Inside Yoga 217 (20/11/2017)

We are told to concentrate and focus when practising, keeping a meditative awareness yet as many of us will have noticed sleepiness gets in the way, preventing us and troubling us when all we want to do is practice yoga. But is sleepiness the problem?

The simple answer is no, being sleepy is not a problem but it is part of the process. It is a process of practice which starts by ridding us of what we do not need in our life, and this can be an excess of tiredness which is probably built up over a long period of time, that when try to meditate we struggle with tiredness.

Basically, if you are tired when trying to meditate or after a strong session of yoga asanas as well, it is your body telling you that sleep is needed – perhaps have an early night tonight? We, and I mean most of us, try to stay awake longer than our bodies (and our minds) like, whether it is due to commitments, habit or lifestyle in general.

Periodically a student will ask about the problem of sleepiness. What can I do, is the usual question. Firstly, I say, don’t worry about being tired, especially when in seated meditation. I give this answer because the person often feels that they are doing something wrong and that they don’t know how to meditate. We might focus on staying awake but if we feel very sleepy then that is part of the meditation at that moment in time, and the instruction is to acknowledge this as part of the process we happen to be experiencing, as part of mindfulness meditation. And keep practising, because eventually the tiredness does disappear, it could be during the same session or over the course of days or weeks.

What is important is that we become more in touch with our own needs, our physical and emotional rhythms which affect our how we are on a day-to-day, weekly, monthly and seasonal basis. After all, the point of yoga, which means union, is to establish a sense of union with ourselves. We ignore our own needs driving ourselves onward and wonder why we crash into exhaustion periodically – that is not union but separation.

Sleepiness is especially relevant at this time of year, when in the UK, we have short days, lack of sunlight, and colder weather; around us nature is beginning to bed down for winter with some animals hibernating and many plants lose their leaves, while we as humans try to maintain the same energy levels and activity that we had during the summer. We ignore the signs at our peril. Now I do realise that we have to work, we have family duties and we have all that Christmas shopping to do, but there are ways we can allow for our lower levels on energy and greater tiredness. We can go to bed earlier for example, we can rest when possible and when it comes to practice we can adapt and make it more suitable for how we feel that day.

The yoga practice (the full combination of exercise both breathing and physical with meditative breathing) is designed to activate and reconnect with our parasympathetic nervous system as opposed to the sympathetic system. The former is the process which helps us to sleep and relax, while the latter is the process which helps us to be on alert and active. What can happen is that we become addicted to being alert and awake, through habit or necessity, and forget how to switch off, a good example of this is a person who is chronically stressed (could be work or anything causing this) and this person does not know how to switch off.

This could be any of us, always busy and wondering why we cannot stop and relax? Learning to connect with ourselves is part of the process of healing this unhealthy pattern before it all goes wrong (whether it be illness, loss of work etc).

Attending yoga classes to practice asanas (physical exercises) helps to release the accumulation of tension, fatigue, restlessness (this list of negative states is long) and leave us in a place where we feel more relaxed and at the same time, more alert, which can sound contradictory but a refreshed body and mind can be aware and awake.

I better add this point just in case you are now thinking that no more yoga just sleep is better. This is not the point, because the yoga practice is very important is recalibrating our body-mind balance so that we feel like an engine which is working perfectly. In fact, with our fluctuating states of being that we go through our yoga practice is the one constant factor.

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