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SHAMANIC DIRECTIVES FOR ADDRESSING INSOMNIA

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.

PROVERBS 6:10

SHAMANIC TEACHING

Night is a garden for the spirit. Recognize it as a time to plant seeds for the harvest of spiritual dreams. If you are unable to sleep, consider this a time of preparation for the shamanic garden of the night, a time to till the soil and act as a steward of the dream landscape. As you lie awake, consider pretending to dream, dreaming yourself into dreaming. We sometimes worry about not sleeping. Is it better to be concerned over the planting and the harvesting, whether one is awake or asleep?

No matter what challenge you face, even insomnia, know that the winds of absurdity are available, ready to stretch any shrunken serious concern with the help of its partner, absurd play. Awaken the merriment of trickster wisdom, permitting it to enter the challenges of the night. Being awake is a classroom for learning how to prepare for the entry into dream, as dream should be the preparation for entry into the waking trance of the everyday.

DIRECTIVE: WATER LULLABY

Fill every glass you own with water and place these full glasses around your bed. When you retire for the evening, take a spoon and tap every glass so you hear it ring. Keep the ringing sound in your mind as you get into bed. Lie there imagining that the glasses are playing music all around you. Fantasize seeing a tiny angel flying from glass to glass, making the most beautiful music ever heard.

As you listen to this night music, try to turn it into a lazy lullaby. If you are unable to slow the music, get up and empty some of the water out of one of the glasses. (You will have to take the glass to the kitchen or bathroom.) Before going back to bed, sound each glass again with your spoon. Begin the music in your mind and try again to get that slow lullaby. Repeat the procedure over and over, emptying more and more water from different glasses, until the music is right. The right music will be a slow, hypnotic lullaby that comforts you into not caring whether or not you fall asleep.

Considerations

• Consider surrounding your bed with stones that you tap with a hammer before going to bed. Listen to the tapping sounds. Can you imagine an angel gently tap dancing around you?
• Place your favorite tapes or compact discs in a circle around your bed. Think of the music they hold as you retire.
• Open your favorite books and place them in a circle around your bed. Imagine their wisdom floating from the pages and entering your mind as you become relaxed.
• Write the words “sacred sleep” on soothing-colored paper. Place these sheets around your bed and sprinkle water on them before retiring.
• Write down every dream you can remember having on separate sheets of paper. If you can’t remember them, make up some dreams you wish you could have, or go get a book on dreams and write down some of the dreams you like from the book. Place these around your bed. Call it your “dream circle.”

DIRECTIVE: SAND AND AIR

Fill a small jar with sand. Five minutes before going to bed, open your jar of sand and place your fingers, one by one, into the bed of sand. As each finger goes into the sand, quietly say to yourself, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” Pretend that the sand puts your fingers into a state of complete relaxation.

Do this every night with a new jar until the entire area under your bed is filled with little jars of sand. When the task is complete, think about all the sand underneath your bed as often as you can during the day. In the evening, try not to think of the sand.

For every evening of peaceful sleep you receive, empty one jar of sand into a bucket that you keep in the closet. Place the empty jar underneath the bed. You will now begin creating more and more little jars full of air.

Throughout the day, think of this air and the sand sitting next to it. Again, try not to think of the air or the sand or the jars during the evening.

Considerations

• Think about places in the world that contain a great deal of sand—from Caribbean beaches to the Kalahari and Sahara Deserts. While resting over your bedroom sand, ask yourself if you are sleeping on a beach, a desert, or both.
• Experiment with various placements of the jars under your bed. Do you arrange them in symbolic patterns?
• Before going to bed, lie down on the floor next to your bed and stare at your jars for five minutes. Decide whether or not you will speak to them.
• Take a bottle of sand and a bottle of air with you to work. When you need to catch a brief nap or a moment of relaxation, take them out and set them in front of you.

DIRECTIVE: EARLY THEORIES OF SLEEP

Ask several parents who have young children to do you a favor. Have them ask their children how it is that a person is able to go to sleep.

Write down all the answers you get and study them. Know them by heart, and begin a collection of children’s theories on sleeping. Remind yourself that children have a special spiritual sensitivity, whether or not they are aware of it.

When you go to sleep, think of the many theories about sleep you have learned from these young teachers. Be grateful that your evening experiences have awakened you to the enchanting ideas of children.

Considerations

• Write down the names of several of your childhood friends. Imagine the sleep theories each might have come up with when they were children.
• Ask children about their dreams and what they think the dreams mean.
• Make up a dream you believe you could have had as a child. Guess what your childhood best friend might have said it meant.
• Ask a child to draw a picture of a dream he or she had. Ask him or her to give the dream a name. Draw your own conclusions as to how the name of the child’s dream explains the dream.
• Ask a child to imagine what kind of dreams dogs and cats have.

DIRECTIVE: REJOICING IN RELIEF

When you are unable to get to sleep, get up and lie down on the floor. You may use a blanket to keep you warm. Feel how long it takes before your body begins to feel uncomfortable. What part of you begins to ache first? As you experience the growing discomfort, think how good it will feel to get back into your bed. Do not allow yourself to return to the comfort of the mattress until you absolutely cannot take any more discomfort.

When you must get up, turn on a flashlight and write down the parts of your body that ache the most and are most relieved to get off the floor. After each body part you name, write, “Thank you, Jesus. I rejoice in getting up.” Go to bed thinking only of those parts of your body and rejoicing with the words, “Thank you.” Imagine they will go to sleep in a happy way, even if the rest of you is not appreciative. Lie there reflecting on a body that is already happy with how certain parts feel.

