I am an insomniac. I was born this way.
My father was also an insomniac.
Occasionally I find ways to get more restful sleep and the longest streak of a sleep solution lasts for a few months, and then I have a new longer streak where I don’t sleep well, don’t sleep enough, even though I spend the night in bed, with the light turned off.
This morning, while I was researching something else, my attention was guided to a TED talk… on sleep. This was the second hint this morning to go and watch some videos… on sleep. But I have gotten, this past month, some hints every day… so it is time. Not my favorite topic.
Why? Because in my typical fight, catching the uncatchable ball, I prefer to do the failure series in private. Winston Churchill said: moving from failure to failure, without loss of enthusiasm… is what a winner is… but what he didn’t say: eventually you would like to have some success… wouldn’t you? I would.
And in this arena of failures, I’d love to get to sleeping well, waking up with full energy that lasts… To have some semblance of control over my life. Because having good sleep is priceless.
Especially around the time change…
It seems that if I keep the “real time” clock going year around, attempt to fall asleep at 8:30 pm in the winter, 9:30 pm in the summer, I can have some control over that part of sleep. But what about the frequent awakenings at night?
As I am writing this article, I write a paragraph or so, and then watch the next video on sleep… and find myself breaking out in sobs. Obviously 70 years of grief unexpressed is coming out in bursts. Grief over feeling completely powerless, unable to have anything to say, anything to do with the quality of my sleep, and therefore the quality of my life.
Sweeping the issue under the rug… what else can you do with unsolved and unsolvable issues… right?
And no, this article won’t have, probably, a happy ending where I sell you the unbeatable method, or a gadget, or something that will make me rich, whether I can sleep or not… No. Not likely. lol.
I am learning that the shortening or disappearing of the slow deep sleep cycle leads to loss of memories, and eventually to dementia. The slow cycle is the first on after falling asleep: if you take naps that is the first cycle to go. If you drink lots of caffeinated drinks, or alcohol, that is the first cycle to go. If you eat shortly before going to sleep, that is the first cycle to go. If you play video games, or watch movies with rapid screen changes, if you take your iphone with you to bed… that is the first cycle to go.
My simple brain cleansing process, 6 minutes, done with my audio, that provides the energy, not your hands! does some of what deep sleep does: purge the accumulated toxins in the brain. I have been doing that for about ten years now. Without that I would have already turned into a pumpkin or some other vegetable.
When on a call you hear me looking for a word… I probably skipped on my brain cleansing the night before.
In addition to refraining from the behaviors that cause me to skip the deep sleep cycle, napping and the like… I also have learned techniques to slow down my brain, disengage the chattering mind, so I can go to sleep faster.
I just learned, in one of the TED talk videos the rhythm technique: tonight I’ll start using it. i did the technique with the presenter, and I could feel its effectiveness. I also see that I can also recommend it to my students: it actually puts you into theta brain wave mode, so you could use it to listen to whatever you need to listen to, to read, to write, or do things that require you to not resist the activity…
Another issue is waking up in the middle of the night, being jolted out of slumber, and then not being able to go back to sleep for hours.
My hunch is: the cause of that phenomenon is always something physical: not in the brain, not in the mind.
An outside noise, breathing difficulty, mite attack, something physical.
My father had an unusual bite: his lower jaw came before his upper jaw. He fell from a high wall flat on his face, or maybe on his chin… I don’t know for sure. I remember our dentist checked the children all the time, being worried that we inherited my father’s “bite”…
He had the kind of insomnia where he woke up in the middle of the night and could not go back to sleep. He took sleeping pills as a “fix”…
I have been taping my mouth for about a year and a half now. It has made a world of difference in the quality of my sleep.
I only know it, of course, when for some reason I forget… and I have as fitful a sleep as the worst: never getting any rest. A secondary result is that I have less pain in my body. I have even stopped visiting the chiropractor: I simply don’t need it. A savings of many thousands of dollars a year… for me. In the 30 years previous to that I spent roughly 100K… and I feel better now, without… than I felt then, with the treatments.
Oh well, live and learn. Better late than never.
I don’t know exactly what in taping the mouth is significant. My hunch is: it has to do with the ability to breathe, unobstructed by stuffy nasal passages… but maybe even sleep apnea. I have students who have followed suit… but from some of their reports I hear that they still sleep restlessly, judging from the number of times they change positions. So there can be other factors, like coffee consumption? Like unhappy bowels?
What you eat, how you eat are very important for your quality of sleep.
One of these restless sleepers has developed chronic Candida in his system… He is hooked on bread… I also noticed that an experiment I ran (you notice when I lie, don’t you?) seeing what happens when I eat a bread roll after four years of refraining from eating bread showed me that sleep, memory, mood, ambition, all dropped tremendously with the consumption of just one small bread roll… I am never going to have to experiment with that again. Just one small piece of bread and I didn’t, couldn’t write an article for ten days… Ever wondered why you are not succeeding?
Anyway, I hope that my musings about sleep is useful to you… and that you don’t hate me for it.
If you would like to have an orientation session with me to ferret out what I can see why you have trouble getting good sleep, please contact me and I’ll muscletest if i can help you… If yes, I’ll send you a payment link.
My health sessions are simple: I listen and I move my whole self inside you, so I can feel your feelings… I connect to Source and ask quesitons, quastions I know to ask. I am not super-human… so don’t expect miracles. Just honest looking to see what is invisible to you or maybe to your doctors.
Email me at sophie at yourvibration.com
