opportunity to learn Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya, a life-transforming practice from him. To learn about the benefits of Shambhavi Kriya please click here. To learn more visit: www.InnerEngineering.com or contact us at toronto@ishafoundation.org/ 647-797-3350 (Canada)/ 931-400-5288 (US).
(Image obtained from: https://www.innerengineering.com/online/blog/troubled-by-insomnia )