Considerations

• Consider which parts of your body are happiest about receiving relief from discomfort. Call those parts your “happy zones.” Are these the parts of your body that are most likely to become uncomfortable?
• Is discomfort a precondition for comfort? Think about this.
• Consider focusing on a previously unnoticed part of your body. Can you make it uncomfortable and then provide it with relief?
• See if you can pretend to be uncomfortable when you are not. Will that skill enable you to pretend to be comfortable when you are uncomfortable?
• Say “thank you” whenever you become aware that any part of your body is feeling different, whether it is becoming comfortable or uncomfortable. Contemplate how noticing the difference is an indication or communication that you are alive.
• Write a letter to your body’s happy zones. Ask them to teach the rest of your body to be as alive as they are.

DIRECTIVE: BACKWARD SLEEP

Before retiring, spend thirty minutes reading the Bible backward. Start at the end and read each sentence in the reverse direction. Say the name of Jesus backward, “Susej.”

Change out of your daytime clothes and then put your clothes on again. Repeat this undressing and dressing for six cycles. Each time say, “Susej.”

Go to the kitchen, get an empty glass, and pretend you’re drinking the air that is inside it. Then fill it up with water and leave the glass on the countertop. Do not drink it or pour it out. Say “Susej.”

Go to your bed and pull the covers back. Count backward from ten to zero and then make up the bed. Do this five times. Don’t forget to say, “Susej.” When you get into your bed, do not allow any of your thoughts to go forward. Everything in your mind must be done backward. Repeat “Susej.”

Say quietly to yourself, “I hope I stay awake tonight and get a good night of wakefulness. After all, it would teach me a lot about being backward.” Then say, “Susej.”

Considerations

• While doing these shamanic exercises, focus on the Japanese proverb, “For every truth, the opposite is also true.”
• Sign your name backward in some minor transaction.
• Begin the day by reversing the way you brush your teeth.
• End the evening by standing up in bed for a minute.
• Ask your unconscious to have a dream that mixes you up.

DIRECTIVE: PRETEND SLEEP

Go to bed and pretend you have fallen asleep. Pretend to sleep for at least half an hour. After the required pretend sleep, get up out of bed and pretend to sleep walk. Squint your eyes, allowing enough visibility for careful navigation, putting your arms straight out like Frankenstein, and walk around the house for at least ten minutes. Do not open your eyes fully or let your arms down. All eating and entertainment are off limits. You are restricted to doing the best job you can of walking in your sleep. Return to bed and pretend you are reading the Bible. Pretend to say a prayer, but remain silent. Lie down and think about pretending to be awake. Enjoy any confusion that may come upon you. Accept it as an advanced shamanic teaching.

Considerations

• After doing this directive for at least three nights, one evening simply pretend that you did it. Lie in bed and imagine going through all the steps.
• When you pretend to read the Bible, make nonsense sounds as you conduct your pretend reading.
• While walking in your sleep, decide whether you will walk in straight lines or circles. Experiment with different walking patterns.
• As you walk in your sleep with outstretched arms, hold a Bible in one hand and a candle in the other. Decide for yourself whether the candle will be lit or unlit.
• Wake up in the morning and pretend that you didn’t do any of the above, but simply dreamed of doing it.

DIRECTIVE: SLEEP SANDWICH

Have another person trace the outline of your whole body on a large piece of paper. Do this twice, so you end up with two full-scale body outlines. On one body write the words deep sleep as many times as it takes to fill in the entire space inside the outline. Place this “deep sleep body” under the part of your bed in which you sleep. On the other body write the word dreams as many times as it takes to fill up the outline. Attach this “dream body” to the ceiling immediately above the part of the bed in which you sleep.

When you retire for the evening, reflect on how you are the middle of a “sleep sandwich.” You are located midway between deep sleep and dreams. Imagine seeing the deep sleep body below you floating up into your own body on the bed. At the same time, see the dream body above you floating down into the middle body. Let all three of these body images merge into one another in as many different ways as you can imagine.

Considerations

• Consider painting each of the two bodies a different color. Which color would you choose for deep sleep and which for dreaming?
• Tie a string to the belly button of the dream body and let it hang all the way to the bed so it rubs against you as you sleep. Attach a string to the belly button of the deep sleep body and attach one end to the bed mattress or springs underneath.
• If you get hungry in the middle of the night, make yourself an edible sleep sandwich. Think of what bread, cracker, or other food will be the top, bottom, and middle slices. Think of your bedroom dream sandwich as you eat your kitchen dream sandwich. If you are on a diet, don’t eat more than one bite.
• Think of other bodies you could create besides the deep sleep and dream bodies. How many layers can you imagine?
• Before going to sleep, make a prayer to have a dream of entering a Holy Ghost body that will provide spiritual teaching through osmosis.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Don’t use the word “insomnia.” Instead, refer to this kind of situation as a time when the difference between sleep and waking is being stretched. Sleep and waking are stretched when you want to sleep, but can’t seem to do so. Rather than fighting the stretch, flow with it. The shamanic way to meet this situation is to join with the stretching and stretch it further. The further the difference between sleep and waking is stretched, the more likely you will make a transformation, which may include deep sleep.

Enter the stretch and play with the difference between sleep and waking. See how much you can learn in this play of contrary states of consciousness. The Christian shaman prays not only “Lay me down to sleep” but also “Lead me into playing with sleep, waking, and the differences that lie between.” The latter is the shamanic garden where mysterious seeds are harvested in the night.