The Breathing Technique a Daoist Monk Taught Me Cured My Three Years of Insomnia

I'd had insomnia for three years.

Not the occasional can't-fall-asleep kind. The kind where every night you lie in bed, eyes shut, brain spinning like a washing machine. Your body is exhausted, but your brain won't stop.

I tried melatonin. I tried white noise. I tried counting sheep — when I got to three thousand seven hundred I gave up and started counting how many days I'd been alive. I tried meditation apps. That gentle woman's voice said, "Feel your breath." I felt it. Then I was more awake.

Last winter, I went to Qingcheng Mountain to clear my head. I just meant to hike. On the mountain I ran into a monk at a Daoist temple. He looked about sixty, but he had more energy than me — rosy face, walked like the wind was behind him.

I don't know where I found the nerve, but I asked him, "Master, do you ever get insomnia?"

He looked at me and smiled. "I haven't had insomnia in thirty years."

I said, "You're a monk. Of course you don't get insomnia. You don't have to go to work."

He laughed again. "I used to get it too. Then my master taught me a way of breathing, and I haven't had it since."

I said, "What way?"

He said, "Sit down first."

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Day One: Counting Your Breath

That afternoon, in the back courtyard of the temple, bamboo leaves rustling in the wind. He had me sit on a stone bench, back straight, hands on my knees.

He said, "Take a breath now."

I breathed in, and breathed out.

"How long was your inhale?"

"One second? Two seconds?"

"And your exhale?"

"About the same."

He nodded. "That's the problem. Your breathing is too shallow and too fast. It's like eating — if you chew twice and swallow, is your stomach going to feel good?"

Then he taught me the first method — breath counting (数息法).

The method is simple:

1. Breathe naturally. Don't try to control it.
2. Don't count when you breathe in. Count when you breathe out.
3. Count from one to ten, then start over from one.
4. If your mind wanders and you forget what number you're on, start over from one.
5. If you count past ten, go back to one.

"Count a hundred breaths first," he said.

I thought, a hundred breaths — how long is that going to take? But I didn't ask. I just closed my eyes and started counting.

One, two, three... seven... hmm, what am I having for dinner... no, start over. One, two, three... twelve... no, that's past ten. One, two...

Just like that, back and forth, I counted for about twenty minutes. My mind wandered I don't know how many times, and each time I started over. But the strange thing was, after twenty minutes I opened my eyes, and my head felt much clearer.

"How do you feel?" the master asked.

"A little... quieter, maybe."

"That's right. Breath counting isn't about the counting. It's about giving your mind somewhere to stay. The mind is like a monkey — you have to give it a branch to hold onto, or it jumps all over the place. Breath counting is that branch."

That night, back at the guesthouse, I lay in bed and tried breath counting. I don't remember which breath I was on. I fell asleep.

It was the first time in three years I hadn't tossed and turned for over an hour before falling asleep.

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Day Two: The Long and the Short of Breath

The next day I went to find him again. This time he taught me the second method — breath regulation (调息法).

"Yesterday you just counted your breaths. Today you're going to start adjusting them."

He had me watch my breathing rhythm first.

"When you breathe in, does your belly go out or sink in?"

I looked down. "I think... it sinks in."

"That's backwards," he said. "When you breathe in, your belly should rise. When you breathe out, it should sink in. This is called abdominal breathing. Babies are born doing it. But as people grow up and get tense, it reverses."

He had me put my hand on my belly and feel it rise and fall with each breath.

Then he taught me a rhythm:

• Inhale for four seconds
• Hold for two seconds
• Exhale for six seconds
• Hold for one second

"The key is that the exhale is longer than the inhale," he said. "Breathing in nourishes. Breathing out releases. You can't sleep because too much is stuck inside you — you keep taking in but never letting go. Of course you can't sleep."

I thought that sounded a bit mystical. But later I looked it up, and it turns out modern medicine has similar findings — extending your exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the body's "relax mode." When you breathe in, your heart rate goes up. When you breathe out, it slows down. The longer the exhale, the slower the heart, the more the body relaxes.

