Sleep.
Quotes in praise of sleep
"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." ~ John Steinbeck
"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?” ~Ernest Hemingway
"Sleep is the best meditation." ~ The Dalai Lama"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein
Episode 25.
We spend 26 years of life asleep. 26 years! 9,490 days. 227,760 hours. And from those quotes, sleep seems to be a fix for just about anything...it can also be elusive, disruptive, and deficient. We spend 7 years of our life just trying to get to sleep! (Jump to the end for HOW to set your brain up for sleep. Hint: it has to do with sunlight)
Insomnia is a bugger. It takes the nourishing, relaxing zone of sleep and spirals it into battle and struggle, and can actually impact every aspect of life.
Why, at the moment we land in physical stillness, do our minds launch into marathon race-day mode? Why is one of the most common complaints trouble sleeping? How do we mitigate this stress around sleep?
Maybe you were never a "good sleeper", but this pandemic and all the uncertainty and isolation it brings is exacerbating poor sleep on many levels. This uncharted territory is primed to uncover depths of uncertainty in ourselves- questions of self and identity and meaning can easily disrupt our subconscious, and unravel a night of sleep.
The notion of disconnection and separation is proven to be impactful on quality sleep...
"Loneliness causes mental and physical exhaustion: disconnection takes a toll on the quality of sleep. When we’re profoundly lonely, we tend to sleep lightly and rouse often, just as our ancestors did to prevent being overtaken by wolves or enemies. When we become chronically lonely, most of us are inclined to withdraw, whether we mean to or not." -Vivek H. Murthy, US Surgeon General, Author of Together: Why Social Connection Holds the Key to Better Health, Higher Performance, and Greater Happiness
Why do we feel so "off" when our sleep is lacking? What is it in the construct of sleep that is so critical to our emotional, mental, and physical health; to our clarity in decisions, to our ability to respond rationally, to our stress levels, weight management, nutrient absorption, and overall sense of wellbeing?
Think of sleep as getting a download from the day... expunging the meaningless stuff we don't need and running some form of an algorithm to work out all the stuff of life. We process through short time-frames of the previous day and long time-scales of a lifetime in dealing with all of life's little traumas. So, in essence, we sleep it all off. Sleep allows us to regenerate and recalibrate, settle our system, and heal our mind and body. We actually have immune cells in our brain that clean out the gunk- the metabolic waste from the day's activities. If we don't sleep enough, the waste doesn't go away, it creates a small tax on our cells, which over time builds up to a massive debt. The critical nature of sleep has a billion dollar industry around sleep remedies, hacks, and tricks... Here is one for free...
Your sleep optimization SHIFT...
Your brain bases its sleep cycles on LIGHT, not time.
Your brain cannot see the time on your apple watch. 9:30pm means nothing to your brain- there is no alert saying, "it's time for bed"; and seeing the clock at 2am also means nothing to your brain to keep it asleep...
So what regulates sleep?
Sunlight coming into your eyes. Period.
Your retina is actually an extension of your brain, and it is the window by which your brain modulates and regulates the rhythms of wake and sleep.
There is a German word, zeitgeber, which translates to time keeper, and is the dominant way that your biological system knows how to behave. The brain and body want to anchor to regularities, to give every cell in the body predictable information it needs.
>>Your anchor to sleep is viewing light as the sun rises and as the sun sets.<<
THIS will regulate your sleep.
Here is what you can do:
1. Get morning sunlight in your eyes.
Go outside within the first hour of sunlight and view the sky, the horizon, in a panoramic view. (Panoramic view also independently generates optic flow, resetting the eyes from the claustrophobia- inducing view of all-day closeness of screens to the retina.)
Even on an overcast morning, viewing sunlight through cloud-cover does the trick.
2. Next, get late afternoon light in your eyes. Remember, the brain wants a bookend to that morning anchor of light, to regulate its cycle.
3. And, very importantly, avoid light at night- 10pm to 4am.
4. Calm your nervous system with your breath- a very simple, but effective technique is called the "physiologic sigh"- it is a double inhale, through the nose, and then long exhale, through the nose...
so, IN-IN----OUUUUTTT.
This resets the ratio of CO2 and O2 and is the best way to activate the calming mechanism.
If you are lying in bed, instead of grabbing phone (NO light), do the double inhale-exhale....fall back to sleep.
I am not posing as a sleep expert, but I am a research nerd and this stuff is all research-based. References below.
Reply to this and let me know what you think, after you try the light and breath techniques.
Little SHIFTS....
Love,
Jessica
Do it all with Love. Nothing is promised. But everything is workable.
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