Insomnia: In search of the silence of the mind

Abstract

Why are sleep disorders so widespread in Western industrial societies? The root of insomnia is a mental restlessness which symptomatically reflects the accelerating pace and pressure of contemporary life. Sleep disorders are, to some extent, conditioned by social conventions of the individual’s attitude towards life. Thus their causes extend to some of our most fundamental cultural assumptions. A prerequisite to the treatment of insomnia is an understanding of mind itself and of our possible orientations within the field of mind. Patients with insomnia often have difficulties allowing themselves to pass from a waking to a sleeping state of mind. They have to learn not only to relax their habitual patterns of thought – the current approach of cognitive-behavioral therapy– but also to free themselves from being caught in waking consciousness. The cultivation of awareness is suggested as a way to step outside of insomnia’s vicious circle. Awareness was empirically tested and confirmed as a potentially relevant dimension in psychological research.