Insomnia can be one of the most draining and debilitating experiences. Anyone who has struggled with it knows how soul-crushing it feels to be unable to sleep or achieve truly restful sleep.

In fact, insomnia is one of the most common complaints people bring to their doctors. Its symptoms typically include insufficient or poor-quality sleep, along with difficulty falling or staying asleep.

People suffering from insomnia often experience significant distress and disruption in their daily lives. They rarely wake up feeling refreshed and may feel fatigued or drowsy for the rest of the day. This lack of rest can also lead to feelings of depression, anxiety, and irritability.

The condition can severely impact performance at work or school by making it difficult to focus, pay attention, remember information, or learn new things.

There are two main types of insomnia: acute (short-term) insomnia, which lasts for days or weeks, often triggered by stressful events; and chronic insomnia, which persists for months or longer.

While there are many “solutions” available—most of them drug-related—even natural remedies tend to fall short, as they don’t address the root cause. From a Taoist perspective, insomnia stems from an inability to recharge, to surrender, and to trust in one’s connection to life and nature. It’s important to recognize that this is not anyone’s fault; no one would consciously choose to miss out on deep, restorative sleep.

I believe it comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be human.

Let’s delve into this from a Taoist viewpoint. What exactly is sleep, and how does it restore us?

In our day-to-day lives, we are constantly spending energy. Our senses are engaged—looking, speaking, thinking, tasting—we are projecting our energy outward to accomplish our goals and desires.

As the day goes on, in a healthy individual, fatigue sets in as the body signals that it needs rest to replenish. But what happens when we sleep? Our senses turn inward, reconnecting with deeper layers of energy and linking us back to the life force.

This is a critical concept. The scientific view suggests that we are born with plenty of energy, and as we age, we gradually lose it. But this is a limited, linear understanding of what it means to be a human being. From a Taoist perspective, we are continuously nourished by the life force in the eternal present—there is no linear depletion of energy.

This single shift in perspective changes everything.

During sleep, we encounter less resistance to the life force. The mind, with all its worries and preoccupations, relaxes and surrenders, allowing for deep rest and replenishment. As we sleep, life force flows into us from deeper dimensions, and we are recharged. Upon waking, we begin the cycle of spending energy again.

Over time, we may find that we’re not recharging as much as we’re expending, and this is what we commonly refer to as aging.

The key to overcoming insomnia and aging is to understand your energy body and its connection to the deeper dimensions of life force. Taoist Inner Alchemy practices are designed to help you access these deeper levels of vitality that are freely available to all.

You might ask a simple but profound question: Is this energy truly ours, or are human beings part of nature’s energy flow? Taoists in my tradition believe it is the latter. We are all connected to the energy of nature; the misconception is that this energy is personal or belongs solely to us.

For example, trees are nurtured by the Earth, by Gaia herself. Human beings, on the other hand, often operate from a sense of self-ownership and willpower, but is that actually the truth?

I suggest that the root cause of insomnia is a lack of trust in life’s inherent support. Life is continually nourishing us because every human being is an extension of nature. We become disconnected from this truth when we fall into survival mode, comparing ourselves to others who seem to have more or less than we do.

This inability to trust life is, in essence, a distortion of the core feminine principle of existence: Love. Nature is love made manifest.

We have lost our ability to trust that life is a loving, supportive force. I call this the “Betrayal of Love.”

This betrayal is a uniquely human experience, and it is often felt more acutely by those in female bodies.

With Love,
Andrew Kenneth Fretwell