Part 2

Dr. Emily Noble, who has seen Oriental soldiers at the end of a long march throw themselves in complete relaxation on their backs, gives in her _Rhythmic Breathing plus Olfactory Nerve Influence on Respiration_ possibly the most practical of all directions for the mature in the important art of relaxation. She bids him lie upon his back on a hard surface, with head turned to one side in order to relieve the tension on the muscles of the neck, with arms extended at right angles, with the palms turned up, with feet turned out and spread for comfort at least a foot apart.

The lungs are then to be cleared of their static air by a few deep inhalations, made through the left nostril because in the average man it seems to furnish a freer channel for the air than the right nostril. Next the insomniast settles down to lighter rhythmic breathing, which is nothing but the consequence of the conscious effort to make each exhalation equal to each inhalation. He should take the “breath in as gently as the fog creeps in from the sea.” He should let it out “as the air goes out of little children’s balloons when it is allowed to escape.”

As with experience all feeling of conscious effort passes, he will have a sense of letting go, the muscles will of their own accord relax, the quiet mind will come, especially if a pleasant thought be held steadily before it, the insomniast will stretch and yawn, take instinctively if he be in bed the sleep position, and pass off into a dreamless sleep which will indeed knit up “the ravell’d sleave of care,” and make him ready for a day of effective thinking and efficient action.

FOOTNOTES

[11] _The Heart of Good Health._

THE EMMANUEL METHOD

When sleeplessness can be directly traced to mental causes, the Emmanuel treatment, if experiments made both in Boston and Northampton are to be trusted, is as surely a specific as quinine for malaria. If in any instance medical diagnosis can find no physical reason for the sleeplessness, Emmanuel treatment is at once in order.

The sufferer is admitted to the Rector’s study. The very atmosphere encourages frank speaking. Concealment of any fact or circumstance which bears upon the case is prejudicial to improvement. I have once after three treatments refused again to see a patient who had failed to give me her whole confidence, until she was willing to speak out with greater freedom. The physical habits are invariably considered and corrected whenever there is need. Deep breathing is prescribed. Dr. Learned’s method is sometimes suggested, and always Dr. Noble’s. Drugs are from the first withheld. Tea, coffee, and all other stimulants which act directly on the brain are banished from the evening meal. The sufferer is encouraged as the bedtime hour draws near to give himself to such interests as scatter the cares and worries and obsessions which are then wont to gather like a cloud around the patient’s head.

For some a social evening is suggested, provided it be not too exciting. For others the theatre, the symphony, or other form of public entertainment serves the same purpose. For perhaps a larger number, especially the preacher, or the teacher, or the literary worker, a magazine, a novel with no miserable modern problem in it, or a standard history will in a half-hour let down the mind to the sleep level. I know one man who found Parkman’s histories a soporific boon; another whom Green’s longer _History of the English People_ led on each night to wholesome sleep; another, the head of a large sanitarium, who sometimes saves himself from sleeplessness by reading after he has gone to bed as dull a book as he can find, and recommends the same plan with some profit to his patients.

FAITH REQUIRED IN GOD AND MAN

The main reliance, however, in the Emmanuel treatment is on faith, reinforced first by hetero-suggestion and then by patient and persistent auto-suggestion. The man who would be permanently free from insomnia must be an optimist. He must have a philosophy of life wholesome enough to keep him buoyant, cheerful, and serene amid all the changes and the chances of this mortal life. With the Persian he may hold that “He’s a Good Fellow, and ’twill all be well;” with Socrates that “To the good man no evil thing can happen;” or with St. Paul that “All things work together for good to them that love the Lord.”

Whatever language he may use in the formulation of his life philosophy, he must believe with all his heart and soul that life in spite of all appearances is worth living, that there is love and goodness at the heart of things, that the word God, whatever be its content, does stand for a concept indispensable in our everyday existence, and that there is somewhere, everywhere, One who, by a paradox as strange as it is true, is both the centre and circumference of all that has been, is, and ever is to be—The Absolute and Unconditioned wherever we may chance to be in time or space. “If I climb up into heaven, Thou art there: if I go down to hell, Thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning: and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall Thy hand lead me: and Thy right hand shall hold me.”[12]

A man who wants that serenity of mind on which the soundest sleep invariably depends must get right and keep right with God, whether he defines Him in the terms of Persia, Greece, or Christianity.

But this is not enough. A man must be right also with his fellow-men. He must love his neighbour as he loves his God. “He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” He must have more than a languid interest in his brother. He must wish him better than well. He must have done forever with sharp practice, hard bargaining, ungracious criticism, and that subtle disloyalty which often through sheer cowardice stands mute while slander wags its tongue or envy shoots its Parthian arrows back as it retreats.

