It was but only a mere 12 months ago when I wrote ‘blogger brain’, blabbing on about how I consider sleep a huge waste of time. Fool, I know. Believe me, I understood completely the idiocracy of this. I knew how important adequate sleep is and by how improving my sleep would have a substantial impact on my wellbeing and the way I function. But since I can remember, I’ve always had a bad relationship with sleep.
It’s interesting because I am someone who tries to take care of myself as much as possible and love anything to optimise my health or physical/mental abilities, but I just wasn’t educated enough on the matter, or at least didn’t care enough to further research and try to find a solution or at least the cause of the problem. I would completely survive off naps to get me though the day, with short, interrupted sleeps throughout the night. And this honestly worked! I functioned normally, was able to wake up super early every morning, exercise, go about my day and still feel great. So I thought this was enough. I did encounter many nights of insomnia which I had been a victim to in the past so thought “well this is just normal for me and can’t really help it, so its just something I’ll have to live through”, wrong. Insomnia is nothing fun to boast about, it sucks. There were many things I could have done like the common method of just getting up, engaging in a stimulant activity (without technology) like walking, reading, drawing and eventually letting that tire me out but in my dumb young mind, I told myself that it would contradict what I was trying to do because I evidently was tired and didn’t need help feeling sleepy, I just needed to fall asleep. I since then understand that if I had just got up and done that method, I probably would’ve fixed myself right up a lot sooner. Another thing I have come to learn is that not everything is just hearsay or a theory, but people have actually conducted experiments and the world wide web is full of data to back up these theories and if not, have other alternative methods you could try. It’s so simple. Ask and you shall receive right? But anyway…
So how did I go from hating and having inadequate sleep to loving and having the best sleep I have experienced in my entire life?
It all came from a place of wanting to change. Like anything, we will never see any significant changes in our lives until we decide within ourselves that it’s going to happen. Not from someone else telling us, not because its the right way but because we have made a conscious decision within ourselves to make the change (but that’s another topic I’ll soon get around to writing about).
I started listening to the ‘Huberman Lab’ podcast by Dr. Andrew Huberman on Spotify after listening to his episode on JRE. He’s a Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology, and his lab studies neural regeneration, neuroplasticity and brain states. What sold me to his podcast was the topics of changing your nervous system for a better/healthier mental state as well as becoming more focused and having greater memory and therefore, learning new things more affectively which I am ALL about. I am someone who suffers from having way too many hobbies and interests. Its overwhelming and a little sad when I have to prioritise some over others but its something I confront and work on daily, understanding that although my time here is finite, I have SO much time and I don’t need to use it all at once (but thats another topic I’ll soon get around to writing about).
Sleep just so happens to be one of the most potent practices in aiding our ability to learn. As soon as my brain went from thinking sleep was just to recharge my body and mind for the following 24hours to being a tool for learning, I made an agreement within myself that it was time to change. And the way of obtaining this optimal state of sleeping was by setting your carcadian rhythm. To cut it short, our carcadian rhythm is an internal system that every single human has and lasts about 24 hours. It is controlled by light and temperature and these are the tools the mind uses to set this rhythm and tell your body when its time to sleep. There are a lot of things you can do to orchestrate these patterns (I’m sure I’ll get around to writing a whole blog about that too but in the meantime, go check out his podcast). But I set my carcadian rhythm and it worked! That and meditation which he does actually advocate and talk about.
I since then had also come to learn that optimal sleep is a key factor in lengthening our telomeres. Our telomeres are the structures found at the end of our chromosomes and act as an ageing clock. The things we do from this day on affect our DNA, which affect our telomeres, which affect the way we age and our life expectancy. So basically, good sleep = longer life. That and a bunch of other things – WHICH I SWEAR I WILL WRITE ABOUT! **public promise to myself to start prioritising writing regularly because I seem to have a lot to say but never get around to saying it!**
Have I noticed a difference in my focus, memory and learning? Oh you bet! Like night and day. Kind of like when I started taking fish oil tablets daily – that stuff works dammit. It’s one thing to try and learn something and being taught how to do it. Its another to come into a practice with a mind like a sponge, soaking in more than the person next to you and being able to hold onto more information because unfortunately as humans, we do have to recycle our memory banks.
So if you’re someone who has insomnia or wants to become a more efficient learner, or just wants to lengthen your telomeres, I highly recommend getting your sleep in check as a start! I am now transcending to the next level of sleep and what they call, lucid dreaming. As I’ve mentioned many of times, I am a victim of having too many hobbies and only so many hours in a day. I now have great sleep and meditate regularly. So I want to try and practice the art of lucid dreaming, which is just being conscious while you’re sleeping. I am hoping to one day be so sufficient in this skill that I can work on other skills all while getting a good nights rest! But first and foremost, going on epic fantasy adventures because hello, why wouldn’t I! I have an insanely vivid and complex imagination so I can only imagine (hah) the things I’ll get to experience if I can get this skill down pat.
I’ll let you know how that goes…
Sleep well y’all.