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Mindfulness for Insomnia

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Member Reviews

A very well written guide, Mindfulness for Insomnia is the perfect companion for anyone having problems sleeping.

You'll learn practices grounded in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindful self-compassion (MSC), and guided mindfulness and acceptance for insomnia (GMATI) to alleviate the mental, emotional, and physical suffering caused by insomnia. You'll also learn to identify both internal and external factors that may be compromising your sleep, and develop a plan to address these issues.

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Mindfulness for Insomnia is an informative book. The authors seem well informed and have written an easy to understand book.

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Very useful, theory well explained. Thank you to NetGalley, to the author and to New Harbinger Publications for the ARC.

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Learn how to fight insomnia without pills.

This book focuses on the CMATI (Guided Mindfulness with Acceptance Treatment for Insomnia) method. The author suggests:

Along with reading this book, you can access guided meditations that can be used: (1) throughout the day to train your mind and body to be less reactive to circumstances; (2) before going to bed to create new habits and wind down; an eventually (3) even in the middle of the night when you find yourself awake and need support.

After completely this guide and becoming proficient with it. The author suggests the reader may be able to be weaned off of sleep aids or pills.



I received an ARC from New Harbinger Publishing through NetGalley. This in no way affects my opinion or rating of this book. I am voluntarily submitting this review and am under no obligation to do so.

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This book helped my insomnia. Great tips! Have recommended to others and know I will keep to reread in the future.

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I found this informative and helpful with some tips that I used also, it's a definite read that will prove useful for some

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As an occasional insomniac (ok more than occasional, but I'm trying), I was hoping for a magic bullet. Well, spoiler alert: there is none. In fact, the authors of this book say the best you can do is to relax your mind with meditation practice and acknowledge your insomnia when you wake in the middle of the night, but without the anxiety (e.g."yep, I'm awake, but whatevs. Let those thoughts just pass on by.") An interesting book; I took lots of notes about thoughts on interconnectedness, peace in mind and body. You can't control thoughts and monkey mind, but "you can influence how they affect you".

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Well written but still a terrible sleeper. I do think part of it is that I am just expecting. To be a terrible sleeper so that’s not the books fault. Thanks NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review!

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Thank you Netgalley and publisher for this.

What a wonderful book, I sleep really badly and thought this might give me a little bit of help and it has.

It has tips to help clear you mind fora better sleep and is a beautiful book as well as being practical.

I would definitely recommend

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I love this book which has a 4 week guided program to use. I felt like this was a perfect length of time for me to give this a try. The book starts out with reasons that we have trouble sleeping, and what cause and effects this brings on. I learned a lot in this section. As I got into the 4 week program I found that journaling was a very effective way of tracking for me. It gave me time to think about the meditations and what they meant to me and how/if they helped me. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that is looking to work on their sleeping patterns and make adjustments to help them have a healthier sleep experience.

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This was a well-written, informative, relaxing guide about how the principles of mindfulness might be adapted to help you with your insomnia. It presents a four-week program designed to help you relax and ease your mind in order to help you fall asleep.

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Well-written mindfulness exercises intended to help insomniacs. Likely best if presented while engaging in in-person treatment.

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I am a terrible sleeper and, for those reasons, I participated in a mindfulness course before. The GMATI approach outlined in this book is a helpful reminder plus added some extra tips to help clear the mind for a better sleep rhythm. It's a practical book with online meditations available if you prefer listening.

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Mindfulness for Insomnia: A Four-Week Guided Program to Relax Your Body, Calm Your Mind, and Get the Sleep You Need by Catherine Polan Orzech and William H. Moorcroft lays out a day-by-day meditation program to facilitate sleep.

I’ll start off by saying that I read the book because I was curious about the method, but I didn’t actually practice it myself. Other than the sleep education provided in the first part of the book, the book is not something that’s intended to simply be read.

The book is based on a method called Guided Mindfulness with Acceptance Treatment for Insomnia (GMATI), which operates under the principle that it’s more effective to teach people to accept their experience of poor sleep than it is to try to directly bring about changes to their sleep patterns. It draws on ideas from mindful self-compassion and mindfulness-based stress relief.