With the spirit’s eye he must see even in the poorest and the meanest of his fellows some charm which others have not found. He must with the Christ insight pierce to the heart of the roughest boulder that was ever hewn from the hard mountain-side of seamy human nature and let loose the imbedded angel always there and always struggling to be free. No man has any right to sleep, in fact to any of God’s better gifts, who goes through life with slanting eye and lowering brow sullenly protesting to himself:

As I walked by myself, I talked to myself, And thus myself did say to me: Look to thyself, And take care of thyself, For nobody cares for thee.

FOOTNOTES

[12] Psalm cxxxix., 7-9.

THE SPECIFIC TREATMENT

When the insomniast is ready to pay this double price of love to God and love to man for the peace that passeth understanding and that also bringeth sleep, he is ready for Emmanuel treatment. Seated in the Morris chair before the smouldering fire with curtains drawn, he is taught to relax his muscles, the cortical layer of the brain is quieted by soothing suggestions, and then standing behind the chair the Emmanuel worker begins the treatment somewhat thus in a low monotone:

You are now relaxed in body and quieted in mind. You are to let your thoughts languidly follow mine expressed in words. Do not offer any mental opposition. I shall say nothing which your mind will not instinctively accept and cherish.

Fix your thoughts on God. Think of Him not alone as the All-Father but also as the Universal Mind in which your mind exists exactly as each individual thought floats in your mind. Think of Him not merely as your Heavenly Father but also as the Universal Spirit on which your soul depends for every breath of spiritual life, just as your body is dependent for its every breath of physical existence on the air you breathe. Believe that in this larger, higher, truer sense, “In Him we live and move and have our being.”

Now Universal Mind or Universal Spirit is wholesomeness and love, harmony and power. Realise that when your soul breathes in the atmosphere in which it lives it breathes in wholesomeness and love, harmony and power. But it is possible, in the exercise of the free will with which you are in the nature of the case endowed, to fill up the soul with morbidness and selfishness, disunity and weakness, so that there is no room in it for God’s wholesomeness and love, His harmony and power.

If thou couldst empty all thyself of self, Like to a shell dishabited, Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf, And say, “This is not dead,” And fill thee with Himself instead. But thou art all replete with very _Thou_, And hast such shrewd activity, That, when He comes, He says: “This is enow Unto itself—’t were better let it be: It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.”[13]

You do not sleep because you are “all replete with very _Thou_.” You have filled up your soul with thoughts of self, or thoughts of others from the point of view of self. You have worried when you should have cast your care on Him; “for He careth for you.” You have yielded to all sorts of foolish fears, forgetful that “perfect love casteth out fear.” You have been self-centred, though God Himself was so far centred out of self that “He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

In the silence of this quiet hour put your worries and your fears away and swing your centre out of self. Open wide the windows of your soul and let the Spirit in of wholesomeness and love, of harmony and power. Believe the Spirit will come in. Interpret in the terms of Spirit those veracious words of Revelation: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

Wait for the incoming Spirit. Wait in faith and confidence. Remember that “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.”

With your mind filled with the Spirit of wholesomeness and love, of harmony and power, it will be at rest; it will know the peace that passeth understanding. All nerve-strain will go. Sleep will come to-night. Sleep will come to-morrow night. Sleep will come every night. Sound sleep, re-creating sleep so long denied you, will be yours at last. The day will never know again its feverish inquietude. Work will have its zest, and play its joy. The silent night will lose its morbid fancies and its horrid nightmares, and you will each morning wake with the song upon your lips:

The dark hath many dear avails: The dark distils divinest dews; The dark is rich with nightingales, With dreams, and with the heavenly muse.

You have done with sleeplessness forever. You go out from this room beneath the rooftree of God’s sanctuary, a new creature in Christ Jesus. Claim your new privilege in Jesus’ name. Act henceforth on the comforting assurance that you are to go to sleep as soon as you have gone to bed, and sleep the whole night through.

Keep by day as well as night the serenity you here have found. Awake with the morning light into the thoughts of this first treatment. Keep them in the background of your consciousness the whole day through. Take a few minutes every day to go into the silence as you now are, and think these thoughts again in proper sequence. Take them up into your heart and brood upon them all the day. Work them into the warp and woof of your inmost soul so that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature” shall be able to separate you from them. Make them yours and keep them yours forever and forever. And you shall sleep the sleep of the quiet mind and the God-filled soul in all the years to come.[14]

FOOTNOTES

[13] Thomas E. Brown.

[14] Subsequent treatments are usually a logical development of this. See also Henry Wood’s _New Thought Simplified_. In the author’s next volume to appear in 1909, he expects to publish a complete series of suggestive treatments for nervous functional disorders.

