Written on December 15, 2024

Over 4000 years ago, there were temples in Egypt that we now retrospectively call sleep temples, or dream temples. These temples were hospitals of sorts, which cured a variety of ailments, most of them psychological in nature.

Patients were taken to an unlit room to sleep and be treated for their particular ailment. The treatment consisted of singing chants, putting the patient into a hypnotic state and analyzing their dreams to determine the treatment. Meditation, fasting, bathing and offerings to the gods were also often involved.

Such temples also existed in the Middle East, Rome and Greece. In Greece, these temples were called Asclepieions and the Greek treatment is called incubation. Incubation was later adopted by Greek Christians and is still used in a few Greek monasteries.

For as long as I can remember, I have had difficulty with restlessness. And over the years, through having to try so hard to achieve a state of tranquility, I have discovered that achieving a state of tranquility is the best way to heal your body and mind.

Almost everything in life affects your nervous system. What you drink, what you eat, how much you move during the day, how much sleep you get each night and even the way you breathe. To achieve a calm mind, all these actions must be in balance.

Focusing on curing the symptoms without looking at what is actually causing the symptoms is like pushing water uphill. Focusing on the cause of the symptoms is the real solution.

Look behind the veil to find out what the problem is that is causing the symptoms. If you are breathing shallowly, the breathing itself is not your problem, the real problem is the cause of your shallow breathing. Work on that and the rest will resolve itself.

I would have loved it if temple sleeping was still a common thing. But luckily we don't need temples to achieve the effects they achieved all those years ago. By reading about their methods, we can continue these age-old healing methods in our own time.