I have never been a good sleeper. Usually it takes me a quite a while to fall asleep and I often wake up during the night. There are some things that I know I should avoid before going to bed like browsing on/playing with my smartphone or watching TV but I have to admit that I’m not really disciplined at that. For me the biggest problem is calming down and ease my mind before going to sleep and usually I still keep thinking about work, plans, meetings, my to do list, etc. when the lights are off.
Recently, I read about meditation for a better sleep and I really intend to do it regularly to see if it has an effect on my sleep.
Kundalini meditation for a better sleep
This sleep meditation is quite easy, even for meditation beginners like me:
Position
Sit in Easy Pose with a straight spine and hands in the lap in Buddha Mudra (palms up, right hand on top of the left, thumbs touching.
Eyes closes about 9/10th and focused on the tip of the nose. This causes the optic nerves to cross at athe thirds eye and should therefore help to bring the mental focus to the third eye. It helps to bring the arms up parallel to the ground, palms up as this will balance the right and left hemisphere of your brain.
For me, this is very hard to do and sometimes my eyes even hurt from trying too much. So I decided to gently close the eyes instead and I’m sure that’s fine, too.
Breathing and mantra
The breathing and mentally singing the mantra goes hand in hand in this mediation. The breath is regulated in 22 beats, following a 4 – 16 – 2 rhythm. This gives the mind the power to stretch to the infinite.
In numerology, 22 is considered as the most powerful number, also called the master builder and is able to achieve what is hardly imaginable, like the mastery over the mental realm.
Inhale to 4 (divide the inhale into 4 sniffs) and mentally vibrate SA TA NA MA with the four parts of the inhale.
Hold the breath and mentally repeat 4 times the SA TA NA MA mantra again, so this will be 16 counts.
Exhale to 2, mentally projecting WAHE GURU.
This meditation can last 15 – 62 minutes, so for starters something around 20 minutes should be fine.
Meaning of the mantra
The mantra SA TA NA MA WAHE GURU can be translated as following:
SA = birth, beginning
TA = life, existence
NA = death
MA = rebirth
WAHE = the indescribable joy of…
GURU = going from darkness to light.