SOME IMMEDIATE RESULTS

Again and again one treatment of this sort—faith reinforced by reiterated suggestion—has sufficed to break up the most obstinate insomnia. One man on the verge of suicide from hitherto incurable insomnia went home from this first treatment to sleep soundly for several nights thereafter. Another man on whom a heart-breaking disappointment had swept down without a word of warning went home to sleep eight hours and a half for the first time in many nights. A trained nurse so long on night duty that she had slipped her sleep cog to the demoralisation of her entire nervous system slept normally again after but one visit to me.

A college instructor sleepless on the verge of a new year of academic strain thus secured the long night’s sleep she coveted the day before the opening of college. A wife and mother overwhelmed by a domestic tragedy after six weeks of drugged sleep went home from her first treatment with a shining face to sleep ever after without taking any drugs. A college girl worn sleepless by the heat and burden of earning her own living while she kept up her standing in the college, reported marked improvement after her first treatment. And a neurasthenic who had lost all hope of ever sleeping better slept so much better after a single treatment that she insists in spite of all my protests in placing her experience among the modern miracles.

THE CO-OPERATION OF THE PATIENT

In most cases, of course, more is necessary than one treatment.[15] Sometimes a dozen treatments are required. And at every stage the patient’s close co-operation is of utmost consequence. In fact, the cure can never be effected without it. To faith reinforced by the Emmanuel worker’s suggestions must be added the auto-suggestions of the patient. He must will to keep the loving attitude toward God and man. He must cease to worry about sleep. He must never mention his symptoms to anyone except the Emmanuel worker who is treating him.

He must cultivate a heavenly unconcern about himself. He must keep saying to himself the whole day through: It does not matter anyway. If I sleep, well and good. If I do not sleep I will not worry over it. To lie awake at night is not so terrible as I once thought. Bed is for rest as well as sleep. The worry over lack of sleep hurts more than sleeplessness itself. Rest is possible even when I can not sleep. Happy thoughts will rob the darkness of its gloom and minimise nerve-strain.

If I keep still in my normal sleep position eight hours every night in bed, if I relax every muscle and let it stay relaxed; if I breathe lightly, regularly, rhythmically in a well-ventilated room, making sure the early morning light will not strike across my face and wake me up; if I simulate sleep in every way I can; if I shut out all preoccupation, expect each night to go to sleep, and steadily hour after hour suggest sleep to myself in words like these I shall surely go to sleep:

I am going to sleep. I shall not lie awake. I cannot lie awake. I am going to sleep. The tired eyes are closing. The blood is flowing from my brain to my extremities. There is no longer any pressure on the brain. The muscles are relaxing. Sleep is stealing over all my senses. They are growing numb. I am getting drowsy, drowsy. I am softly sinking into sleep, dreamless sleep. I am sinking deeper, deeper, deeper. I am almost asleep. I am asleep, asleep, asleep. I am asleep.

FOOTNOTES

[15] It is perhaps unnecessary to explain that no charge is ever made for the Emmanuel treatment, though grateful patients sometimes make a thank offering to the church of which the Emmanuel worker is the Rector.

THE ULTIMATE EFFECT

Even if, in spite of this, one sometimes fails to sleep, one will at least be free from the nerve-strain which a night of worry about sleep invariably brings. And if, in the face of every discouragement and every temptation to lapse from this wholesome attitude toward sleep, one habitually practises each night some such auto-suggestions, he has forever turned his face away from chronic sleeplessness.

He may not always sleep at will. He may not always live up to the light vouchsafed to him. But he will sleep much better than he slept before. He will be free from the morbidness and worry of insomnia. He will have faith where he had fear, peace where he had the troubled mind, and the light at eventide of a night which is not dark with griefs and graves. More than this, he will sleep. He will sleep habitually—to his body’s health, his mind’s contentment, and his soul’s supreme delight.

ILLUSTRATIVE CASES

I. CURED BY SUGGESTION ALONE

_A.—Waking Suggestion_

1. The Emmanuel Clinic in Boston reports the case of a distinguished lawyer who after nine months of insomnia came to Emmanuel Church for counsel. He was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His habit was to take his work and worries every night to bed with him. He was advised to submit to the rest cure under a good neurologist. He replied that, with important cases coming up at once for trial, rest was impossible. In fact, he could at most spend a few hours in Boston. The causes of insomnia were then explained to him. Suggestions were given looking toward self-help. The importance of cheerful and uplifting thoughts was emphasised. He went away an hour later to report in a few weeks that he was entirely cured and had not felt so well since he was a boy.

