That 3am Meditation

by Traci Hodes

I often wake around 3am. 

The more I speak aloud about it happening, the more I hear I’m not alone -- the humanity of it all.  A friend and I joke we could offer a 3am meditation sit, and there would be plenty who would be awake to join us 

I was in practice with others recently, and a wise one expressed how for her, the 3am “sits” are some of the most illuminating sits she has. I must agree with her, although I would also say for me, they most often don’t start out pleasant. 

Usually when I wake at around 3am, it’s with a bit of a start, a bit of activation, anxiety, panic, or dread…. Something unpleasant, although it doesn’t register at first.  Now that I think about it, I’ve never woken at 3am because I’m feeling something wonderful… There are parts of me, awakening from sleep at 3am, asking to be heard, and they seem to know that at 3am I won’t have the energy to argue. Perhaps they are the parts I’ve ignored during the day, and they know they can creep up on me in the silence of the early, early morning. 

Often, when I wake, my mind is going so fast I don’t feel my body.  It’s loud in this mind, so many thoughts swishing by on this highway.  At first, they are speeding by so fast I can’t even make sense of them. Truly, I don’t even want to make sense of them.  It’s like the heat of summer when I don’t want to sit in that hot car seat; and so for a bit, the thoughts keep uncomfortably speeding by. 

I convince myself I’ll get back to sleep, and I toss and turn a bit.  Then it hits me-- I won’t be able to fall asleep, there’s too much churning inside. 

When I first wake in the dark quiet, I often don’t trust myself to see what is there, I don’t trust myself to hold what is asking to be held.  It’s like I have to re-find myself.  It’s so quiet outside, and so loud inside, how do I find the quiet within me?  Right there is the question, the inquiry. 

Sometimes, I really can’t find the quiet on my own and on those nights, I’ll pop on a guided practice by one of my teachers, and their soothing voice guides me back to my body, back to sensation, back to the ground, and it is such a relief to feel the ground again.  Once I remember I’m being held by the ground, by this earth, once I remember I exist in this body, the mind starts to slow down again. The thoughts that were speeding by, they start to slow. 

I see them. 

They aren’t quite as scary as I originally thought, sort of like the long-ago feared monster in the closet who turned out to be my Winnie the Pooh, my very best and most trusted friend. 

It's at that point that I can feel the vibration of the body and my body’s reminding me it’s here for me.   

I can understand that during the day I took on another person’s angst and I forgot to let it go, it accompanied me to bed and settled in the body.  I invite it to return to the earth. 

I can see the critic who was hiding away in the corner of the mind, only to make itself known in the quiet of the night, telling me I’m not doing something well enough.   

I can see the critic is like a mirage -- it feels so real, but it doesn’t speak truth. 

The remembering of being held by the ground helps me remember that these thoughts which wake me at 3 in the morning, these thoughts that feel so real--  

are not truth. 

And with that, I continue to feel the refuge of vibration, of breath, of a humming in the body. 

I remember trust, and I allow it to return to my heart. 

I remember kindness, and I allow that to settle back in as well. 

And, sometimes, such a lovely gift arrives: Gratitude. 

Gratitude for this practice of listening. 

Gratitude for the practice of courage. 

Gratitude for the practice of “being with”. 

Gratitude for this waking at 3am, the tossing and turning, the re-finding of the body, the re-finding of refuge, the re-finding of being held, the re-finding of trust and ultimately, of love. 

And, some mornings, after all of this practice, I am even fortunate enough to go back to sleep, but not always.  Regardless, even when I lay there awake after the rush of the busy highway of thoughts, I am with the quiet of the night, the beauty of the darkness.   

It’s like I’ve been given back to myself. 

And I rest.