Mindfulness for Insomnia

Break the cycle of anxious thinking and rumination that keeps you up at night. With this much-needed guide, you’ll learn to quiet your mind, relax your body, feel less tense, and finally get the sleep you need.

Sleep plays a crucial role in our waking lives. While we sleep, our bodies are recharging with energy, damaged tissue is repaired, and our memories are stored. When we don't get enough sleep, we are tired, less positive, less motivated, less focused, and more likely to feel depressed. We may even experience more intense cravings for high-fat, sugar-rich foods. And yet, despite the myriad advantages of getting a good night's sleep, countless people suffer from chronic insomnia. If you’re one of them, this book can help.

In this guide, a trained mindfulness expert teams up with a behavioral sleep specialist to offer evidence-based meditations and an innovative four-week protocol to address the emotional stresses and anxieties that lie at the root of sleep issues. You’ll learn practices grounded in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindful self-compassion (MSC), and guided mindfulness and acceptance for insomnia (GMATI) to alleviate the mental, emotional, and physical suffering caused by insomnia. You’ll also learn to identify both internal and external factors that may be compromising your sleep, and develop a plan to address these issues.

There is nothing we can do to “make” ourselves fall asleep. In many ways, this is why insomnia can be so maddening. But what we can do is help create the conditions necessary for healthy slumber. The mindfulness tools in this book will help you do exactly that.

About the Authors

Catherine Polan Orzech, MA, LMFT, has taught mindfulness since 2000. She received her initial training in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and her professional training under the direction of Jon Kabat-Zinn, and is certified to teach MBSR and mindful self-compassion (MSC).

William H. Moorcroft, PhD, is a registered psychotherapist; behavioral sleep medicine specialist; emeritus professor at Luther College, Decorah, IA; and founder and chief consultant at Northern Colorado Sleep Consultants, LLC, where he now specializes in treating insomnia, children’s sleep problems, nightmares, and sleep problems in shift workers. He is also former director of a Sleep and Dreams Laboratory.