There’s plenty going on in the world today to keep us up nights. Forget about just being sleepless in Seattle. When you throw in multi-tasking minds that won’t turn off, all the complications of raising children, or midlife sleeping issues, you have the potential for a sleepless world!

Sleep expert Constantine Darling’s interest in the restorative world of sleep was a family affair. Both his grandfather, who was a linguist and Kabbalahist, and his mother, who was a student of metaphysics, were power dreamers. As was his first wife.

By his definition, a power dreamer is someone who can dream link to the dreams of others. As he explains, “Imagine that you dream we went to the beach and there were dolphins. We are swimming underwater with the dolphins. In the morning you realize that you and the another person have shared this experience. You both remember that there were six dolphins and that you held onto a dolphin by the snout as you swam. In linked dreaming you have the exact shared memory of the dream. It’s like having a second life.”

Sounds remarkable doesn’t it? Through teaching proper nutrition, guided meditation and extensive breath work, Darling has helped students uncover deeper layers of their sub-conscious, leading to transformational dream recall and improved mental and physical health. Later this year he will be putting all this fascinating and helpful information in a book called Romancing Sleep.

We all hear about how important sleep is to both our health and effectiveness. According to Darling, statistics indicate that 65% of us aren’t getting the sleep we need for either. I tell him that I’m in bed eight hours but rarely wake up feeling refreshed. He explains that there are several factors involved in getting the restorative sleep we require to function at a high level.

Why we don’t sleep well
In my case, the skylights in my bedroom prevent total darkness, which Darling believes is necessary to trigger deep, restorative REM sleep. “Melatonin is not released in sleep unless you’re in blackness. I could try using an eye mask. He also recommends that the bedroom have as few electrical appliances as possible, and to use plugs that block electrical currents. Using magnetic tape around our computers and television can also keep the positive ions at bay.

Darling explains that the reason running water (think water falls, streams, a refreshing downpour) makes us feel so good is that running water generates negative ions, while everything is our home is putting out massive amounts of positive ions which are like “battery acid for the nervous system.”

Inject more languor into your life
Furthermore, we need more languor in our lives to sleep well at night. Animals spend 50 to 60 percent of their time in a state of languor and then have periods of powerful activity. Humans, on the other hand, spend 80 to 90 percent of their time in activity with hardly any languor.

“Languor allows you to think and perform better,” states Darling. “I take people out on journeys in nature and teach them Chi Gong, meditation and yoga. They learn to go right into languor.” You could try taking “wolf naps,” which are 10 minute power naps throughout the day.

Get in touch with your 5 senses
You can learn to relax and turn off your analytical mind by working with nature to get in touch with your five senses. Darling recommends try sitting by a stream. Watch the water in one place as you breath gently. This will get you in a very relaxed, almost hypnotic state. You see the stream, you hear the stream, you feel the moisture rising from the streaming, etc. Get all your senses moving in one direction.

Darling is an expert on “fields of consciousness,” and the first layers are consciousness, subconscious and dreaming, so that’s why Romancing Sleep focuses on these. The book focuses on how to get to sleep, simple breathing exercises and awareness exercises that shift the frequency of the brain. As he says, when “our stressors can’t be shut off, we get burned out.”

“Nature gave us easy breathing exercises that animals and children do without thinking. Sighing de-stresses the nervous system. If you just learned that it would be enough. You can try visualizing indigo blue. This calms and soothes the nervous system. If you can’t visualize, try putting colored gel (like what photographers use) over a lamp for a soothing effect.

Tips for shutting off the analytical mind and falling to sleep
As Darling explains it, most people operate from their analytical mind. The mind tells the body what to do without checking in with the body to see what it wants or needs. “The body is the horse of the mental body’s directives. If you don’t treat the horse right you can run it to death,” cautions Darling.

Developing your somatic body intelligence
Somatic body intelligence, sensory feelings of the body, let us know how the body feels and what it needs and that can be diametrically opposed to what the mind wants or the emotional body wants, according to Darling. The somatic body is more in touch with sleeping and the dream mind. The somatic body is more connected to the cycles of life.

As he says “The body likes to have loving attention versus directive attention. Imagine a mother listening to the breathing of her child laying on her breast. That quality of a soft loving embrace is what I would recommend that people offer themselves.”

Darling recommends the following to relax and give yourself a soft, loving embrace:

• Develop a place where you have languorous moments. Maybe it’s sitting in your favorite chair by the fire.
• Take a few deep breaths.
• Let yourself fall into yourself. Think of the corpse pose in yoga which is a melting into the earth, a relaxing into core essence which is beyond doing.
• Create a relaxing ritual. Have a glass of warm milk or a cup of tea. “My grandfather, who was very mental, would pour a small shot of cherry brandy and light is pipe. With each tiny sip and little puff you could see his face relaxing bit by bit,” share Darling.
• Walk in nature without thinking. Just witness without a thought to do something.

Constantine Darling invites you to give him feedback on his upcoming book by reading the sample chapters posted at www.romancingsleep.com. You can also contact him to give him you input about your sleep and dream experiences at: www.innervisionouterquest.com