What’s The Root Cause Of Your Sleep Issues?
Are you stressed? Did you eat poorly earlier today? Yesterday too? Are you feeling old traumas coming back up? Is your mind working on overdrive? Are you itemizing the stuff you’ve got to do tomorrow? Were you woken by a bad dream? Are your hormone shifts taking you on an annoying wakeful romp in the middle of the night? Do you have to get up to pee multiple times? We can help! But if the answers to these questions have you ticking multiple boxes, this article probably will just be putting a homeopathic band-aid on the elephant’s hiney. The risk is, then, that you’ll say something like, “I tried homeopathic remedies, but they didn’t work.”
The truth is natural law never misses the mark. Never! When was the last time you rolled out of bed and gravity failed to show up that day? A homeopathic remedy will only be effective where it’s been applied lawfully. If you don’t suffer from Arnica disease, then Arnica won’t do the job on the law of nature like cures like. The thing is that I can only write about the more superficial aspects of sleep and provide superficial solutions acutely here, for obvious reasons. I’m trying to target some of the elephant’s hiney in a herd of complication and dynamics way beyond the scope of this article.
As you may know, Heilkunst Medicine is a deep, multi-dynamic system of remediation designed to get to the very root of symptoms listed above. It’s our modus operandi to suss out the reasons that you can’t sleep, chronically, and address the old traumas sequentially, the hormonal issues, the frequent urination, nightmares, and the reason why you keep reaching for those simple carbs and sleep aids.
If you’re using sleep aids, and you want to get off them, this article won’t solve the toxicity from those or the reason you’re trying for the chemically-laced catatonic route that’s messing with your natural circadian rhythms. As you can imagine, we don’t promote the ‘play now and pay later’ as an approach for your whole health. That’s just us, though.
We adults are complicated and multi-dynamic beings. You’re a luscious entanglement of 5,000 regulating chemicals and hormones. So much in our very complicated lives can throw one domino off kilter and if we start stacking up the issues, plummeting us into the realm of provoking the hydra-headed monster of chronic disease, we’ll start throwing off the bowlines of our health and spinning out of control without navigation. Add a poor diet high in refined sugars and carbs, little sunlight, a modicum of exercise that week, and less than two litres of water a day and we’re creating a recipe for disaster. Don’t believe me? Read Suzy Wiley’s book, Lights Out.
If you’re reading this article and hoping to resolve your baby or small child’s sleep issues, we penned another article for you, Sleep Baby Sleep. It’s easier to use more pathic prescribing for kids because they generally haven’t poked the bear of chronic disease as profoundly as we adults have AND their daily responsibilities are generally fewer. They’re overall less complicated beings with a few less traumas in their wee black bag of life.
At the risk of putting bandaids on the elephant’s hiney, I give you a place to start … right here. Below, you’ll find pathic remedies, some flower essences, and some essential oils that may help in about twenty percent of cases. Please let us know if we can help you to get to the deeper phenomenon of your suffering, as those elephant’s deserve a little grace too.
Aconite: is a great remedy for when you’ve been exposed to a dry, northeast wind during winter, aggravating a low or high-grade fever. You may also be suffering with a bit of an earache. You might feel just fine upon going to bed, however, that may all change around midnight, clearly sensing greater pain. Look for a generalized restlessness, dry body heat, and increased thirst. You may be writhing in discomfort with extreme sensitivity to touch, suffering burning or even violent pain.
pain in the right side of your head and ear. Belladonna will solve this state outright if natural law applies.
Arnica: is a good remedy for when you seem to have a mixed up circadian rhythm; drowsy during the day, but able to sleep during early evening and then waking with a hot head at night, with fear that you will suffer discomfort yet again. You may hear yourself complain of feeling exhausted upon waking, with dark dreams about animals, death, and even mutilated bodies. During sleep, your partner may say that you were groaning, murmuring, talking, and snoring. Folks needing arnica may even have a small amount of urine pass involuntarily when trying to make it to the loo.
Belladonna: is one of our chief remedies for right sided earaches and for waking violently with pain and high fever at midnight. Kids will scream, but more stoic adults will feel their own forehead and notice their head feels like it may burst. Look for restlessness, agitation, and a pretty profound
Chamomilla: is a great remedy for agitation and restlessness. Like Belledonna, look for right-sided earaches, red face, a more low-grade fever, around 102 or 103 degrees Fahrenheit. In a Cham. state, you may feel that nothing will touch the discomfort that your suffering and will reject everything that their partner offers in the way of hot valerian tea or ashwagandha. In children, they’ll give the impression that there is absolutely nothing you can do to appease them and they will reject absolutely everything that you offer, pushing it, and you, away.
