Quiet Wakefulness – What It Can And Cannot Accomplish

If you’ve not come across the term “quiet wakefulness” before, then it’s best described as lying with your eyes closed, or resting.

Others may say it’s somewhere between mindful meditation and sleep, but either way, it’s a practice that can be helpful.

When You Cannot Get To Sleep At Night

One way to use this technique is if you cannot get to sleep.

While resting is not going to give you the same restorative benefits as true sleep (e.g. allowing your brain to process and assimilate the previous day’s experiences), it can still give your brain a much-needed rest – the very fact that your eyes are closed reduces the stimuli it receives and has to deal with.

Another facet of quiet wakefulness is that you should try to quiet your mind – this is not a time for solving problems with your eyes closed.

This is why is has been likened to mindfulness and meditation – the aim is not to consciously think about anything in particular.

Having said that, it’s virtually impossible to shut the thinking part of your brain down completely, so when the thoughts do intrude, as they will, then just acknowledge them and let them pass.

If you want to think about something, to help keep those random thoughts at bay, then you can try to focus on your breathing – a standard technique from the world of meditation.

By concentrating solely on your inhalation and exhalation, you can relegate other thoughts to the back of your mind.

And if they still pop in, uninvited, simply re-focus on the breaths you are taking.

From a physical point of view, you should of course make sure you’re comfortable, and if you’re lying there trying to get to sleep, there’s a good chance you’re in bed anyway.

One reason why this style of resting is useful in such situations is that it removes the pressure you feel because you can’t get to sleep.

Rather than worrying about that, if you simply rest, with your eyes closed (and, preferably, with no lights on at all), you will still be engaging in a helpful activity (if resting can be called an activity, of course), and by not consciously worrying about sleep itself, you’ll probably find that you drift off soon anyway.

Allied to this is your sense of control.

Most people cannot just fall asleep whenever they feel like it (there are exceptions, of course, such as military personnel who have to get used to grabbing sleep whenever the opportunity is available), but you certainly can decide when and how to rest.

So, deliberately choosing to rest (even if you want to get to sleep but can’t) helps you to stop worrying about sleep itself, because your resting is an active choice.

From a neurological perspective (e.g. electrical activity and brain wave patterns), there are similarities between sleep and quiet wakefulness, which demonstrates that there is a benefit to the practice.

One study, albeit a small one, found that resting is as good as sleeping when it comes to some cognitive tasks.

Another factor is that if you are resting, rather than doing something because you cannot sleep, there is a good chance that there is little to no noise, and it has already been shown that silence also has its benefits.

Naps

When I first started taking an afternoon nap, way back in 2005 when I was off work with stress, I found it incredibly difficult to do.

This is probably because it was a major change in my daily routine, and while I got better at, it was always difficult to do on demand.

There is research that suggests that humans, like many other animals, have evolved to have two sleep periods during the day, and that our current habit of only sleeping during the night time hours (unless you’re on shift work, of course), is unnatural.

There is also evidence that taking naps offers its own set of benefits, as you can read about here.

So, if you decide to make naps part of your day, and you too find that it’s not easy, then you can fall back to quiet wakefulness.

LIke I said above, it’s not the same as sleep, but it’s still better than remaining on full alert.

These days, I tend not to take naps – except for the unplanned variety, when I fall asleep because I cannot keep my eyes open. 🙂

Alternatives To Quiet Wakefulness

Some sleep experts say that the best thing to do when you cannot get to sleep after around 20 minutes of lying in bed is to get up and engage in a low-light, low-stress activity until you begin to feel tired.

For me, though, moving around wakes me up immediately.

A common suggestion is reading, which I used to do all the time, but as an experiment, I stopped and found that if I didn’t read in bed, I got to sleep a lot faster. (This applied regardless of my reading material – e.g. fiction, non-fiction, magazines.)

The one thing you should not do is anything that involves using a screen, such as watching television, or using electronic devices such as computers, phones, or tablets, because the blue light from the screen can further disrupt your sleep patterns.

Some people like to do one or more of the following:

• Have a light snack of the right type of foods (which I discuss here)
• Meditation
• Take a warm bath
• Yoga, as long as it’s not too strenuous

The key, as usual, is to find what works for you, and as long as you find something that prevents you from feeling frustrated that you cannot sleep, you’re going to be better off.

Conclusion

Even though quiet wakefulness, or resting, is not the same as sleep in every way, it can:

• assist you in dealing with insomnia
• help you be more creative
• improve your mood
• increase your alertness
• refresh and relax you
• relieve stress and tension
• restore your motivation

So, why not try making a habit of setting your alarm for 20 minutes and closing your eyes? If you can find somewhere dark and quiet (sleep masks and over-the-ear noise-cancelling headphones can help here), so much the better.

But remember, no matter how great having a quick rest can be, your mind and body still require real sleep!

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above, and all of the turmeric products are ones I use:

1. Noise-Cancelling Headphones
2. Sleep Mask