The Yoga of Sleep

Toward a New Science of Consciousness

Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence. It is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it.  Not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Volume 1, pg. 237

OVERVIEW

Consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries, perhaps the greatest mystery that exists for modern science. Some look to philosophy for help, others to quantum physics, still others to studies of near-death experience, psychedelics and parapsychological phenomena. 

But perhaps the science of sleep, and particularly the science of yogic sleep, can provide a more readily accessible means of understanding consciousness, as well as a natural method for investigating it. 

We begin this exploration with a mainstream method that was designed to cure insomnia by realigning our nervous system and physiology with its natural sleep cycle. Why might such a physical approach shed light on the mystery of consciousness and serve as a gateway to a radically new science of consciousness? Because in order to create a reliable, scientific exploration of deeper states of consciousness, creating a stable physical foundation is a crucial first step.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY FOR INSOMNIA (“CBT-I”) –

A PRIMARILY BEHAVIORAL INTERVENTION

In 2016, the American College of Physicians recommended using Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) as the first-line approach for treatment of the rapidly growing epidemic of insomnia.

CBT-I has several components. The two that have gotten the most scientific support are Sleep Restriction (developed in 1971 by neurologist Dr. Art Spielman), and Stimulus Control (developed in 1972 by psychologist Dr. Richard Bootzin).

• Sleep Restriction is prescribed for the purpose of strengthening a person’s natural sleep-wake cycle. It is intended to address the counterproductive tendency of many individuals suffering from insomnia who try to resolve their problem by spending extra time in bed. So, as an example, if they typically spent an average of 7 hours in bed, but actually slept only 4 of those hours, in an attempt to get more sleep they would extend their time in bed to 8 or 9 hours. But that rarely results in more hours of sleep.
  
  The technique of Sleep Restriction is incredibly simple. By restricting the time in bed – to as little as 5 ½ hours – you increase the person’s “sleep hunger” (a popular term for the biological need for sleep). When a person’s sleep hunger is sufficiently strong, it is easy for them to fall asleep. However, for many people, such extreme restriction is difficult because it usually results in a significant increase of daytime fatigue during the two to three weeks of its duration. For them, “Sleep Compression” – decreasing the time in bed gradually, rather than all at once – is an effective alternative. Sleep Restriction/Compression alone has been shown to cure insomnia in at least 30% of cases, even the most severe ones.

• Stimulus Control is based on the principle of classical conditioning. Remember Pavlov’s dog who was trained to salivate by pairing the sound of a bell with the presentation of food? Similarly, people with insomnia are often unconsciously conditioned to associate their bed with a tense wakefulness and the anguish of struggling to fall asleep. So even if they were to start nodding off to sleep while reading or watching a movie, the moment they got into bed, they would suddenly become wide awake. 

The basic rule of Stimulus Control is simple – if you’re in bed for more than 15-20 minutes and unable to sleep, get out of bed (or just sit up in bed) and do something calming. Listen to quiet music, do some gentle stretching, read something that is not too stimulating or engaging, and when you feel so sleepy that you can’t keep your eyes open, get back in bed.

The above descriptions are highly simplified. In practice, it usually requires considerable guidance over the course of 4 to 6 weeks to effectively implement these methods. It’s important to note that even though it is called Cognitive Behavior Therapy, it primarily involves these two behavioral interventions. Despite this limitation, CBT-I achieves significantly improved sleep in 70-80% of cases, and total cure in roughly 50% of cases (that is, assuming people are following through on the interventions). 

Toward a Science of Consciousness – A First Step

The value of CBT-I for the study of consciousness is that it helps to bring greater stability, harmony and ease to the body consciousness, which could otherwise be a source of hard-to-control variables that would significantly distort research results when studying profound states of consciousness. 

EFFORTLESS MINDFULNESS

In 2010, Dr. Jason Ong observed that the greatest obstacle to the effectiveness of CBT-I was the tense, effortful adherence that people tended to bring to its behavioral practices. This anxiety about getting it right and having success often simply made the person’s insomnia worse. It occurred to him that Mindfulness – the calm, non-judgmental observation of present-moment experience without any attempt to control or manipulate it –could be a “game changer” for CBT-I.

Over the past 14 years, many CBT-I therapists have, in fact, incorporated mindfulness into their practice with clearly improved overall results. 

However, there remained the significant problem that the way many people learn mindfulness also involves an unpleasant degree of tense effort. For many, “being in the moment, non-judgmentally allowing the experience to just be what it is” becomes simply one more project to be forcefully mastered. Over the past 10 years, to counter this tendency toward excessive effort, there has been a small but rapidly growing movement known as “Effortless Mindfulness” which offers a radically different approach.  

Rather than struggling to accept and not judge their experience, or striving to achieve the goal of being present, Effortless Mindfulness teachers such as Loch Kelly, Dan Siegel, and Lisa Dale Miller are guiding people – including children as young as 5 years old – to recognize the calm, peaceful awareness that is always already present as the background of our experience. Rather than efforting to achieve a mindful state, it calls for the most gentle shift of attention away from the content of experience to the calm, peaceful context in which it arises – what yogis have called “timeless awareness.” 

Mindfulness in general, and the deeply peaceful sense of calm it puts us in touch with, has proven to be an effective antidote to the stress and anxiety that may accompany attempts to conform to the behavioral interventions of CBT-I. Effortless Mindfulness is an even more effective means of providing a connection to the timeless awareness that underlies all our experience, and which provides a powerful support to CBT-I.

