Meditation improves sleep

People who are under high pressure and highly concentrated state for a long time generally do not have good sleep quality. At the same time, because the mind has adapted to this tense state, they cannot fall asleep peacefully even in their spare time. Such a group of people will be eager to find ways to improve their sleep quality. One of these methods is meditation. In fact, meditation is ultimately about eliminating the body's distracting thoughts and using this principle to put people into a sleep state and improve sleep quality.

The distracting thoughts during meditation are the inertial movements of playing images

This reorganization and playback of memory information also occurs during meditation. When you meditate, your limbs remain still, your body and mind are relaxed, and your brain works hard. A common problem when meditating is that in the first ten minutes, distracting thoughts arise one after another! It turns out that the emergence of these thoughts is like a dream in light sleep, where the brain habitually reorganizes and plays back daytime experiences, knowledge, and memory information. To deal with distracting thoughts, we have two methods: one is to stop all thoughts with one thought, and find an object to guard, such as the "listening to the skin and fur method" and the "focusing on the dantian method"; the other is to neither follow the content of the thoughts nor cut off the thoughts, but let them arise and disappear, and then sit for a while to transcend them.

The emergence of distracting thoughts during meditation is a sign of the brain working hard. However, the difference between meditation and sleep is that the former is conscious but not used, while the latter is unconscious and available. Sitting in meditation and refining Qi are lively and active. We don’t need to pay attention, but the mind is still there. Sleep is different. Although the brain is working, there is no consciousness. At this time, the brain is separated from the limbs, and even light sleep cannot prompt limb movement.

Meditation is better than sleeping

Meditation is superior to sleep, but of course it is more than that. After getting rid of all distracting thoughts during meditation, you can enter the "Qigong state". The "Qigong state" is a trance state of "entering concentration", which is also the "threshold of enlightenment", and is the critical position between consciousness and unconsciousness in the brain. This state means that the activity of the brain is further suppressed and the playback program is terminated, but the memory and emotional networks such as the hippocampus, cortical area, amygdala and hypothalamus are still open, but inactive.

Sitting still with your eyes closed can also be effective

If sleep can promote learning and reorganize all daytime experiences and information for reference in future learning and rational operation, then it is not difficult to put ourselves into a state close to light sleep: we just need to close our eyes and relax, close the six senses of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind, and keep our limbs inactive, then the brain will be able to start the reorganization project, which is equivalent to the effect of sleep.