The first case of insomnia I can remember in my life came when I was seven years old. I had traveled with my family in Michigan to visit my Bubbie Lily in San Diego. Now maybe it was just the three hour time difference, but whatever it was I remember having trouble going to sleep.
After lying there for a while, I remember coming out to find my Mom and telling her, in that little kid way, “Mom, I can’t sleep.” And to this day, I remember her advice to me: Try picturing yourself doing something you really love. My football team, the Detroit Lions, were actually good that year (kinda like this year, which I’m loving), so I decided to imagine myself as the quarterback. I played the game in my head for a while, and eventually I dozed off.
It turns out that seven-year old Josh was onto a problem a lot of us face now as adults: trouble falling asleep. A few years ago a study from the Centers for Disease Control found that almost 15 percent of adults in the U.S. reported trouble falling asleep—and slightly higher for adults under age 45, and even higher for women. In a different study, the CDC reported that 10 percent of women, and seven percent of men, took sleep medication in the last year. A little closer to home, the other day I checked on Google, and unsurprisingly the top search term related to meditation—like, by a mile—is sleep meditation. A lot of us are having trouble with sleep.
If you’ve been listening to the podcast recently, you know we’ve been doing a miniseries on daily rituals. We started with waking up in the morning, and we’ve made our way through going to the bathroom, putting on clothing, eating, moving about and doing our work. So now, we’re ready to close out the series—with an ancient Jewish spiritual practice, the original Jewish sleep meditation: saying the Shema at bedtime.
The idea of saying the Shema before we go to sleep is actually… right there in the Shema itself. Chapter 6, verse 7 of the book of Deuteronomy tells us to say these words when we lie down and when we rise up. The ancient rabbis of the Talmud understood that saying the Shema at bedtime was a form of protection. And the ancient rabbis saw sleep as a kind of mini-death, and waking up as a kind of mini-rebirth. So people in ancient times saw how important it was to express and experience a sense of faith in order to go to sleep.
While science has helped us better understand how sleep and waking up work, I think there’s still a lot of wisdom in what those rabbis figured out millennia ago. Our bodies are more or less the same as they were then. Going to sleep is still an act of courage. It still requires a sense of safety. Our minds still race and worry. My guess is people in the ancient world struggled like we do with hyperactive minds at bedtime—reviewing and regretting parts of the day we just lived, fretting and forecasting about the days to come (although they didn’t have the added challenge of phones on your nightstand that are designed to keep you awake).
So before we get to the practice, as I’ve said so many times during this series, stop looking at the phone. Ideally, don’t even have it in your bedroom. I actually charge mine in the kitchen—and I try to have a full hour of no-screen time before closing my eyes. That definitely helps. (I get that may be a challenge if you’re listening to this in bed right now. You might consider listening to this practice before bed and then trying it on your own.)
Okay, now for the practice itself.
Once you’ve gotten yourself into a comfortable position, take a few good deep breaths.
With each exhalation, try to relax a little more.
See if you can sense the support of the chair or bed or wherever you’re sitting or lying down.
As you exhale, try to bring some relaxation to your body—to your feet, your legs, your belly, your chest, shoulders, arms, hands, neck, jaw, eyes.
Let them gently close if you haven’t already.
And now, try to bring your attention to the same sensation as you woke up with—a sensation of gratitude. For this day that’s ending. For this body that’s alive. For this mind and this gift of awareness you have.
Maybe you notice some worry or anxiety creeping in. If you do, allow that thought or feeling to pass—you don’t need to think about it right now, you can think about it tomorrow. Right now you’re just being held in a warm embrace of the divine presence.
And now, bring your right hand over your eyes—gently, like you’re offering yourself loving protection.
And slowly, with each breath, say the words of the Shema.
Shema – let yourself hear, open, flowing
Yisrael – you are part of this ancient people; your ancestors have done this practice for thousands of years
Adonai – the Divine name that signifies hesed, compassion, loving connection, which embraces and supports you
Eloheinu – the Creator who created you and me and all of us
Adonai – that loving, animating life force of the universe continues to embrace and support you
Echad – You and I and all of us are part of a unity, a Oneness—a Oneness that allows us to trust enough to relax, to rest, to go to sleep.
You can repeat this practice more than once if you need to. I hope it’s helpful to you. I hope you get some rest. And I hope that when you start your day tomorrow, you can pick up back where we started this miniseries—grateful for the gift of another day, the gift of this incredible tradition we call Torah and Jewish life.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.