6 Comments
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
River Kenna's avatar

I haven't seen Pierre Grimes before, thanks for giving me that lead to chase down. And yeah, my mythosomatic stuff draws reeeeeeaaaal heavily from working with Hillman's material.

Re the "I fall asleep when I try to do somatic meditation" thing, I'm just gonna share something in the upcoming dream course that I actually wrote about this - it applies to both somatic and imaginal practice, I hope some bit of it is helpful.

Forgive the length and formatting issues, but here's the page:

--- ---

SPECIAL NOTE ON SLEEP:

One of the most common “problems” people bring to me around imaginal journeying (eg- dream return) goes like “I was trying to deepen into the image, but I guess I fell asleep; that’s happened 3 or 4 times, how do I stop it?”

I want to invite you to see falling asleep during practice not as a fault, but as a kind-of-nice thing that happens sometimes, a very-likely-helpful part of imaginal practice, and maybe only worth “solving” if it’s happening more than like one time in five.

---

I have reason to suspect that falling asleep during imaginal practice can actually be quite beneficial. Here’s one way to think about it:

In usual meditation or journeying, the experience is contained by the conscious ego. We begin as a conscious ego, drop into practice where we move beneath the ego, and then return to the ego to go about our day. In some ways, your ego feels in control of the situation by containing it.

It’s no surprise that when practice ******isn’t****** contained by the ego — when it slips from the ego, down down down, and then literally into unconsciousness — the ego gets uncomfortable. It thinks the practice went badly, was done wrong.

But remember, part of our aim in this practice is specifically to build a relationship with the unconscious Psyche. From that point of view, it’s not so bad if while journeying down into the Psyche’s realm, we go a bit deeper and stay a bit longer than we planned on.

---

That said, ********If you’re reliably falling asleep quite often in practice********, it’s worth trying some things out that help to keep you semi-alert.

One method that works for most is to simply sit upright once you’ve reached a good depth. It’s helpful to begin relaxing into practice by lying flat on the ground, but there’s no law saying you have to ****stay**** lying down the whole time. You can breathe, relax, deepen into Soma and Psyche — and then gently let yourself sit upright before continuing.

If even then, you fall asleep, it may be worth looking at your sleep schedule, checking your [Basic Health Stuff], and generally making sure you’re getting enough rest at night.

If your rest is fine, you’ve tried sitting up, but you often fall asleep too quickly to remember to sit up — try sitting up from the start, without lying down at the beginning at all.

If you’re still falling asleep after all that, maybe just accept that god wants you asleep for now, and keep your Waking Journal nearby so you can write down whatever came up while you were under. —Or you can call me and brainstorm other ideas to help. Both options are solid.

Expand full comment
alistair's avatar

Thank you for sharing this. Super helpful!

Expand full comment