Have you noticed you get tired or need extra sleep when you receive a healing, do a new kind of energy work, or experience a divinely inspired realization (or download)? It's a common effect of spiritual work that I've rarely heard talked about.
Some teachers even warn that certain kinds of work drain specific nutrients. So you may have a short-term craving for a certain food, or more protein, or extraordinary amounts of water. Don’t talk yourself out of it! Discerning and following your body's wisdom is a practice crucial to the healer's path, and will benefit you in other ways. (Make sure you're hearing the wisdom and not your tongue.)
But sometimes it’s not the needs of the physical body that make us tired. I know from experience and from many other healers that some new information downloads, healings, or adjustments/openings have to be processed in the sleep state.
You just can’t do it awake.
For instance, last year I ordered The Keys of Enoch®, a difficult metaphysical text that describes two days the author spent with a divine being who showed him many things, including the future. It felt like I’d waited forever for this book to arrive. I had the box open before setting it down, and immediately flipped through the book. Excited and not the teensiest bit tired or sleep-deprived, I read only two pages and then fell soundly asleep in my chair for 20 minutes, head hanging over the book.
These "naps" have nothing to do with sleepiness or an overtaxed body. You just need to get out of your conscious state to process. Do you and the Universe a great favor: don't fight it. Take a nap or go to bed early -– receive this message and follow it! Your doing so will benefit us all.
Last week, a healer friend read me a passage from the new book, Eat Pray Love. In it, as the writer’s friend drives them on a long road trip, the writer realized that (1) resolving her messy, drawn-out divorce was in fact significant enough to pray about, and (2) it was OK to ask the Universe for help in this way, a big epiphany for her. So she does, and they spend an hour thinking of all the famous people who would endorse her prayer. Then the main character conks out, a common enough car event. The book casually says she took a short nap. It might have said about 20 minutes. When she woke up, her lawyer called: the ex had signed the papers.
My friend and I knowingly nodded. We knew why she’d fallen asleep.
Now you do too.
