First, the thing that belongs at the beginning rather than the end: if you have not slept for weeks, if you wake early and cannot get back, or if the insomnia arrived suddenly, the first stop is a doctor. Chronic insomnia often has causes a breathing exercise does not touch, and lost months are real harm.
This piece is about something narrower: the kind of sleeplessness where you are tired but the body will not switch off in the evening. You lie there, thoughts running, heart slightly too fast, and at some point it is very late.
Why the body will not switch off
Falling asleep is not a decision but a switch. The nervous system has two modes - one for doing and one for restoring - and sleep only arrives once the second one takes over.
The problem is that the switch cannot be ordered. Telling yourself in the evening to calm down usually achieves the opposite, because the attempt itself is a form of effort. What does work is indirect: the nervous system can be signalled through the breath, because breathing is one of the few bodily functions that runs by itself and can also be changed deliberately.
One detail matters most. An inhale slightly speeds the heart rate; an exhale slows it. So breathing where the exhale is longer than the inhale tells the body there is no danger. Nothing esoteric about it - it is measurable, and anyone can check it on themselves within two minutes.
Three exercises for before bed
We do all three in the hall as well, in the last part of the class. At home, do them in this order; together they take about ten minutes.
One: the long exhale, standing. Stand loosely, feet hip-width, knees soft. Inhale through the nose for a count of four. Exhale through the nose for a count of eight. If eight does not work, count to six - the ratio matters more than the number. Ten repetitions.
Two: raising and lowering the arms. From the same position, on the inhale slowly raise both arms out to the sides up to shoulder height; on the exhale let them down. The arms should feel heavy, not extended. Eight repetitions. This one ties breath to movement, which occupies the mind without stirring it further.
Three: lying, hand on the belly. Lie down, one palm on the chest, the other on the belly. Breathe so that the lower hand moves and the upper one stays still. Do not count. Ten to fifteen breaths. Many people notice here for the first time that they have been breathing only into the chest all day.
What works and what does not
Regularity works; a one-off does not. One exercise on one bad evening will do almost nothing. Ten minutes every evening for two or three weeks usually brings a change that people describe the same way: I don’t fall asleep faster, but I no longer lie there being angry about not falling asleep.
It works better alongside daytime practice. Qi Gong twice a week in the hall plus ten minutes in the evening is considerably more than the second alone - not for mystical reasons, but because slow breathing is learned under load and only applied at home.
It does not work as a replacement for changing habits. If you go to bed with your phone, with coffee at five in the afternoon, or with ten minutes of work just before lying down, a breathing exercise will barely offset that.
And it does not work immediately. For the first three or four evenings often nothing happens, which is why many people stop precisely before it would start.
When this is not enough
If it lasts longer than a month, if sleep falls apart regardless, if you wake at three and cannot return, or if low mood comes with it, do not persist with breathing exercises as the only measure. Insomnia is often a symptom of something else - thyroid, apnoea, anxiety - and all of those are treated elsewhere.
What Qi Gong genuinely offers here is more modest and still worth having: a body that settles after a hard day faster than it used to. For some people that is enough for sleep to arrive on its own.
