Therefore, you can contribute to your attitude of not minding by just allowing your awareness to shift spontaneously to the sensations in your body - and then spontaneously to the thoughts and ideas that accompany those sensations.

You uncouple the two. When you shift your attention from thoughts to sensations, you dissipate the strength of the emotion, because thought and sensation are no longer chained together. For every mental event there is a physical event, and emotion is nothing but a thought attached to a sensation. Whenever there is turbulence in your mind, there is a corresponding turbulence in your body. If this happens, your awareness should move easily to that sensation. You may find from time to time that you have a sensation at a particular point in your body.

Allow your mind to be easily aware of your body, and let the self-repair process go on. Instead, rest as comfortably as you can with your eyes closed, just not minding at all. There is an old Ayurvedic saying: Sleep is the nurse of all living beings. Remember that the purpose of sleep is to dissolve fatigue and stress from the system. In that case, just let it happen. The mind may be racing, and there may even be physical discomfort throughout the body. Sleep will come naturally when it comes, and meanwhile you're gaining the benefit of valuable rest and rejuvenation of your whole system.

If this is your experience, you should recognize these sensations of restlessness as a byproduct of nature's repair work and not try to resist them or be worried about them. This repair work, or release of stress, can increase mental and physiological activity, which may be experienced as physical discomfort, racing thoughts, or feelings of anxiety. Sometimes repair is overdue to be released during the night.