Restful Insomnia: How to Get the Benefits of Sleep Even When You Can't (Conari Wellness)

In my ongoing quest to find a cure for my insomnia, I was fully prepared to read yet another book with the standard laundry list of antidotes. Instead, I found a literal guidebook of intuitive and insightful ideas that are easy to understand and implement. Restful Insomnia is written with so much vision and warmth that it changed the way I feel about my sleeplessness. I feel truly fortunate to have discovered this gem. -Becky NavarroNo worries! Your review is a gem. Many thanks.I'll let you know when I'm putting it up.1:02pmGlad you like it! I can leave the same on amazon too.Wonderful! Thanks!Sent from MessengerChat Conversation EndIn my ongoing quest to find a cure for my insomnia, I was fully prepared to read yet another book with the standard laundry list of antidotes. Instead, I found a literal guidebook of intuitive and insightful ideas that are easy to understand and implement. Restful Insomnia is written with so much vision and warmth that it changed the way I feel about my sleeplessness. I feel truly fortunate to have discovered this gem.

I have battled industrial-strength insomnia for most of my adult life. This book takes a fresh view of the problem and is full of wisdom for dealing with sleeplessness. Many of the tips can also be useful with life in general.

One of the best and honest books to help get rest despite insomnia challenges.

Nothing new here. If you are able to follow the relaxation tips in this book than you probably wouldn't have insomnia in the first place! Didn't work for me or my friend.

This is a waste. There is no help at all to those suffering from insomnia.Does not really address the cause of insomnia.

Pardon me for the following much cliched analogy: When life gives you lemons (insomnia), make lemonade (restful lemonade). As a victim, I am obliged to thank the author for writing such a sincere and helpful good book. The problem is there. But life must go on. Indeed, it feels much better to know that somebody who truly understands my problem (the author herself suffered so) really tries to help with some constructive advice. In short, recommended!p.s. Below please find some of my favorite passages for your reference.Our bladders are bigger than we think they are, but we've trained them to pee just in case for decades. One way to reduce the number of nighttime bathroom visits is to reduce the acidity in your food (from tomatoes, citrus, vinegar, coffee, tea, milk, cola...) Does drinking fewer liquids help? Actually, reduced fluids can make your urine more concentrated, which can irritate your bladder so you urinate more. Pg44The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. - Marcel Proust pg51Distracting your mind gives you a break, but not deep rest. Pg80A common problem for insomniacs, to get caught in the thoughts - the body is just a hat rack for the brain. So first, remember you have a body. Pg97Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. - Author unknown pg99Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking. - Clifton Fadiman pg128What does your mind do when it's not thinking? Thoughts are pictures, movies, or ideas of life. Awareness is the real thing. Awareness is focusing on sensation. Thinking is the meaning you give sensation, commonly called a story.....Thinking stirs up the Conscious Mind, putting it into high gear at night. Awareness changes focus so the Unconscious Mind takes over....Take a little awareness tour of your body. Pg128-9Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering the quiet that is already there - buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day. - Deepak Chopra pg141Some tips that can help you meditate:- Be present in your body (keep your spine vertical); Have an inner smile (imagine a small smile on your face) ; Roll your eyes down (look down at your nose and toward your heart or navel); Release; Balance relaxation and alertness pg148If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want. - Oscar Wilde pg195

Restful Insomnia by Sondra KornblattRed Wheel/Weiser Books, 2010Review by Debra Louise ScottSondra Kornblatt presents a surprisingly readable Self-Help book for chronic insomniacs. I usually have a hard time with the Self-Help genre, as they tend to make me feel frustrated or guilty, or else take me into areas I really-don't-want-to-deal-with-right-now. Sondra avoids the usual self-examination scenarios and goes gently to addressing the actual issue of what to do when sleep is elusive.Restful Insomnia is geared to the person who understands the body's relationship to energic forces from within and without. If the sentence, "...try having a dialogue between your body and your Conscious Mind." makes you roll your eyes, you probably won't get much out of it. However, if you are someone who meditates, does Yoga, works in esoteric realms, or utilizes alternative healing therapies, the exercises will make a lot of sense. Some passages remind me of the work of Carolyn Myss, [...] so I was surprised to not find her listed in the Bibliography.A subtler technique runs throughout the book that I very much appreciated. Those of us who suffer from chronic insomnia are often afflicted with short attention spans and /or impaired reading comprehension. She introduces a complex idea along with another simpler idea, the simpler idea is explained, and the other simply referred to in passing. The next section will reinforce the simpler idea and expound more on the the complex one and mention a third idea briefly. She continues this introduction and reinforcement in small sections so that by the time you get to the complex concepts, they feel more like old friends than another mind-boggling exercise. The method played well into my tendency to read these types of books in small sections rather than straight through.Because the focus is on learning to feel rested, rather than curing the insomnia, there is no sense of frustration about progress or lack thereof. It is about learning to become friends with your body the way it is, not the way the sleeping pill commercials tell you it should be. The subtitle of the book is "How to get the benefits of sleep even when you can't". While this may be a bit overstated, it does tell you that there is an alternative to stressing over the clock ticking away, and obsessively counting the hours that you actually did sleep as a measurement of how the subsequent day is going to turn out.