Sleep and the Soil
Several years ago, plagued by around five dismal years of insomnia and anxiety, I finally learnt to meditate. I really hadn’t wanted to go down this route due to a multitude of preconceived ideas about what it was. These prejudices, however, evaporated when, within a few months I was sleeping again, and didn’t appear to have turned into a kaftan-wearing, joss-stick-burning, religious hippie. But recently it all started again; three or four hours’ sleep a night, only this time, I appeared to be ‘getting away with it’. I was barely tired at any point during the day, sometimes walking around 10 miles and still feeling bouncy. Meditation didn’t ‘work’ at least not to get me back to sleep, but the years of learning to be aware of all the activity in my mind was a gift, enabling me to get rest if not sleep. Shortly before Christmas, I stopped getting away with it when the flu virus easily passed my immune defences and thus Christmas ended up being pretty much cancelled. The poor sleep p