Coffea: is derived from coffee. In homeopathic terms (like cures like), an over-stimulated individual needs a stimulant to calm down. I used to keep a tin of organic coffee in the freezer for my own children to take a wee sniff from if needed before bed. Actually, I still have the same tin at my office (I don’t drink coffee) for babes I see in person who are suffering an over-stimulated melt-down. All I do is open the lid of the tin of coffee in my office and watch for baby, and mom or dad too, to take a couple of whiffs of the aroma. Within a couple of minutes, baby is completely calm, gurgling, and usually drifting off to sleep. If you’re nursing, you can take the homeopathic remedy to promote sleep for you AND baby as it transfers through the breast milk. We will never recommend drinking coffee while breastfeeding as in this volume, you’ll actually create the opposite result by aggravating the baby’s delicate nervous system and making them wired on caffeine with disastrous sleep results. For you, you can take a dose of Coffea Cruda and then observe your nervous system calm and feelings of over-stimulation resolve.
Nux Vomica: is for what I call the jack in the box syndrome. It will seem that you just drift off to sleep and you, annoyingly, keep popping awake all night long for no rhyme or reason, like you’re woken by the least noise or movement. In proper ascending potencies, Nux. will also help you to detox from the wheat, dairy, sugar, alcohol, and prior medications you’ve taken helping you to sleep more soundly. Classically trained homeopaths have termed Nux Vomica the morning after remedy for any debauchery from the night before. Again, another bandaid on the elephant’s hiney. Why the debauching or binging in the first place? Let’s simply get to the root cause instead!
Pulsatilla: is a great remedy for right-sided ear pain, as mentioned above, with a more low-grade temperature around 103 degrees Fahrenheit. You may feel needy, asking your partner if they truly love you, you may be clingy as well, craving physical contact and consolation. Pulsatilla is less capricious and contrary than the Chamomilla state described above.
Flower Essences for Sleep
To help yourself sleep, we recommend Bach’s Rescue Remedies. I recall certain stressful days where I was still measuring my own sense of value by how many things I was able to tick off my list. Being attached to certain outcomes with a full time job, a mortgage to pay, and an infant or toddler creates a sure disaster with one’s capacity to get enough sleep. When children out number the parent or parents, you’re bound to be pinioned under your children’s expectations over and above your own. This is just how it is, for now. It will get easier, but for now, you answer solely to your child’s needs, dropping most of what you desire to do or find fulfilling.
Bach’s flower essences are super helpful.
Often, when I had a yearning to do something, or I had a deadline, or place to be by a certain time, I would be rendered a high-strung anxious mess by the time bedtime came around, with unresolved feelings of failure that turned up as left-over anxiety, resentment, or even anger from the day. I learned first hand that this is a disastrous state of mind to try and settle myself when I was feeling electrified with irritability and unresolved impatience.
Bach’s Flower Essences, including Walnut, in addition to the remedies below, can help you to feel calmer, more relaxed, and let go to sleep; enabling you to face another day with refreshed eyes, letting go of the unnecessaries, focusing more on simply “being” than “doing.”
Here are the remedies contained in Bach’s Rescue Sleep Remedy, captured right from their website:
White Chestnut: To help ease a restless mind.
Star of Bethlehem: For trauma and shock.
Clematis: For the tendency to “pass out”, and unconsciousness, being ‘far away’ and not present mentally.
Cherry Plum: Fear of mind giving way, verge of breakdown, anger.
Impatiens: For irritability, tension, and fidgety.
Rock Rose: For frozen terror and panic.
(Source: http://www.bachflower.com/bach-rescue-sleep/)
Essential Oils For Sleep
Essential oils, or aromatherapy, are another good way to help with sleep. In the early evening, if my day was super stressful, I will prepare a warm bath with epsom salts and a few drops of lavender. It’s like a reset between my day adulting to simply sit and have a moment to orient myself back to a benevolent world and ponder my own feelings with some chamomile tea.
Journaling my own feelings before bed is also a big help to simply unload the day’s responsibilities and honour my feelings homeopathically.
After the bath is a great time to give yourself a self-massage. If you have a partner who has got great, strong hands and some basic skills, ask them to massage your back, neck and feet with the oil blend below. It’s such a great way to reconnect after the stress of the day, feel held, nurtured, and cared for before drifting off to sleep. If it leads to further intimacy, you can thank me at the bottom of this article. (wink wink)
Massage Oil Blend
1 drop of Lavender
1 drop Geranium
1 drop Roman Chamomile
and 30 ml of Sweet Almond, Olive, or Coconut Oil
Blend all of the ingredients together well. As mentioned above, you can use several drops of lavender and/or chamomile in your bath to help promote sleep. I’ve always used essential oils in a room diffuser, vaporizer, or even a pot of steaming water. One drop of lavender, Roman chamomile, or geranium in about 3 cups of water works well.
I hope that these basic homeopathic remedies help you and that it takes the edge off your acute sleep issues, and that you wake wholly rested and ready to take on the day with greater enthusiasm. To sleep well changes our whole mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being to be wholly present to both the challenges and joys that life offers us in our bodacious lives as dynamically strung individuals.
Much love and care,
Allyson
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