Why You Need to Pay More Attention to Your Sleeping Habits

I've noticed that many people love to sleep - to the point where they've listed it on their CVs as a hobby!

Some people experience sleep as an unnecessary necessity, as there is always so much to do and never enough time, and then some people sleep simply to “zone out”; enjoying a few hours of unconsciousness.

The fact is: we all need to sleep in order to function optimally.

Dr. Naiman, a Clinical Psychologist at the University of Arizona did extensive research into this field and believes that people who are tired or sleep-deprived struggle to deal with emotional issues and struggle to move forward.

What happens when we sleep?

In basic terms, there are four stages of sleep but two of the stages are highly restorative:

• Deep sleep, which we can describe as “true sleep”
• Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is dream sleep

The ideal amount of sleep varies from person to person. Monitor your energy levels in the morning when you wake up and you should know how many hours of proper sleep you need per night.

Another interesting fact is that sleep debt accumulates. If somebody sleeps an average of seven hours per night and he loses one hour of sleep every night, it means that he loses a whole night’s sleep at the end of a week.

Why is it important to dream?

Dreaming occurs in the latter third of the night, sleep loss at that time results in what Dr. Naiman refers to as “dream deprivation”. Another factor that contributes to dream deprivation is when the alarm clock wakes you out of the tail end of a dream.

Dr. Naiman says "I think of dreaming as being a digestive and assimilating process of information… In a sense during REM sleep and dreaming your brain becomes a second gut."

A real life example of this would be when you are taking risks or making decisions that your sub-conscious is uncomfortable with, but consciously you ignore the “little voice” or some of the facts, you might get an image or a story during REM sleep to help you see things for what they really are.

We are exposed to a lot of information during the course of a single day- we see a lot of things, we take part in many conversations or over-heard conversations, we read billboards, internet stories, newspapers, we think and we experience. Dr. Naiman says: “all that information can be understood as something we consumed.”

During REM sleep we digest, process and assimilate all this information. The brain sifts through the information and decides to keep some of it and discard the rest. The process of assimilation shows up metaphorically as images. So when you do not dream “well” this process of sifting and assimilating does not happen and in a sense this stops or inhibits a “growing” process in your subconscious. We can also say that when you are not dreaming, your subconscious is over-loaded with information that never gets sorted. This will have a profound impact on your memory and on a deep psychological level you are missing out on a natural psychological “growing” opportunity.

1. Improve your sleep:

Dr. Naiman advises the following:

• Fall in love with sleep. See sleeping as a gift that can enhance your total well-being. ~ “Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
• Make your bedroom free of electromagnetic fields.
• Your body may, on an imperceptible level, pick up energy levels from Electronic gadgets, such as the TV, cellphones and electric alarms.

2. The Importance of Melatonin:

If you are exposed to light at night for two hours before you go bed, you will suppress your melatonin level. Apart from the fact that melatonin makes you sleepy; it’s also has potent anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer benefits. Blue wavelengths of light convince your brain that it is day time and your body suppresses the response to make serotonin. Television screens, computer screens, iPad Screens or smart phone screens all emit blue light.

Melatonin levels peak at the last two to three hours of your sleep, which is normally also your REM sleep.

3. Learning to slow down:

Dr Naiman says the following: “What I suggest is a way of learning to descend through personal turbulence and touching the ground, the ground of some peace, some quiet, and some inner serenity.” He also adds that people that are “flying high” need a longer time to descend and a longer landing strip.

This is the end of my bed time story: Sleep enough and dream well.

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