Q: I have started practising meditation after reading your book (which I found it most useful and interesting, and I have been reading it repeatedly). After each meditation, I found difficulty in falling asleep ( I usually meditate at night )and when I do fall asleep, it would be for about 3 to 4 hours only and will not be able to go back to sleep again after. Is something wrong? Perhaps, my meditation technique is not right. Please advice.

A: Don't meditate before you go to sleep. Try and meditate at least 3 - 4 hours before you go to bed. Not being able to sleep after meditating is quite normal. One research paper says people get more 'rest' in the 20 minutes meditation than they do in 6 hours sleep and many long term meditators don't need as much sleep as other people.

In contradiction to this, we always recommend to people who have difficulty in sleeping to meditate themselves to sleep. When people who have difficulty sleeping, meditating themselves to sleep does work....but the difficulty in sleeping is anxiety related. It may not work if you meditate first then go to sleep.

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