How to Sleep Better – The Sleep Clinic

Painting by Lori Stanley

Six years ago, in 2011, I worked on an album of healing audio recordings, called Sacred Nature. Two of the recordings were designed to help listeners sleep better: ‘Healing Sleep’ and ‘Drawing from the Well’. I was really touched when I read this unsolicited Amazon review: “As someone who’s suffered with insomnia for most of my adult life, I was skeptical but willing to give this a try … I bought this when it first came out and have used it almost every night since to fall asleep. Out of some 800+ nights, this has worked all but 2 or 3 times. Listening to ‘Healing Sleep’ each night has become such a successful part of my nighttime routine that I don’t even really think of myself as an insomniac any more. It may not work for everyone, but it has improved my sleep incredibly. This has been the single most helpful purchase I’ve ever made on something to improve my health. To fellow insomniacs I can’t recommend this highly enough.”

Encouraged by this kind of response, I began researching the problem of insomnia, and developed a course to help with this, which includes a number of recordings. In February this year a group of 140 volunteers beta-tested the course, and thanks to their feedback I’ve been able to improve the material, and have been spending the last few months making the recordings and films for the course. What a lot of work – but it’s almost ready! We’re going to Iceland, the USA and Italy over the next few weeks, which delays things unfortunately, but we’ll be back in time for it to be released by the end of September.

Here’s some info on it:

The Sleep Clinic – A guided programme to help you sleep better, whether you find it hard to go to sleep, feel you don’t sleep deeply or long enough, or have trouble getting back to sleep when you wake in the night. Each session includes a short film, ideas and techniques to help, and one or more audio tracks you can download to your phone, computer or tablet.
Drawing from the latest findings in Neuroscience, combined with exercises from Sophrology and Yoga Nidra, the course encourages you to accept the ‘gift of the night’: an opportunity for rest, healing, and spiritual insight, whether or not you are asleep. – COMING END SEPTEMBER 2017 – If you’d like to receive an email when the programme is ready, drop an email to Maria at pa@druidry.org

In the meanwhile you might like to hear this beautiful Scottish song – The Garten Mothers’s Lullaby – with harp and voice by Fiona Davidson from her album The Language of the Birds, available from iTunes. With many thanks to Fiona.