Why am I so tired that I can’t sleep?

It might sound absolutely ridiculous that you can be so tired that you can’t sleep, but it’s true. Suffering from insomnia is extremely stressful. When you are in a very stressed state, your body has gone into the fight or flight response. The fight or flight response is your body’s reaction to stress. Your body does not know the difference between mental and physical stress and reacts in the same way. When you are in this state, your body is unconsciously preparing you to act quickly.  To give you an idea, I have listed below what happens to your system when under stress:-

• Breathing speeds up
• Blood pressure up
• Heart rate up
• Breathing faster
• Stress hormones
• Blood clotting
• Immunity goes down as your body has no time to focus on germs!
• Your digestive system is compromised

In this state, it is unlikely that you will be able to get a good nights sleep, your body needs to calm down first.  You have to do something that will bring your heart rate down and quieten the mind, from there everything else will follow. When you  go to sleep, your brain waves go from active beta waves to relaxed alpha waves and so on. It is unlikely that while your brain is ticking away at the level of beta waves, even if you are exhausted, that you will go into a healthy good nights sleep.

Sleep is about balance, in particular a balanced nervous system. Whilst we all want some magic potions that will send us off into dreamland, if we want to heal holistically without the side effects many drugs have, we have to unravel ourselves. You need to look at ‘all’ the areas of your life.  Simply going off to meditate now and then is not going to work. If you are serious about healing your insomnia, you need to actively participate in the journey and make some radical lifestyle changes that will bring your life back into equilibrium. These are a few of the areas that need to be in balance.

• Work life balance
• Contact with nature
• Quiet solitude
• Massage and self nurturing
• Diet

Apart from the more obvious elements of our life, Ayurveda (ancient Indian medicine, translated as ‘the science of life’), has special gifts to offer us, in that it accepts everyone of us as an individual. As an individual, therefore, we will have different needs to remain in balance. If you are interested in finding out more about Ayurveda, click here.

Remember, sleep is about balance.