Meditation for insomnia: 7-minute noting session, during a break

About this practice

For the times during a break when insomnia takes up more room than you would like — 7 minutes, noting. A guided session of about 7 minutes, suited to all levels. Nothing is recorded and no account is needed.

What this works on: insomnia

Insomnia is often maintained by the fear of not sleeping. Anticipating a bad night raises arousal at bedtime, which produces the bad night.

It tends to show up as:

• Dreading bedtime
• Hours awake with a busy mind
• Sleeping worse as the week goes on

Removing the pressure to sleep is the active ingredient. This gives you something to do that is not trying.

Doing this on a break

• Leave the room if you can
• Do not start anything else in the same gap
• Set a timer so the break has an end

A break spent half-engaged with a screen is not much of a break. Guard the whole five minutes.

How noting works

Noting is a technique from insight practice: when something arises, you give it a single plain label — thinking, hearing, planning — and return to the anchor. The label creates a small distance between you and the content.

• Use one word, not a sentence — explaining means you have joined in
• Label and return; do not follow the thought to see where it goes
• Drop the labelling if it becomes effortful and just follow the breath

What happens, minute by minute

1. 0:00Turn your phone face down if it's within reach. If it's in another room, even better.
2. 0:15Let this be easy, if easy is available.
3. 0:26If it helps, imagine your attention is a torch beam. Right now it's wide and soft.
4. 0:41Let your sense of the room shrink down to just your body and the surface you're on.
5. 0:56Count four breaths silently. Then stop counting and just follow.
6. 1:08Notice the small pause before your body decides to breathe in again.
7. 1:21Feel the parts of you that have gone quiet.
8. 1:32Feel your ankles. Let them be loose.
9. 1:42Notice the weight of your thighs, all the way down.
10. 1:54Notice the space around the wide-awake mind at 2am. It is there, even if it is small. Put your attention in that space.
11. 2:12When the counting of hours until morning arrives, name it once, quietly, and go back to the breath. Naming is not fixing, and that is fine.
12. 2:31Notice your elbows. Odd things to have, but there they are.
13. 2:43Stay with it.
14. 2:51Let the breath get soft, the way it goes when someone is reading beside you.
15. 3:05Notice your ears, which mostly just receive things.
16. 3:16Notice how quickly your mind labels things: good, bad, boring, nice.
17. 3:28Pause here. Count three breaths if you need an anchor.
18. 3:40We'll keep it quiet and unhurried.
19. 3:50If you're irritated, that's allowed. Irritation is just weather.
20. 4:01Notice if your breathing is faster than you expected. Don't correct it. Just note it.
21. 4:15A gap. Don't rush to fill it with thinking.
22. 4:26This is not the last time the frustration of not sleeping will visit. That is not bad news. It means you will get more practice.
23. 4:45Picture the wide-awake mind at 2am as a weather front passing over. You are not the weather. You are the sky it moves through.
24. 5:04Let the exhale empty you a little more than usual, but not to the point of strain.
25. 5:19If you're counting the minutes, that's fine. Count them and come back.
26. 5:32If nothing much is happening, that's not a problem. Nothing much is often the point.
27. 5:46I'll stop for a moment. Take the pause at your own speed.
28. 5:59We'll take this slowly, and there's no version of this where you get it wrong.
29. 6:13Come back at your own speed. The room will wait.
30. 6:25Come back to your body first, and the rest of the day second.

Questions people ask

Meditation is a practice, not a treatment. If you are dealing with ongoing distress, please also reach out to a professional.