In brief
Anne Yang first lost the ability to sleep at 14, during a three-day school entrance exam in China. Those nights left her with a quiet wish: to find peace for her soul. Years later, Falun Dafa meditation gave her a way to stop overthinking and steady her mind.
Three days, six exams
Some nights your body is worn out and your mind keeps running — through what’s done, what’s next, what might go wrong. If you know those nights, you’ll understand where Anne’s story begins.
She was 14, in China, sitting the entrance exam for high school. It lasted three days: a two-hour test every morning, another every afternoon, six subjects in all. She was aiming for the best high school in town, where the bar was extremely high.
Everyone who knew her assumed she would sail through. She was a top student. What nobody seemed to understand, she writes, is that top performers are more prone to stress “because they set a high bar for themselves.”
Then night came, and something new happened.
“For the first time in my life, I could not fall asleep,” she remembers. “My body and brain seemed to have switched off the function of sleep and focused only on the exams.”
She calls those three days and nights “tough, harrowing and exhausting.” She got through them. She made good scores, and she did go to the best high school.
But the sleepless nights stayed with her longer than the results. They showed her, she writes, how full of suffering a human life could be.
If you’ve ever succeeded on paper while your mind refused to rest, you know a good result doesn’t always bring peace.
A secret wish
So from then on, she carried a secret wish: that one day she would find a solution to this kind of suffering, and peace for her soul.
She kept looking. She grew up in a generation born at the end of the Cultural Revolution, which, she writes, had largely lost touch with an older Chinese way of living called “cultivation practice.” She thinks of it less as a religion than as a wisdom of life, a way of living.
In college she tried a little yoga and took up tai chi. Then she came across Falun Dafa, a meditation practice with gentle exercises that comes from that same tradition.
Her first thought was two words: “Thank God.”
“I found the solution I began dreaming of when I was a sleepless 14 year old.”
A compass she can carry
Today Anne lives half a world away from China, in Fairfax City, Virginia. She hosts free meditation classes that introduce Falun Dafa, usually at a local library. In the spring of 2020, when everyone was told to stay at home, she moved them online.
What she found, she says, was more than a way to relax.
“Through Falun Dafa I found an inner moral compass that helped me navigate through life and pass through difficult times of stress or hopelessness.”
Hard times still came. The difference was that she had something steady to steer by when they did.
She wrote her story in May 2020, Mental Health Awareness Month, in the first spring of COVID-19. She was thinking of the doctors and nurses carrying the pandemic. Heroes, she wrote, “also need support.” Stress, in her words, “is an issue everyone of us has encountered.”
That is why she teaches. Meditation, she writes, is a good way of dealing with stress, it offers deeper wisdom, and what is learned is something “a person can take with them anywhere.”
If your mind has been running for a long time, perhaps the first step isn’t to win against it. It may be to find something steady to hold while it slows down.
The girl who lay awake through three nights of exams did not get a promise of no more hard nights. What she found was a way to meet them. Now she hands that way, free, to anyone who wants it — the solution, as she put it, that a sleepless 14-year-old once dreamed of.
What this story may hold for you
- A wish made at 14, in the middle of a sleepless night, stayed with Anne for years — and still led somewhere. Perhaps your own longing for peace is worth keeping too.
- Overthinking often visits people who “set a high bar for themselves.” A racing mind may say more about how much you care than about anything wrong with you.
- Anne didn’t find her answer on the first try: yoga, then tai chi, then Falun Dafa. You might allow yourself to keep looking.
- Sometimes the change isn’t that hard days stop coming. It’s having a compass — something steady inside to steer by when they do.
- A miracle might be the body healing, or the heart letting go, or finding meaning again — or any mix of these.
A free guide for the nights your mind won’t rest
If this story touched something in you, there are two more like it.
Our free guide, When Your Mind Won’t Rest, gathers three true stories of people who were caught in thoughts that wouldn’t switch off — and what slowly changed for them — with a gentle page on how to begin.
It’s free. One email with the guide, then a few short letters. Unsubscribe any time.
Free guide (PDF)
When Your Mind Won't Rest
Enter your email and we'll send you the guide (PDF) right away.
We never share your email.
Questions readers ask
Q: How do I stop overthinking at night?
For Anne, the sleepless nights began with an exam at 14, when her body and brain seemed to switch off sleep and focus only on the tests. What helped her, years later, was not a trick to stop the thoughts but a daily meditation practice and an inner compass to steer by.
Q: How can I control my mind when stress takes over?
Anne doesn’t describe winning a fight with her mind. She describes finding something steady — the principles and quiet of Falun Dafa meditation — that helped her “pass through difficult times of stress or hopelessness.” She now teaches it free, because she believes anyone can carry it with them.
Q: Where does this story come from?
From Anne Yang’s own article, “Finding Your Peace During COVID-19,” posted on Patch (Fairfax City, Virginia) on May 28, 2020. The quotes are her own words.
A note on health
These stories share personal experiences and inner journeys. They cannot replace professional psychological or medical help. If you are in serious distress or crisis, please reach out to a qualified local counselor, doctor or crisis line.