2. Dubois (p. 340) speaks of a physician twenty-three years of age who had suffered for nine months from persistent insomnia. By bromides, bathing, travel, and the cessation of all work, he had obtained only transient results. Dubois drew his attention to the psychic causes of insomnia, counselled the immediate abandonment both of the treatment he had been giving himself and of all apprehension of insomnia. In a few days sleep returned, the convalescent resumed his customary duties, and was soon completely well again.

_B.—Profound Suggestion_

Forel (p. 252) describes the case of a working-girl who suffered for a year and a half from extreme sleeplessness. All means for her relief failed. Forel induced profound suggestion, let her sleep about an hour every day while she was still in his clinic room, and after three weeks discharged her completely cured and able regularly to sleep nine hours out of every twenty-four.

2. CURED BY FAITH REINFORCED BY SUGGESTION

_A.—Inability to go to sleep on going to bed_

A clergyman forty years of age had inherited a tendency to sleeplessness. Even as a child it was not uncommon for him to lie awake an hour or two after getting into bed. As he passed into his teens the presence of his brother or a boy friend in the same bed would invariably keep him wide awake the whole night through. At college the unusual strain of extra work or of examinations was likely to drive sleep entirely away, and only with the help of bromides at special seasons was he able to get through his studies and take his place at last among the honour men.

His first years out of college were spent in graduate study and educational work, and were made miserable by the gradual increase of insomnia, which shut him out of many social pleasures and impaired his efficiency.

His first ten years in the ministry were checkered by so many stubborn attacks of insomnia that he was more than once on the verge of a complete breakdown, from which the drugs the doctors gave him furnished only temporary relief.

Two years ago, after six weeks of sleeplessness during which he had at his doctor’s orders taken a hypnotic every night, he was able to sleep at most three hours out of every twenty-four and was haunted by obsessions and pervasive fears. When even morphia failed to induce anything more than extreme drowsiness and the heart’s action was so weak that strychnine was prescribed to make it function properly, one sleepless night a physician peremptorily bade him keep in the sleep position and never move, breathe regularly, keep his eyes closed as in sleep, and in every way imaginable to simulate sleep.

This proved to be the turning point in his experience. Sleep came night after night in consequence of his unvarying obedience to the doctor’s orders. From one source or another he discovered how to relax and to suggest sleep to himself. Within a month he had learned to sleep at will, and only once in two years, when for some weeks there was continuous local pain, has his sleep been interrupted. The average both of physical and of mental health has been at least doubled, and these two years past he has done, without fatigue of mind or body, at least twice as much work as in any two years of his life before.

_B.—Waking in the middle of the night_

A widow, seventy-three years of age, suffering for twelve years from neurasthenia, was apt to wake about the middle of every night and to go to sleep no more. The loss of sleep was bad enough, but the morbid fancies which invariably came in swarms sometimes all but drove her to distraction. There was such a bad family history as to sleep and such poor circulation with its inevitable cold feet, that the physician gave me little hope of relieving her insomnia. During the first month of her treatment I, therefore, confined myself almost entirely to the upbuilding of her faith by a course of optimistic reading and by suggestion. I seldom spoke about her sleeplessness at all. To her surprise and mine in a few weeks her sleep began to improve. At the end of two months, though she still awoke two or three nights every week, no morbid fancies came. She filled up her mind with wholesome thoughts, repeated again and again the auto-suggestions on page 68, and usually awoke almost as much refreshed as though she had slept the whole night through. Now after almost a year she reports what used to be one bad night out of every four or five, but as compared with the bad nights—four or five a week—of former years it were better called, she thinks, a good night than a bad one.

_C.—Waking early in the morning_

1. A college girl of unusual ability and character had practically all her life been inclined to wake at two or three o’clock in the morning and often go to sleep no more; or if she went to sleep, to sleep badly and be subject to hideous dreams and horrible nightmares. After one treatment, June 15th, she began at once to sleep much better. Though she sometimes woke as formerly at two or three, she at once by relaxation and auto-suggestion usually went off to sleep again and suffered little from dreams and nightmares. She has had two treatments since, and is not only much improved in body but is happier and more serene in mind.

2. The Emmanuel Clinic in Boston reports the case of an unmarried woman, fifty-two years old, who usually slept four hours a night, awaking at 2.30 and never sleeping more. Her treatment was begun June 20, 1907, and was followed by immediate improvement. By July 1, 1907, she was sleeping without waking eight hours every night, and reported August, 1908, that the improvement had become permanent.

_D.—Semi-sleep_

1. A college girl had never had the feeling of being sound asleep. She thought she was half conscious the night through. What sleep she got never seemed to refresh her. She came to me for treatment, February 7, 1908, slept somewhat better for a night or two, and came back, February 14th, 18th, 25th, for other treatments. On March 13th she reported that though she was not completely cured she was sleeping more soundly and felt better in every way. There was in this case the unhappy complication of organic heart trouble.