Insomnia, Chronic

Common Concern: Insomnia

Traditional Chinese Medicine Point-of-View

How a person sleeps is one of those vital body processes that every organ, whether it be in health or disharmony, will be reflected within.

When disharmony results, it does not matter whether a person is experiencing deficiency (depletion of reserves or inability to create key, vital substances) or excesses (like byproducts and stagnations) type problems, sleep will be affected. If there are problems with the Blood, the Yin, the Yang or the Chi, a person’s sleep will be affected.

Why is this?

When a person sleeps, it is the time that the individual is the most YIN.
Yin is when a person is the most internal, the most stationary, and perhaps even the most “substantial”. This is a time when the body is resting, inert, and in a passive state, where it should be experiencing a very deep level of healing and cellular repair. The mind, perhaps the deepest aspect of any individual, should also do the same, going into the deepest recesses of consciousness.

As human beings, we are a mix of two forces, Yin and Yang, that are in constant play and interchange, and this is happening at every scale and degree, however large or small. One will turn into the other, and the other will become again what it once was. It is a process of change that has the promise of at the end of the cycle, becoming the same as it began.
So, it is within the most extreme of states, the Yin (the night) of the Yin (sleep) of the Yin (the mind) that we are able to see the health of various processes within the human body.

Every aspect of sleep is important, including:

How easily a person is able to fall asleep or the lack thereof.

The quality of sleep, whether calm, restless, or something else, is a significant indicator.

If a person is able to stay asleep is of extreme value.

If a person cannot stay asleep, then key aspects of how they wake are just as important. If a person wakes up in the middle of the night, what times of the night they wake up at is also important. Furthermore, how often they are waking up in the middle of the night is also key. And of course, once again, how they can fall asleep after having been woken up in the middle of the night is also vital.

Whether or not a person dreams is very valuable.

Not only that, if a person dreams, the type of dreams that a person has is also weighty.

And last, nor least, how a person wakes up after a full night’s sleep is also essential information.

Please see the following common herbal remedies, of our Chinese Herbal Formulas that have been designed by our expert herbalists, designed to help with various types of sleep problems.