Still Hours — the 4-week program for the 3 a.m. wake-up

Built for one very specific night

Most sleep advice is about falling asleep. That's not your problem. Does this sound familiar?

You fall asleep easily — it's the second half of the night that fails.
You wake around the same hour, instantly and uselessly alert.
Your mind picks that moment to plan, rehearse, and regret.
You've already fixed the obvious things: phone, caffeine, the room.
You'd rather not take something every night to get through it.

Four out of five? You're in the right place. If your trouble is falling asleep in the first place, or you suspect apnea, this isn't the program for you — and I'd rather say so now.

Waking isn't the problem. The next twenty minutes are.

Nearly everyone surfaces at night. Most people turn over and are gone again. What turns an ordinary wake-up into two lost hours is the loop that starts the second you look at the clock.

Trying to sleep is effort. Effort is arousal. The loop feeds itself.

Sleep researchers have names for the two things driving that loop — sleep effort and nocturnal cognitive arousal. In a trial of a mindfulness-based sleep program, lowering exactly those two was the mechanism by which insomnia symptoms eased.

That's the good news: effort and arousal are trainable. You can't make yourself fall asleep — nobody can. You can learn to stop wrestling, and that's a skill with a curriculum.

Everything you get

8 guided practicesA daytime and a night practice each week, in Eric's voice, recorded for listening in the dark.
4 short workbooksTwo pages a week. No journaling homework, no sleep diary to fall behind on.
A note from EricDaily in week one, weekly after — so you're not alone with a folder of files.
Yours permanentlyEverything downloads. No subscription, no app, no login to forget at 3 a.m.

Start tonight — $97

Week one arrives instantly, night practice included.

Four weeks, in order

Not a library to browse at 3 a.m. A sequence, with one subject.

Week one

Stop fighting

Waking stops being an emergency. A long body scan for daytime, and a night practice that isn't secretly trying to knock you out.

Week two

The mind at 3 a.m.

Tomorrow's planning, last year's regrets — met as mental weather rather than tasks. And what to do when staying in bed makes it worse.

Week three

The body remembers

The heat, the braced shoulders, the heart you can suddenly hear. Letting weight settle, so the bed stops being where you tense up.

Week four

Letting sleep return

How to keep this going after the program ends, and how to meet the bad nights that will still come — because they will, and that isn't failure.

Eric López Maya, PhD

Twenty years teaching mindfulness. Fifteen training the teachers.

MBSR teacher-trainerUMass Medical SchoolBrown University instructorCalm sleep contentUCLA Cousins CenterCharité Berlin

Eric is one of two MBSR teacher-trainers in Latin America certified by the University of Massachusetts and Brown University, where he is an instructor. He holds a doctorate in psychology and health, has researched mindfulness at UCLA and at the Charité in Berlin, and has written and recorded sleep content for the Calm app.

He also wakes up at three sometimes. That's part of why this program exists — and why it doesn't promise you'll stop.

	Sleep apps	Sleep aids	Still Hours
Made for the middle of the night	Rarely	No	Yes
Taught in sequence	No	—	Yes
Works without a phone signal	Some	Yes	Yes
Skill you keep afterwards	Some	No	Yes
Cost over a year	$70–100+	Varies	$97 once

The complete program

$97one payment

8 guided practices, downloadable
4 workbooks, two pages each
Daily then weekly notes from Eric
Lifetime access, no subscription
Full refund within 30 nights, keep the files

Start tonight

Secure checkout by Stripe · card or Apple Pay

Before you buy

Will this cure my insomnia?

No — and be wary of anything that says it will. Still Hours is an educational program, not medical treatment. It teaches a skill that research links to lower sleep effort and less nighttime mental arousal. If your sleep problem is severe or long-standing, see a physician; mindfulness works well alongside proper care, not instead of it.

I've tried meditation apps. They didn't help.

Apps hand you a library and leave the choosing to you at the exact hour you're least able to choose. This is a sequence, taught in order, about one thing only. Four weeks, then it's done.

Do I have to listen at 3 a.m.?

Only if you want to. Most of the learning happens in the daytime practice. The night audio is there for the nights you're awake — some people use it constantly, some never open it and still sleep better.

How much time does it take?

Fifteen to twenty minutes a day for the daytime practice. Night practices run ten to twelve minutes. The workbooks are two pages a week.

Is it an app? Do I keep paying?

Neither. You pay once and get a private link that never expires. The audio downloads to your phone and works with no signal and no login.

I'm not a meditator and I'm skeptical.

Good. No incense, no beliefs required, nothing to say out loud. It's attention training with a practical target, taught by someone who trains clinicians.

Tonight, when you wake, have something to do

You'll probably surface around three again. The difference is whether the next twenty minutes are a fight you lose or a practice you've started learning.