Meditating on a Stressed Out Stomach With Insomnia

Insomnia by Jacob Stewart

Have you ever felt a tightness in your stomach when worried? Ever have that at night? For me, it’s like you’re lying in bed and someone has their hand on your belly and is squeezing.

You tell yourself that you accept everything with equanimity. Just let go and sleep. Yet, your stomach is not having any of that. It wants you to do something, now! Yet, it’s time to just be and sleep.

When one is concerned about an upcoming event, the tightness in the stomach is natural. There’s uncertainty and your stomach is sending a message saying get ready. When the message happens at night, one wishes they could kill the messenger ..or at least make it quiet.

Focusing on Something Else

Gently laying your focus on something else other than the event, may be just the thing to do. Focusing on how the sheets feel or gently rubbing your belly may do wonders. Since others have told me that reading a book, going for a walk, or doing something self-nurturing before trying to sleep is helpful, I shall experiment with that as well.

Getting Up

For me one night at 2:30 am, the answer was to get out of bed and start my morning routine. Crazy, right?

Part of my morning routine is to slowly jog and meditate. My friend, Dr. Wayne Buckhanan, playfully calls it jogitating. Once I was done jogitating, I was more in tune with my body. I felt more relaxed. I went back to bed and could sleep for a few more hours.

Write It Down

Another technique is to write down the item on my mind, leave it on the table by my bed, and promise that I will deal with it once I am up. That’s a promise to the stomach that I won’t forget. It’s similar to reassuring a friend that you care and that you will follow-up on the item as soon as the time is right.

Know Your Sensations

One technique I learned from a wonderful coach named Rae in the 10% Happier app was a technique similar to what I had learned before for handling pain. The goal is to really get to know the raw sensations in the tense and non-tense parts.

The technique starts by gradually feeling out where the boundaries of the tightness exist. Feel the calm outside of the tightness. Really zone in on the calm and then gradually shift your focus towards the boundary of the tightness. Does the tightness change its shape? What does the raw data of sensation feel like? Is it feeling different over time?

I can move in and truly get to know the raw sensations without adding a story or narrative to it. Just observe the raw data and see if there are any changes. If a thought pops up, I can note it and go back to exploring the sensations.

Next, I can pull back and observe the whole body, both the areas of tension and calm. Observing the specific areas and then pulling back and observing it all. Ideally, I would even do this exercise during the day before I need to go to sleep.

A Little More Exercise

Since I also jog as part of my morning routing, I also make sure that I job an extra 1000 steps. Fitbit helps me track that. Those extra steps make a world of difference.

Summary

The tightness in the stomach is like a little worried kid asking for some extra reassurance and attention. Reassuring, distracting, exploring, and extra exercise are all great ways for giving that kid a hug and saying that you’re here for them. What works for you? Feel free to tweet to me at @FinneyCanHelp on Twitter and let me know!

Anxiety? How Does One Start To Meditate?

Let’s say you feel anxiety. It’s a natural state of being that almost everyone experiences sometime in their life. Sometimes one feels it daily. How does one start to meditate and where does anxiety fit into the picture?

Good questions. It took me years to find the answers which you can have in mere minutes.

It depends if you want to start alone or with someone who can cover some common questions. Let’s start with a basic focus concept.

From Meditation Yields a Better Brain:

Is it that easy for adults to get started meditating? Yes, one can practice the vipassana, a mindfulness meditation. As described in the Huffington Post article by Sam Harris, one can meditate by focusing on the breath, recognizing distractions, and reverting ones attention back to the breath.

It’s a simple instruction. That’s all you need to start alone.

Yet, it’s often not easy to do and questions arise. So, there are people who are happy to share what they know. The two instructive meditation solutions that have resonated most strongly with me are the Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics by 10% Happier and Headspace.

In my opinion, 10% Happier does a great job with instructing a person how to meditate. Yet, Headspace does a great job of sharing certain concepts through animation. Let’s start with a Headspace concept and then move on to instruction.

An important concept was introduced to me originally as Blue Sky. Technically, the title of the following video is “Underlying calm”:

Once you understand the concept of Blue Sky, you can apply it within the context of anxiety or other dominant thoughts and feelings. Here is a Headspace video about anxiety from a meditation instructor, Andy:

Andy knows what he’s talking about. As seen on this TED Talk, he began this meditation journey due to his experiences with anxiety.

So, you have been introduced to some concepts. It’s okay if not everything in those videos make sense right away. We’re laying the foundation. Now it’s time to move on to the basic instruction of meditating. Here we shift our focus to 10% Happier.

If you have an iPhone, great. You can download the 10% Happier app for free. If you can, I suggest downloading right now.

If you can’t download the iPhone app, you can access the starting 10% Happier course material on the web for free. When you start, you will hear Dan Harris (ABC News anchor) and meditation instructor and Joseph Goldstein go over the initial ideas and first steps. If you need it, the front door to the 10% Happier website is http://www.10percenthappier.com

So, there you go. Hopefully, this helps you get started down a path of less suffering and more freedom in life. All I ask is that you share these concepts and resources with others. Together we can make life better for us all.