Getting A Good Sleep
Outer chaos, inner calmness, and healing
Master Glenn Tobey
Addressing your emotional response to the pandemic.
April 7, 2020
My topic today is sleep. The virus has been causing a lot of complications. You may have noticed already. The illness and death. Financial. Unemployment. Relational. All sorts of things are going on. Emotional. Fear. Worry. Huge impact on all of our lives. How can we not allow that unnecessarily control our lives? What are the things, maybe what is the one critical thing you could hold to that so that you could control? It seems to be out of control in a lot of ways.
One thing, maybe 2 or 3 things that you can have a sense of control is sleep. If the idea of stay-at-home, a lot of states and countries are saying, “Lock down. Stay home. Don’t leave. Shelter at home.” The reality of that, the policy so to speak, is fear, a lot of concerns. But really it is fear based. The reality is, don’t move. Stay home. Stay there.
What is the spirituality of that? It is to get a good sleep. Go home and have a great sleep. It’s critical to have a good sleep. You may take it for granted just like breathing. I ask you to take a deep inhale through your mouth and hold it. Inhale through your nose. You can inhale more. So, this simple movement of breathing, you think, “I can get more through my mouth.” No, it’s through your nose. You may think about getting good sleep. Maybe not.
The real great importance of getting good sleep, maybe turn off your TV one hour before going to sleep, find your routine, etc. Sleep is that important. The simple message is to get a good sleep. Not that I am going to do a lot of things, by the way, I fall asleep. By the way, when I get tired. Almost, don’t be so disrespectful to one of the most powerful tools that your body needs to recover is sleep. Purposeful, deliberate focus on sleep.
One of the things sleep does is to help to wash the brain. The better sleep you get, the better it clears out anything in the brain, I don’t meant the knowledge you have got empty. Whatever happens in your mind can be washed during a good a long sleep. It has a great healing quality.
The thing I like about Spring Forest Qigong is about the flow of the energy. There are 3 dantians, energy fields. The lower dantian is here. 80% of the body’s energy resides here. When the brain says, “I’m going to do a lot of work. I’m going to do a lot of thinking.” The lower dantian sends energy to the brain. The brain says, “No, I’m doing a lot of things. I need more.” More sends to the brain. The brain says, “I’m stressed out.” Send more. More energy to the brain. It depletes the lower dantian so to speak. But now you have a lot of energy in the brain for it to do a lot of things. That’s OK.
But now you go to sleep. This is what is happening in your brain. A lot of energy in your brain. So, now finding a way to move the energy out of the brain when you go to sleep. Bring your mind’s focus down to your lower dantian. Don’t just try to do it once. You might need to do this for 5 minutes to 10 minutes.
For me, sometimes when I wake up at night, I am thinking about some stuff is going on, like the virus or other things. The way I can get back to sleep is that I bring my mind’s focus back down to the lower dantian. I bring that energy back to where it belongs to so that the brain is not always thinking, thinking, and doing things. That will help you to sleep a lot better.
This simple message of going to sleep, having a good sleep is really important. It will help you to process all this information and the rest of things you need to do. Have a good sleep.
Qigong Master Glenn Tobey
Master Glenn Tobey, M. Div., M. A. in Management, is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Duluth, Minnesota.
He has almost forty years of experience in the Human Service field and has worked in both urban and rural settings, and values the collaborative community-based model.
He has also taught at the college level, and conducted numerous SFQ workshops and trainings in various community settings. Glenn continues to teach and to share his knowledge and wisdom of Spring Forest Qigong which is at the center of both his professional focus and his personal passion.
Glenn is a member of the SFQ teaching team. He teaches Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Instructor Certification, and other workshops.