Weird physical symptoms from insomnia

[Jeff B]

Happy New Year to everyone!!

Chris,

Happy New Year to you and thanks for the compliment - I can assure you I am far from a Zen master. Just ask my wife!! She's seen me at my sleepless worst
Then again, I'm sure even Zen masters have their issues.

I've definitely had my share of trials and tribulations and have learned a lot from the "school of hard knocks"

I have been a student of the mind/body connection and the dynamics of performance, mostly because I needed to in order to improve the quality of my life. I suffered from terrible anxiety during my 20s and then the insomnia during my 30s.

In my life, the feeling of low self esteem that I mention and that you seem to relate to has many sources, but is often passed to us from prior generations. The Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn calls is "habit energy", that is passed to us. As kids, we are essentially sponges, so we suck up the habits from our parents. We have no choice.

So now, you own the feelings that your parents and to some degree, your parent's parents carried. This is why some of the feelings may even seem foreign to you, they may have originated in a past generation. If your grandfather didn't feel good about himself, your Father inherited that feeling and may have then passed it onto you.

Take a look at your lineage and see if you can figure out where the feelings came from. Is there any evidence of addiction, abuse or other evidence of low self-esteem?

Of course, our own experiences can contribute to our self-esteem. Failures, physical traits and other characteristics by which we are judged can lead to our own self judging. And since none of us is perfect, we can find plenty to focus on.

Western culture is great at helping us in this respect. Why? Because in a market driven culture what better way is there to motivate the masses to buy a product then to create a standard and then sell to all those who don't meet the standard (everyone).

Anyway, this is a message board about insomnia so how does this relate? It all comes back to mind/body dynamics as you so aptly termed it. Any thought pattern or habit that excessively internally directed can contribute to stress and insomnia. The energy of your mind is directed inward.

The psychology behind low self-esteem is probably the subject of thousands of books, so I won't attempt to address the reasons for the self-esteem issues.

All I know is that low-self esteem leads to inner directed thought patterns( self-consciousness, hyper vigilance, excessive analysis, etc) which is basically energy that is focused inward. If your mind's energy is a beam of light, self esteem issues can cause that light to be focused back onto itself. When your mind is relaxed and purely focused on a say, a flower or a delicious meal in front of you, the beam becomes like a laser with no dispersion. Our minds seem to work best in this mode. Others can feel this energy. We can feel it too, when we've achieved a relaxed, non-judgemental state of mind.

Have you ever danced freely to music or laughed uncontrollably at a funny comedian or been in a passionate make-out session with someone you love or been transfixed by a magician's performance? That is the feeling that I strive for: selfless and pure.

So, my quest has been to achieve that state of mind of pure externally focused energy so that my mind and body are free to operate in the their natural state.

This led me back to the whole self-esteem, self-consciousness issue.

The feelings of low self-esteem often seem to have emotional origins, usually from fear. A traumatic experience at one point along the way in our lineage or in our own lives. So, we need to stop the feelings and own them. How? By understanding them, feeling them and expressing them to another person or persons (to me, the primary purpose of psychological counseling). I'm not sure why this is necessary, but it seems to work. The feeling energy is dispersed out into the air - away from us and future generations.

It's a really interesting journey.

Thanks for the info about the nostril breathing. I had read about that technique and tried it, but wasn't able to do it. I think it must be an advanced breathing exercise. I am going to try it again. As your skill increases, you can notice more and more subtle things in your body. Thich Nhat Hahn talks about chewing milk. I've tried it and felt like I was chewing my teeth. More work to do....

Sorry for writing a book here. It's actually a great way for me to organize my thoughts that I've collected over the years. It occurred to me that maybe I should start a book or at least a blog.

Regards,

Jeff

[Desertdream]

Hi Burrellchrs,

I am sorry to hear about your insomnia. Have you had a Sleep Study yet? So many people think that they have insomnia, I was one of them , but actually it was Sleep Apnea which was constantly waking me up at night, and causing me to be an insomniac. Now I have a CPAP machine and I love it!!!!! I sleep like a baby now.

Good luck

[Burrellchrs]

Hi desert dream

Thanks for your concern but I'm pretty sure I don't have sleep apnea. I have trouble falling asleep but if I do sleep for long enough I feel absolutely fine. It's good you managed to get a sleep study done. In the UK, where I live, it's very difficult to do this because there are only two sleep research centres in the whole country. I'm pleased that you've managed to resolve your sleep problems - you're a very lucky person in this respect!
All the best, C

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