Getting a Good Night’s Sleep – Three Ways to Release Tension

Written By: Christopher May No Comment

There are three ways that will successfully allow you to get a good nights sleep if you’re feeling stress and tension. Most of our attention is caused by our thoughts and emotions. When we hold onto or carry that stress and tension into the end of the day. Often, the stress reactions and associated mental “tightness” of being will interfere with getting a good nights sleep.

How can we release these stressers?

Here are three things that you can do to reduce stress and tension which will allow you to sleep better. The first is releasing prayer, the second is appreciation and gratitude, and finally the third is breathing exercises.

1. One of the best prayers to use for quieting your mind and connecting you to your deep inner sense of love and compassion is the prayer of the four virtues. Recite this life prayers slowly and with great feeling. Imagine all those you love, whether they be friends, family and people all over the world, receiving the benefit of this blessing. Unite your heart and mind with that of your Higher Power, the Presence of God, Enlightened Mind, and the good forces in the universe.

Love to all beings,
North, South, East and West,
Above and below,
love to all beings.

Compassion to all beings,
North, South, East and West,
Above and below,
Compassion to all beings.

Joy to all beings,
North, South, East and West,
above and below,
Joy to all beings.

Serenity to all beings,
North, South, East and West,
Above and below,
Serenity to all beings.

You can recite this prayer three times for maximum benefit. Be sure to recite it slowly, deliberately and with all your mind and heart engaged.

2. Gratitude and appreciation are different experiences, but they have similar benefits. They dissolve all worry and fear. Gratitude unlocks the positive forces within your conscious mind, your subconscious mind and your soul.

Appreciation is a form of valuing every thing in your life. Appreciation is like a handshake between you and someone else. Appreciation in is embracing all the goodness in the world around us. The act of appreciation lets you go out into your environment to contact all of the beautiful, good, positive, wonderful energies at work in the world. You can even be appreciative of difficult, obstructive or challenging things around you and the world. This takes a little more practice though, so start with appreciation for those people, places and things which are easiest to enjoy.

Both gratitude and appreciation will relax your mind fill your heart with a sense of expansion and wonder and thereby relax your body.

Here’s what you can do: begin by being grateful for every thing that’s ever happened to you from your present moment going back in time as far as you can. You will likely fall asleep before you get all it back into childhood but it’s a wonderful exercise to try.

The appreciation part is even more vast. You can appreciate the air your breathing the sheets your sleeping on, the people who made the sheets, people in the store who sold them to you, the son that shown on the fields that grew the cotton, the people that harvested the cotton, the people the wall over the cotton and so on. Do you see how expansive this is? We’re only on the sheets. What about the rest of your life, such as, the food you eat, all of the elements that went into building the home or building your living room, everything about your life your education your job, in fact that when you get up in the morning the sun will be shining, that there’s beautiful air to breathe. Create an endless stream of appreciation for every aspect of the good and life.

3. The third exercise you can do is to breathe through all of the areas of your body that are tense. You can imagine an extremely positive experience and call upon the joy, love, tenderness, emotional warmth of that experience. Send that emotional energy through:

~ your head,
~ your neck,
~ jaw,
~ ears,
~ shoulders,
~ arms,
~ hands,
~ chest,
~ stomach,
~ back,
~ pelvis,
~ thighs,
~ knees,
~ ankles,
~ and toes.

Just take all the time in the world to enjoy the act of breathing and breathe through those parts of your body that are tense and the relaxation. This will release tension from your body, emotions and mind.

If your mind wanders away towards troubling thoughts while you’re doing any of these three exercises, then gently keep bringing your thoughts back to the act of prayer, gratitude, appreciation and breathing which releases tension.

To learn more healing methods for relaxing and getting a good nights sleep join us on our tele-seminar class at Ask a Spiritual Teacher, we will discuss ways of increasing the sacred, joyful and enriching part of our lives, while reducing tension and increasing energy.

Christopher Lee May