Seasonal Slumber.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
Since regularly practicing meditation for 5 years now it has been a consistent theme that April through October is a time of year when my meditation practice is very deep, day in and day out, and its effects can linger for days and days. Then November through March is the polar opposite where I’m lucky to have one successful meditation every couple of weeks;
otherwise I just simply sit down and almost immediately begin to fall asleep. It doesn’t seem to matter if I get 7, 8, 10, or even 12 hours of sleep the night before, the level of fatigue upon awakening is the same and it prevents me from having any kind of meaningful meditation. The rest of the year (the other 7 months) I’m perfectly fine and enjoy restful sleep, only requiring between 7-8 hours. Is this common among meditators? Also, I’ve reached a level now through meditation where the witnessing presence and deep silence is there whether I meditate or not, as long as I have restful sleep. So I suppose the more immediate issue for me to address is sleep itself (though I’m well aware that I’m still an infant on the path to enlightenment and need meditation as much as ever). Thank you.
Response:
That kind of dramatic increase in the need for an extra 4-5 hours of sleep for 5 months of the year is not a common experience among meditators. There must be something else going on here. If you live in the mid to higher latitudes, it’s possible you may be suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder. You may want to explore light therapies to see if they help.
Something else that might help is to make an effort to get more exercise during those months so that you go into a deeper sleep. That can make your sleeping hours more productive and rejuvenating, so that you can wake up refreshed after 7-8 hours. Try these ideas next winter. Otherwise, it might be an odd sleeping pattern that eventually wears out in a couple of more years.
Love,
Deepak
