Sleep practice for winter solstice
Calendrical qi update:
Winter solstice qi node begins at 1am-3am PST saturday morning dec 21, so do your own time zone math, but what that means is:
sleeping early (in bed by dark),
no screens after dark,
no food after 6pm.
Unplug the wifi,
do not sleep in total darkness but have a soft ambient light somewhere in the room you are sleeping.
Sleep on right side or back, with head pointing north if possible, mouth taped to prevent mouth breathing.
Bonus if you can have a hygienic scrubbing bath before bed, thanking the water. Air dry completely before retiring.
Actually sleep. This means:
consciously close the senses/turn the senses inward, imagine soft moonlight in the chest region
if you wake in the night:
solemnize (say out loud “it is done”, “thank you” or “yes”, etc) your dreams
and/or softly meditate laying down, focusing on enjoying the breath and breathing in through the surface of the entire body.
Recording any hooked dreams:
If you want to, in the morning or during the night you can record your dreams but do not go into extreme details or focus maniacally on the content or supposed meaning of the symbols. Just notice the predominant feelings of the dream, and the context of the dream. Do not obsess over it nor dissect it.
Upon waking in the morning:
In the morning do a spinal meditation, wherein you breathe into the L-5 sacral vertebrae 36 times. On inhalation the whole body inhales and qi enters L-5. You can visualize L-5 glowing brightly if it helps you feel the exercise. As you exhale, L-5 sends the radiant light (qi) throughout the whole body, bones, organs, flesh and skin.
If you wake in the night, especially in the two hour period mentioned above, you can do the spinal meditation.
Taking a 1 hour nap Friday and Saturday is also indicated.
View reminders
While the methods and techniques of cultivation are vast and infinitely granular, often we get lost in the minutia and lose our sense of dignity due to striving and hungering for some form of salvation.
Remember that we practice to celebrate and express who-what-how we are!
The Path Dreamer, adept, cultivator, shaman, does not dream to save themselves or others, because they have an innate sense that all appearances and forms are dreams, there are no real distinctions, there is no real “other”. Death is not the opposite of life, there is no opposite of life. It’s all one big dream/ing.
At a certain point in fate/karma/luck every being/thing gets tired of being tired. That is, is exhausted of being exhausted. They realize that “blacking out”, “sleepwalking” through existence and otherwise operating on auto-pilot IS what is exhausting about this existence. Not that existence is inherently exhausting! It’s not! It’s how we are relating with it, it’s our (and out ancestors/cultures) habits, preferences, beliefs, ideologies, polarities, grudges, debts and all the myriad constructions and delusions we generate and maintain. This generation and maintenance of oppositions is how we exhaust ourselves, our various streams of qi that we have access to.
So with that, sleep is a relief, it is a return. A return into “death” which is the undifferentiated and unborn. The unknown and the unknowable. A state where “understanding” and controlling based on information can relax and unclench.
There is nothing to overcome.