The first part of the book is devoted to understanding the fundamentals of sleep and the “mental threats” that tend to perpetuate insomnia.

The majority of the book is devoted to the GMATI method. It’s a four week program, and there is a guided medication script for each week. There are recordings available online. Each week has a theme for the meditation, as well as specific sub-themes assigned to each day. After each meditation sessions, the authors suggest that you journal, including what you noticed in your mind, body, and mood.

The meditations are supposed to be done during the daytime, and it’s only in the fourth week that the mindfulness practice is incorporated into the nighttime.

The focus for week one is establishing a meditation practice, including being present in the moment and focusing on the breath. The authors write that “the breath is a friend, and is also a teacher. It is always teaching us how we can receive, and also how to let go.”

In week 2, the focus is on accepting and allowing sleep rather than trying to change it, and cultivating self-compassion. The breath also plays a big role here: “You are being nourished, rocked, and caressed by each breath.” I include these quotes about the breath because they’re quite reflective of the type of mindfulness practice described in this book.

Week 3 focuses on letting be and letting go, and not trying to push away negative thoughts about sleep. Week 4 aims to build confidence in your ability to sleep. Mindfulness is used during time in bed awake at night, as “you are learning a new way of being in bed when sleep eludes you”.

In the concluding chapter there is a neat little summary checklist to pull it all together.

In the appendix there is a schedule for tapering off sleeping pills after using GMATI, with the comment that you must consult your doctor before going ahead with it. It did not specify which particular “sleeping pills” should follow this regimen. The inclusion of this concerned me, as neither of the authors are medical doctors. Plus coming off of trazodone is a very different thing from coming off a benzo after 20 years. All things considered it just seemed irresponsible.

The book is clearly written and explains the various elements of the program well. Mindfulness can be practiced in various ways, and this book tends to focus on formal seated meditation with focus on the breath and that type of thing. It wouldn’t be my personal choice, but I think this could be a useful book for people who are interested in trying out that kind of practice.

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This book is a really calming read (which is great) and expertly guides you through a four week guide to calm your mind, relax your body and to get the sleep you are struggling to get. I would really recommend this book for anyone with an interest in mindfulness, sleep, resting, sleep deprivation, and self-help.

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Great book. Gave lots of very good hints and tips. I’d love to put these into practice. I’m sure this will be very popular. A lot of people suffer insomnia

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The author provided tips on how to get yourself into the mindset to get a healthy amount of sleep each night. I am someone who will not worry about something until my head hits the pillow at night and then I spend the night tossing and turning. I utilized the advice from the author and I was able to get a good night's rest about 70% of the times that I used the techniques.

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This book is informative, with many tips and to help you, but it did not really help me personally, so .

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The Good: This book was a great beginning mediation book. It covered a lot of the details that many people don't understand as they start mediating -- such as that your brain will get distracted and that mediation is not about keeping your mind completely blank as many believe. I also liked how it gave this information out on a day by day format rather than dumping it on you all at once as some mediation books do. And I enjoyed the online mediation that I listened to as well.

The Not So Good: It seems a little conflicted about what it's purpose is. Apparently the plan is to come at Insomnia indirectly, by using meditation/mindfulness completely separately from the moments of insomnia. I do not know if that works or not at this point, but IMO it lead the authors to a book that is really a beginning mediation/mindfulness book with prologue on how that can help out with insomnia. Additionally some parts seem directed toward a coach or counselor on how to guide patients (although I may be somewhat misremembering the start of the book due to having just read the online PDF -- which is 100% directed towards that purpose). Lastly, the online meditation seems awkward to access but is integral to the book. I know from experience that any small awkwardness in accessing something like this pretty much makes it extremely unlikely I will use it at all.

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As someone who struggles with Insomnia I am always looking for natural ways to find peace in sleeping though the night. The information isn't anything new for someone who struggles with Insomnia on a daily or month basis. This information is helpful for those who struggle with loss of sleep once every couples of years but for those who struggle monthly this is might be the book that puts you to sleep and less the method they suggest. I didn't find it as helpful as I had hopped as well as something new.



Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher New Harbinger Publications for the advance copy of Catherine Polan Orzech, William H. Moorcroft Mindfulness for Insomnia

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