Get Some Headspace: 10 minutes can make all the difference (21 page)

Time is a funny thing. It’s hard to say whether I’d been asleep for five minutes or five hours, but I was awoken by a group of men shouting and banging loudly on my front door. Feeling sleepy and not altogether sure where I was, I stumbled towards the door. I was so tired that I didn’t even think about the fact that I was dressed only in my underwear. Nor did I think about checking the peephole in the door to see who was standing on the other side. I just walked to the door, unlocked the deadbolt, opened it and . . . suddenly woke up, very, very quickly. Facing me were four policemen, holding very big guns and shouting loudly as they moved towards me into the flat. I didn’t understand a word they were saying and apparently none of them spoke English either. They were clearly excited about something or other – and not in a good way. Three of them moved from one room to the next, looking in cupboards, searching through my suitcase, as one stayed with me, blocking my exit to the front door with his gun.

Having satisfied themselves that the apartment was not packed full of explosives, as had been intimated to them by the babushka on the door, everyone started to relax a little. But only a little. They continued to talk loudly and forcefully. I glanced at the clock. It was only 12.30 a.m., so I’d been asleep for less than half an hour before they arrived, although I could have sworn it was longer. They asked me for my passport, my documents, my work papers and one by one sat down at the dining room table to examine them. I remained standing, still dressed in nothing more than my green underpants. ‘So,’ I thought to myself, ‘what do you do when someone comes to your home and takes a seat at your table? Well, I guess you offer them a cup of tea.’ Fortunately, a few basic provisions had been left for me and so, still under the watch of one of the four policemen, I went into the kitchen and hurriedly made the tea. As I came back, one of the policemen noticed the area I’d set up for meditation. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Karate, da?’, gesturing to make clear his suggestion. Not knowing how to say, ‘Well actually, no, this is where I’m planning to sit and do my meditation when I don’t have policemen with guns running around the place’, I smiled politely and nodded my head.

This seemed to please the men a lot. They started to laugh and joke among themselves. Whether they were laughing
at
me or
with
me is hard to say. Just to see them laughing was good enough. They then started to point at different things, clearly trying to ask a question. One of them even pointed at my pants, which was a little disconcerting, given I had no idea what they were asking. It took a little while, but I eventually established that they were trying to ask what colour belt I was in karate, what standard I’d reached. Riding the wave of laughter, I jokingly pointed at the chair, which was black. This really seemed to get them excited and they started to gesture for me to demonstrate. I tried to explain that I’d been joking, but they didn’t understand. So a game of semi-naked charades began where I tried to indicate I was too tired, it had been a long flight, and so on. Eventually the men gave up, realising that there would be no brick smashing or door breaking on this occasion, and left me alone to go back to bed.

‘Welcome to Russia’ I thought to myself as I lay back down. It was now after 1 a.m., but I was wide awake. My mind was racing with thoughts and my body was still pumping with adrenaline. I knew I was tired and needed the sleep, but I had no idea how it was ever going to happen. Thoughts of the police, the apartment bombings and my new life in Russia filled my mind. I was also conscious of the fact that early the next morning I would be meeting lots of new people who I’d be working with in the months to come and, let’s face it, first impressions count for a lot. So I lay there with all these thoughts buzzing around. Now if I’d faced this kind of situation before I’d received any training in meditation, I’m certain I’d have been awake for the rest of the night. But having been shown a way to deal with the situation, the mind started to calm down surprisingly quickly.

The more I was able to simply watch the thoughts, to be aware of them as they passed through the mind, the more the mind seemed to quieten. As the mind settled down, so the body began to feel less agitated. Knowing that no amount of effort was going to force me back to sleep, I let the metaphorical rope out a bit and allowed the mind lots of space. It can be helpful to think back to some of the analogies here, whether it’s taming the wild horse, the idea of the blue sky and the thoughts passing by as clouds, or any other one of them that you might find helpful in increasing your sense of perspective and space. For me it was the blue sky. But old habits can sometimes be very strong and every now and then I’d notice that I’d slipped into trying really hard again. But as soon as I became aware of the effort being applied, it was as if it suddenly vanished. It came back again of course, but it was the same thing each time, as long as I was aware of the effort then it never really seemed to build up any momentum. Soon enough I started to feel sleepy again and I eventually dozed off for the night.

This exercise I’m about to show you is applicable to all forms of sleeplessness, whether that’s being unable to go to sleep, waking frequently throughout the night, or waking very early in the morning and being unable to go back to sleep. It’s even applicable if you’re not experiencing any of the above, but simply want to know how to experience a more restful sleep, or wake without feeling groggy in the morning. Although this particular exercise is designed to be done in the evening, in bed, immediately before you go to sleep, it’s not meant as a replacement for Take10. In fact, you’ll find that doing Take10 on a daily basis, at the same time as learning this exercise, is the best combination.

Many people find that their sleep improves simply as a result of doing Take10. This is without doing any particular techniques at night in bed. And the scientific research seems to back this up. Most of the trials that have been done to assess the benefits of meditation and mindfulness on insomnia have requested participants to practise the technique during the day rather than at night, with equally impressive results. So it might be more useful to think of this in terms of having a healthy mind over a twenty-four-hour period, rather than exclusively targeting your mind at night.

The exercise below is designed to take about fifteen to twenty minutes, although obviously it doesn’t matter if you fall asleep halfway through. In fact, it’s very normal to fall asleep and this in no way detracts from the long-term benefits of the exercise. Remember, this is not an exercise to
make
you go to sleep, but rather to increase your awareness and understanding of your mind at night. It just so happens that it often results in sleep. You’ll probably find it much more comfortable to download the audio of the exercise and be guided through the process, but within a few nights you’ll be familiar and confident enough with each section to do it without the guided version if you prefer.