Toward a Science of Consciousness - A Second Step

With CBT-I, we can create a stable physical foundation for the investigation of the deeper consciousness that is revealed in dream and sleep.

With Effortless Mindfulness, we increase one’s capacity to stably abide in the deeply peaceful, non-reactive awareness underlying all experience. This is crucial to being able to view and report on one’s inner experience with the accuracy and objectivity needed for a science of consciousness. (One might argue that it could be a helpful training for a physically-based science as well.)

YOGA NIDRA – literally, “Yogic Sleep”

Based on a practice that is several thousand years old, Yoga Nidra is an unusually powerful means of radically improving sleep. The behavioral discipline of CBT-I, combined with the capacity for calm stable, inner observation afforded by Effortless Mindfulness provides an ideal foundation for the profound experience of yogic sleep. 

If you’ve ever taken a yoga class, you’ve most likely experienced Yoga Nidra. It’s usually something you do at the end of the class lying down, arms at your side, often with gentle music in the background, being led through some form of deep relaxation. The modern form of Yoga Nidra, the form practiced in most yoga classes, was developed by a Danish man in the 1960s who went by the name Swami Satyananda Saraswati. However, the basic practice of yogic sleep is thousands of years old and has a radically different aim than the kind of deep relaxation taught in yoga classes. 

Toward a Science of Consciousness – A Third Step

Understanding the nature of this aim points to something far beyond CBT-I, Effortless Mindfulness, and simple relaxation exercises. Yoga Nidra is designed to encourage a profound letting go of the movements of the surface consciousness, resulting in an even greater inner stability from which to explore the profound states of consciousness we traverse (usually without knowing it) during the various stages of sleep.  

What follows is a brief description of some of those profound states of consciousness.

Lucid dreaming

As your Yoga Nidra practice deepens, and you become more established in this calm effortless awareness, several things can happen:

• The experience of your body may slowly shift from being experienced as a solid object to being experienced as a flow of energy.

• Your thoughts, along with your sense of yourself, may become more and more dream-like – that is, the rational connections of the everyday waking consciousness tend to become more fluid and change more rapidly.

• You may start to notice increasingly vivid images – and if you’re able to keep from falling into unconsciousness, these images may eventually come together into a three-dimensional dream environment.

• By means of a very gentle intention, it is possible to then “will” yourself into this dream environment and find yourself fully conscious within the dream state. 

Lucid sleep

If you are able to sustain consciousness for a significant amount of time within the dream state, another possibility opens up. Human language was not developed to describe this wordless, thoughtless (though fully conscious) state, so I’ll just say that, with the gentlest of intentions, it is possible to intentionally allow the dream to dissolve, and find yourself in a boundless, luminous, blissful state of consciousness that is devoid of any apparent objects.

Lucid waking

Returning to waking consciousness from this state, your perception of what appeared to be a purely outer world may be completely transformed. What was previously experienced as a world of solid, independent objects may now be experienced more as an ocean of Consciousness – undulating yet Still and Silent, endlessly changing yet utterly Changeless, impersonal yet deeply Personal.

As you can see from the apparent contradictions and paradoxical phrasing of the last paragraph, there is little one can say about lucid waking that will make sense without having gone through the steps of stabilizing the body, stabilizing one’s capacity for recognizing the ever-present state of calm, peaceful awareness, and actually having the experience of lucid dreaming, as well as lucid sleep.  

However, you may have gotten a sense of how the practices of CBT-I, Effortless Mindfulness, and Yoga Nidra can together offer a solid preparation and fertile ground for exploring both the nature of consciousness and the nature of the universe. Tibetan Buddhist teacher B. Alan Wallace has, in fact, already developed a 9-month training program at The Samatha Institute in order to teach these very methods for the purpose of developing a new scientific methodology which he refers to as “radical empiricism.”  

In closing, let’s ponder for a moment the possible nature of a fundamentally different approach to examining the world of our experience, as well as some of the potential avenues of exploration that would open if we began with the radical empiricism of lucid waking:

• We might no longer investigate the forms appearing within Consciousness as fundamentally different from ourselves

• We might collaborate with other scientists who have developed at least some capacity for lucid waking and communicate with them in what now appear to be paranormal ways, but which within a radically empirical approach would be quite normal. For example, we might be able to actually perceive and explore forms together as they emerge from, and are shaped by, the underlying Consciousness.

• We might no longer have need for precise mathematical measurements as, together, we directly perceive the “Ideas” or archetypes or “Logos” out of which all forms in the universe come into being, moment after timeless moment

• We might find that the very essence of what we call matter, life, or mind is revealed to be utterly different than what we have believed from the dawn of science until now. 

And perhaps, with such explorations, we may eventually arrive at a true understanding and direct perception of   what Sri Aurobindo meant when he wrote that,  

“Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence  it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it  not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself. For instance, when consciousness in its movement or rather a certain stress of movement forgets itself in the action it becomes an apparently unconscious” energy; when it forgets itself in the form it becomes the electron, the atom, the material object. In reality, it is still consciousness that works in the energy and determines the form and the evolution of form. When it wants to liberate itself, slowly, evolutionarily, out of Matter, but still in the form, it emerges as life, as animal, as man and it can go on evolving itself still farther out of its involution and become something more than [human].

Letters on Yoga, pg. 237-238