Ocean breathing for getting back to sleep

Hey everyone!!! Today I am sharing another calming breath work practice- this one has been a real help to me lately. It is called ujjayi pranayam aka "ocean breath" or "victorious breath" in the yogic tradition and let me tell ya it has helped me be victorious during a lot of middle-of-the-night wakeups recently thanks to the earlier sunset and time change.

The background

To be honest, I had not been practicing this one regularly (don't call the yoga police on me please) until it came up in my polyvagal theory and yoga training at the beginning of the year, and we had a whole glorious three-hour session on breathwork for both calming activation and bringing activation to the nervous system. I started doing it more as part of my yoga and self-regulation practice, and one night several months ago when I woke up in the middle of the night I remembered Tara Brach mentioning using the ocean breath in my meditation teacher training but as a sleep aid, and to imagine the sound of your breath as the ocean and ride the waves back to sleep. So instead of my usual habit of reading myself back to sleep with my kindle (not super helpful depending on the book!) I started to do that and much to my chagrin it works pretty well (sometimes with some extra components which I will get to later). The key for me- and this is critical - is to remember, in my foggy middle-of-the-night state, to actually do it.

The crux of it

I don't know about y'all, but there are few things during the day that get me as riled up as interrupted sleep at night. My mind goes wild - and quickly! Usually my sleepy but alarmed mind is trying to immediately figure out what went wrong the day before - eating dinner too late? not getting enough exercise? too much coffee or screen time? And/or worrying about the next day- ugh I'm gonna be so tired, I'm not gonna be able to focus on my Zoom, my heart rate's gonna be all over the place, I'm gonna eat so many unnecessary carbs, or my favorite: it's gonna ruin my whole daaaaayyyyy 😩

That (obviously) can quickly get me all the way awake y'all- heart rate increases, I get all tense, I might even flail a bit in frustration. Unless....unless I can catch that activation and try the ocean breath. Ahhhh. Yes, there it is. Sometimes that awareness doesn't come until I'm making frustrated grumpy noises that are loud enough to wake my dog up because I hear his collar jingle in the darkness 😑 and that dang collar jingle will be the thing to finally get me like, "ok girl it's time for the ocean breath." I know this ocean breath trick works, and yet I still struggle to actually freaking do it before I get spun UP.

The sleep conundrum

It's so interesting and maddening to me that I have developed my self-awareness through my mindfulness practice to be able to generally catch myself getting activated during the day and choose to respond vs react, but that my brain is too sleepy at night to be of much use. Y THO. I became obsessed with sleep back in 2018, reading Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker over the course of several months, slowly working in his advice and recommendations. It is now known as "the sleep book" amongst me and family and friends who have read it (so good, check it out and it will change your life. Or just find him talking about it on a podcast- also valuable). My point is- I know that one of the reasons why I get so mad at waking up in the middle of the night is because I know from SCIENCE (aka from the sleep book) and from my lived experience that disrupted sleep portends doom for the next day. Which brings me to my next point, a little lesson from Buddhist philosophy.

The Buddhist conundrum

So there is this great simple Buddhist teaching about the two arrows. It goes like this: There are two (and only two) kinds of arrows in life that cause suffering: events, and our reaction to those events. We cannot avoid the first kind of arrow because shit happens (that is more colorful than the original teaching but I think it gets the point across better, so allow me this editorial choice 🤣). We can, however, avoid the second arrow by choosing how we respond to them or even choosing not to react at all.

I KNOW THIS TOO! I apply it all the time, from a stubbed toe to flight delays to car trouble to, I don't know.... being currently furloughed as a USAF civilian employee: ok, I see this arrow, it sucks, and I would rather conserve my energy and just deal with what happened and move on with my life and not get all worked up over something I can not control. So this is also hilarious to me that my middle-of-the-night sleep reactions are CLASSIC examples of those second arrows, and I can clearly recall chastising myself mentally for falling into the second arrow suffering trap during these wakeups. I mean, come on 🫠

The secret sleep sauce

However- there is hope friends! I've recently figured out a key missing ingredient (for me at least; hopefully just the breath does the trick for you, but sharing anyways in the event it is helpful to someone else). If you have done a yoga class with me, you know I usually include a little phrase at the end along the lines of "give yourself a mental high five for giving yourself permission to slow down and take a break." (I think I have included that in some of my videos too!) So one fretful frustrated night, I thought, hmmm...permission...and mentally said "I give myself permission to fall back to sleep." I immediately felt my body relax in places I didn't even realize I had tensed up! So I have been adding that phrase to my wake-ups, along with the ocean breath. A visual of waves coming in to shore and the tide pulling the water back also helps. I have been practicing this combo package more so that I actually do it - instead of reaching for my Kindle to simply distract my mind and thus ending up losing more sleep. Practice, practice, practice.

The moral of the story

In conclusion: The universe abounds with ways to force...I mean enable... us to practice our skills in catching ourselves LOSING IT and choosing differently and wisely. Including in the middle of the night 🙄. Keep practicing friends!! 😴🥱💤

P.S. This technique is fantastic for calming down during the day too - so practice it awake and alert to get a dose of calm and build up those neural pathways so you can actually remember to do it in the middle of the night too, hopefully with not as much trial-and-error as I have had! 😉

In deep, usually well-rested gratitude,

Carly

Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter!! If you know anyone who would benefit, I would be delighted if you shared the love and passed it along 🙏

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