Insomnia & Chronic Fatigue Recovery Coaching
You're here because you've made all the efforts and nothing has fully worked. The approach at Rested and Free is not about introducing you to a new effort to make sleep happen. Rather, here you will experience relief from needing to make the natural process (sleep) occur, and restore your trust in your body's natural sleep drive. The pressure to "get it right" and "make it happen" often backfires when it comes to sleep. Hence, we will work together to remove pressure, reduce anxiety, and sleep will return naturally and effortlessly.
Sleep is always something effortless. It's a let-go. Making efforts to accomplish letting go is contradictory; it will not work for most people, and even when it seems to, it's often not for the long term - insomnia returns down the road.
The issue is the fear itself of not sleeping, which keeps the system in hyperarousal. Hyperarousal interferes with the body's natural sleep drive. When we don't sleep well or at all, the fear only increases, and thus we are even more hyperaroused, making sleep even more difficult. This is the loop of insomnia. Hence, it is the fear and the hyperarousal that are targeted in the Rested and Free approach.
When we learn how to bring down the hyperarousal, the natural sleep drive of the body can function without interference. Sleep returns to being effortless. There is no longer any battle to get sleep - but also no fear of not sleeping. When that fear is absent, perhaps paradoxically, sleep no longer eludes us. We are no longer trying to avoid what we don't want to happen. Sleep ceases being an issue or a thought in our lives at all any more than it is for someone who never had insomnia.
But the journey of recovery, while not easy, is something very special. The way is through the fear, and it does require courage, but along the way, you'll likely come to shift your relationship with fear, as well as with yourself: Recovery leads us to no longer fear fear or see anxiety as an enemy, and we find a deeper and embodied kind of safety than we've ever known. This equanimity is the reward of moving through the fear. But also, that reward comes with a deeper acceptance of and kindness toward ourselves, liberating us to be a freer and happier version of ourselves.
The recovery is not instant; it requires patience, but it is most definitely doable. I speak from my own experience, and that of countless people I've encountered and worked with to end the fear and no longer view sleep as an issue, or as a problem in one's life that needs fixing.
My name is Daniel Shai and I suffered from insomnia and chronic fatigue for over 30 years. I wish to be for you the help that I wished I had.
You are welcome to read throughout the website about my approach to insomnia and chronic fatigue. It is a pioneering approach to both, one that worked for me! Because of this, I want nothing more than to share it with you! If what you read resonates with you or calls you, know that I look forward to supporting you.
Ending the struggle of Insomnia
Pioneering Approach to Chronic Fatigue 🪷
Brighter Days
Are Ahead ☀️
Healing takes courage, but avoiding the issue keeps it in place. It involves learning how to approach our fatigue differently, particularly in a way that ceases making an enemy out of it. It sounds counterintuitive, but the brain must learn that fatigue is not the problem it thinks it is. While this is a radical shift in approach, it retrains the brain to see safety where it previously saw threat. As a result, symptoms gradually fade.
It is astnoishing to learn of the mind-body unity, and how fear, anxiety, and stress can produce so many symptoms in the body. Fatigue that is without them, does not feel the same. A major part of chronic fatigue is emotional and includes fear of the fatigue itself.
Through the process I offer, we learn to differentiate between the emotional aspects of our fatigue and the physical aspects and unburden the former; we recover our ability to function without fighting against ourselves; we reclaim our birthright to enjoy our days. This is not about fixing you -- you're not broken; rather, it's about becoming aware of what maintains you in struggle and learning how to leave the struggle.
As we shift our relationship with the experience, our experience begins to shift, and now deeper and less obvious layers may arise. We may discover fears we didn't know were there, but the process frees us from them, and renews our life force. It is a journey that leads us to a renewed relationship with ourselves -- one that heals the basic fear that causes us to avoid living our full lives and results in deep self-acceptance.
Surely, this is not any traditional approach to CFS, and it may not be for everyone. But if you are willing to take the inner journey, you just might be ready to find out who you are and what your life looks like when free from chronic fatigue.
CHRONIC FATIGUE
INSOMNIA
For so many years I was looking in the wrong direction, looping in my exhausting struggle. But the good news is that when I finally knew where to look and how to approach my situation differently, relief came quickly. This is about what I call LGC (Letting Go of Control), which paradoxically makes you feel more in control, as you begin to feel safe and calm.
The path of recovery begins by first framing insomnia as what it really is: an anxiety and fear about not sleeping that we keep reacting to with more anxiety and fear. This perpetuated state of threat interferes with our body's natural built-in ability to sleep. We cannot lose this ability or sleep drive - but we can interfere with it.
This is why my approach to sleep recovery deals primarily with ending this loop of anxiety. It can be a tricky path at times, and having gone through it, I of course want to shed light on the path for you. I know all too well how lonely, intense, panic-inducing, and despairing it can be.
My own intense and long struggle ended not with victory and beating sleep into submission, but with letting go of the struggle -- to the point that I lost interest in thinking about sleep at all. What giving up the fight meant was giving up the effort to control a natural process that doesn't benefit from control. Becoming aware of where that anxiety-inducing control that makes sleep more difficult lies is a big part of recovery. Another big part is retraining our nervous system to feel safe.
Sleep Without Pressure
Function With Ease
Feel Like Yourself Again
What if our struggle is caused not by a real threat but a perceived one? What if our brains keep reacting to a threat that isn’t there? In our work together we will be addressing the specific perceived threats at the root of CFS, and those that keep the cycle of sleeplessness and tiredness fixed in place. Not only will we uncover these threats, but we will see through them, and find out experientially what happens when life is without threat. Specifically, what happens when we realize there is actually nothing wrong with us, and that our reactions to what has occurred in our lives have been entirely normal.
This is about life without pressure and suffering, where well-being is not just an idea but manifested emotionally and physically, in the body. It’s a life in which we are rested and free.
Sleep Recovery
Fatigue Recovery
This isn't sleep hygiene, nor CBTi, nor does it have anything to do with supplements, or any type of "trick" that is supposed to make you sleep. This approach meets you where medicine and most therapy fail to, and restores your natural ability to sleep.
It isn't magic, it's simply a correct understanding
of the issue: Insomnia is not, essentially, a sleep issue, but a fear of not sleeping, which then creates such pressure and hyper-arousal, placing sleep out of reach. When anxiety levels are high, no sleep effort - whether medication, hygiene, or the perfect sleep scenario - can make us sleep.
This work does require you to face yourself, mainly your fear and anxiety around not sleeping. But with the right tools and support from someone who's been through it, there is no doubt that you can and will be at peace with sleep again! Robust recovery means it will no longer be an issue that occupies your mind.
What creates fatigue to a point that it becomes debilitating? And how do we reverse this?
Healing involves re-education regarding the body-mind connection, an area that is strongly overlooked by the medical and therapy fields. Yet the fact is that the mind created the condition, and it also has the power to shift it.
Looking in the right places and being given actually helpful tools, along with the right encouragement from someone who knows what it feels like, is what makes this a worthwhile journey and not another waste of time and energy.
Working together will give you hope and empowerment. It takes willingness, but as you see results, you will feel encouraged. Once you get the hang of it, relief grows and recovery is at hand.
You will enjoy full days that feel fulfilling and meaningful.
If you don't have chronic fatigue necessarily but feel like exhaustion is hindering you, this work is for you as well!