A Good Night from YogaAway

Night Blindness
"We suffer today from serious complications of psychospiritual night blindness," writes Dr. Rubin Naiman, in his book Healing Night (Syren Book Co., 2006) " — a far-reaching failure to understand the significance of night in our lives...."

"A culture of zealous industrialization," he says, "has polluted the night environment with excessive and pernicious artificial illumination. Blinded by this light, we have lost our regard for the natural milieu of dusk, dawn, and the intervening darkness of night. Daylight has been deified and darkness demonized. It would seem that even as adults, we are afraid of the dark."

Startling as this may seem, Dr. Naiman paints an accurate picture of the conundrum that faces us now. We have lost our relationship to night. And what's worse is that we are loosing sleep over it!

"Inundated by day," Dr. Naiman reports,

"we suffer by night from an unprecedented epidemic of sleep disorders that take a substantial toll on our health, well-being, and productivity."

Yet the darkness will eventually make us come to terms with our own light of consciousness, in order to recover one of the most fundamental relationships we have — the relationship we have with ourselves.

Because sleep is ultimately, personal. And to heal our relationship to sleep and to night requires deep personal exploration and growth.

An Integrative Approach
In Healing Night, Dr. Naiman articulately, even poetically, lays the foundation for a new, integrative approach to the understanding of sleep, dreams, and their related problems — an approach that is profoundly spiritual in nature.

This approach truly encompasses the

"yogic" perspective. It enlightens us to the forgotten potential of nature's rhythmicity, and reminds us to align ourselves intensely with all that is natural and real. This teaching is present throughout sacred texts in all major religious traditions, both East and West. Why? Because it touches the deepest levels of our human consciousness; and challenges our faith and relationship to (God).

As we restore a sense of sacredness to our sleep and to night consciousness, we bring a deeper meaning to sleep as a spiritual path — one that provides extraordinary transformation and healing to our lives.