By shifting your attention from thoughts to physical sensations, you uncouple the two and dissipate the strength of any anxiety. If there's an unpleasant or painful sensation anywhere in your body, focus your mind on the sensation itself. If you're feeling restless or fidgety, or if your thoughts are racing, recognize that even these feelings represent the process of healing that's taking place. Remember: You're getting valuable rest even if you're not asleep. Let your mind be easily aware of your body. Once you've gotten into bed, rest comfortably with your eyes closed, "not minding." Pick a reasonable (early) time to get ready for bed, and establish a soothing routine beginning at the same time every night. Through solving your problem of insomnia, you'll be solving a lot of other problems in your life at the same time.

Once you balance the activities of your life and experience the enjoyment that comes with that balance, your sleep will spontaneously become balanced. When you've learned to experience pure wakefulness, liveliness, and dynamism, good sleep will come naturally. This is the fundamental answer to insomnia and the solution for many of the apparent problems of life as well. In other words, when you're awake, be fully awake. The solution to all sleep problems lies in making the period of daily activity truly dynamic and satisfying. If the period of activity is somehow imbalanced, that will be reflected in the period of rest. Activity and rest go hand in hand, therefore we must pay attention to what happens during the day.

All these time periods are related, and to focus on one without considering the other can lead only to short-term solutions. I want to emphasize once again, however, that the real solution for the sleep problems you encounter at night lies in what happens during the day. Now you've got a technique to use when you go to bed: rest with closed eyes and let your awareness drift from sensation to sensation or thought to thought in a nonminding attitude.