This isn't superstition. It's physiology.

That afternoon I practiced for over an hour in the back courtyard. Four in, two hold, six out, one hold. At first I could never get it right — either the inhale was too long or the exhale too short. But slowly I found the rhythm, like walking down a long, gentle slope. Step by step. No rush.

When I finished, he asked me, "How do you feel now?"

I thought about it. "A little sleepy."

He smiled. "That's right."

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Day Three: The Warmth of Breath

The third day was the last. I had to go down the mountain.

He taught me the final method — an introduction to embryonic breathing (胎息法).

"Breath counting and breath regulation from the last two days are the foundation. The truly advanced breathing is when you can't feel yourself breathing at all."

"Isn't that just being dead?" I said.

He laughed again — the kind of laugh that makes you feel like you said something stupid, but he doesn't hold it against you.

"It's not that you stop breathing. It's that your breathing becomes so light, so fine, so slow, that you can't even feel it yourself. Like a baby in the womb — it doesn't breathe through its nose, but it's alive."

He said there was no rush with this method, that I could practice it slowly. The way to begin:

1. First do breath regulation to slow your breathing down
2. Then slowly make your breathing lighter — so light that if you held a feather under your nose, it wouldn't move
3. Shift your attention from "I am breathing" to "the breath is moving through my body"
4. Don't force it. Let the breathing happen on its own

"Imagine you're a rubber ball," he said. "Breathing isn't you pumping air into it. It's the ball expanding and contracting on its own. You just watch."

I tried for a while. I didn't reach the state he described. But the feeling was strange — when I stopped "trying to breathe" and instead "let the breath come on its own," my whole body seemed to sink below the ground. It got very heavy, but also very loose.

"Practice every day when you get back," he said. "Twenty minutes before bed. Count your breaths first, then regulate them, then try embryonic breathing. No rush. However far you get is fine."

"How long until it works?"

"It varies from person to person. But you already fell asleep here on Qingcheng Mountain, which means your body can sleep. It's just that your brain won't let it."

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After I Came Home

After I came down the mountain, I practiced every night before bed.

The first week, sometimes I'd fall asleep in the middle of practicing. Sometimes I'd finish and still be wide awake. But I noticed a change — even when I didn't fall asleep right away, that "I can't sleep, this is so stressful" feeling had faded a lot. Because while I was counting breaths, my mind had something to do. It didn't wander off to "why am I still not asleep."

The second week, the time it took to fall asleep dropped from an hour or two to under thirty minutes.

The third week, sometimes after I finished breath regulation, I'd turn over and be asleep.

After a month, I could basically fall asleep within fifteen minutes every night.

I'm not saying the breathing method is a cure-all. I made other changes too: no more coffee at night, no more phone before bed, switched the lamps in my room to warm light. But the breathing was the core of it — because it directly changed my relationship with "sleeping."

Before, I was "forcing myself to sleep," and the harder I forced, the less I could. Now I "let the body relax first, and whether I sleep or not, so be it." And then I sleep.

He said something once that I still remember. He said:

"You think insomnia is a disease. It isn't. Insomnia is your body telling you your heart is too full. You don't need sleeping pills. What you need is — to let the air out."

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A Few Last Words

If you have insomnia too, you can try it. You don't need to go to Qingcheng Mountain. You don't need to find a Daoist monk. Tonight, when you lie in bed:

1. Close your eyes and count your exhales. One to ten. If your mind wanders, start over.
2. After a few rounds, start adjusting the rhythm: four seconds in, six seconds out.
3. Put your hand on your belly and feel it rise and fall.
4. Don't think "I need to fall asleep." Just think "I am breathing."

That's it.

You've known how to breathe since the day you were born. You just got too busy later on and forgot how to breathe well.

He said, the Dao follows nature. The greatest method isn't some secret art. It's returning to what you already knew how to do.

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Three questions for you:

1. You can pause right now and feel it — when you breathe in, does your belly go out or sink in?
2. When was the last time you really paid attention to your breathing?
3. If you try breath counting tonight, which breath will you fall asleep on?