When we sleep, our body’s main purpose it to repair, renew, rebuild, refresh, restore and rejuvenate itself. This is the time that we most effectively and efficiently process our daily stress.
Imbalances in our natural sleep patterns have quickly reached epidemic numbers in today’s western culture. It is rare that I meet someone without sleep “issues” during their initial analysis using The Intention Method in our office. I believe that it is the quality of our slumber that determines proper sleep patterns as opposed to the quantity. For example, I have personally met and analyzed many people that average 8-10 hours of sleep every night yet still have imbalances due to a lack of sufficient deep sleep. The opposite also occurs, as I’ve seen people average 4-6 hours of high quality sleep each night and thus keep their sleep patterns balanced.
The main part of the sleep that we will concern ourselves with using The Intention Method is the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) portion of our deep sleep. Throughout the waking day, our senses are bombarded with physical, emotional and chemical information and experiences that are stored in our short-term memory in the subconscious mind. Ideally, when we go to sleep at night, we will consistently reach a deep REM pattern of slumber. It is in this stage of sleep that all of our short-term memory storage is routed through the limbic portion of the brain and filed away into our long-term memory in the neocortex portion of the brain. While it is always possible to pull useful information from these memories, once all of these experiences are filed away into the long-term memory, they cannot affect us on a day-to-day basis. This is how the body most effectively processes our daily stress.
The majority of our society, however, is not reaching the REM pattern as efficiently as they could. Thus, their daily stressors remain in the short-term memory and the person tends to re-experience this “past” stress subconsciously.
The main point here is that if you do not consistently reach the deeper levels of sleep, you simply cannot process stress correctly. Stress will then accrue day after day. Multiply this daily accumulation by weeks, months, years or, quite commonly, decades and you will see and incredible amount of tension throughout the entire system which will, without a doubt, negatively effect every aspect of your life.
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2 comments:
So what is the answer for better sleep? I have been searching for s great nights sleep for years.
Well, you are definitely not alone. I’m usually quite surprised if I don’t find these issues on someone during their initial visit to my office. In fact, I would estimate that over 95% of the population over the age of 25 has some degree of sleep pattern imbalance. This is important of course because if your quality of sleep is not good then you are not efficiently processing your daily stress.
Just like putting money into a savings account, unprocessed stress becomes excess stress earning compound interest. This accumulation of tension literally creates all chronic western diseases, illness, aches, pain and just about any physical ailment that you can imagine.
Once I figured out how to analyze and address this issue the results in my office went through the roof. This is simply because if you sleep better, deeper and more efficiently you will heal faster and more thoroughly. Correcting these imbalances is actually quite easy to do. This is part of what I plan to teach as this blog progresses - so stay tuned!!
In the meantime, what can you do to sleep better? Since all sleep pattern disturbances are created by excess stress in the first place, it is important to work on lowering and managing your daily stress levels. After looking at your blog - I feel like I’m preaching to the choir here since a lot of this is stuff that you already know and practice. But here are a few tips that may help you deal with the 3 types of stress in your life:
Physical Stress: Exercise (walk, swim, bike, run, garden, etc.), belly breathing (focus your breath down into your belly with each inspiration).
Chemical Stress: Drink plenty of pure water (your urine should be consistently clear), eat 10 servings of fruits/veggies a day (a slam-dunk for you with that garden of yours), 2-4 grams of omega 3 fatty acids a day (fish oil, flaxseed oil, olive oil, avocados, raw almonds). Avoid dairy, soy & wheat products - replace them with rice-based products. Avoid caffeine and alcohol.
Mental/Emotional Stress: It's important to know that it is impossible to Love & Worry at the same time. Worry creates tension - love creates ease. These two emotions cannot occupy your mind at the exact same time. Take advantage of this. Here is how I practice this concept - whenever I feel or catch myself worrying, feeling anxious, overwhelmed or tense, no matter the topic (finances, relationships, career, etc.), I quickly shift my mind over to something that brings a smile to my face. We all have things in our life that bring us instant joy, gratitude, appreciation and love. Some of the things that I can think about or visualize that instantly put me in this "love" mode are: the giggles of my kids, Danielle (my wife) often does these little quirky things that crack me up, a recent wave that I enjoyed surfing, our family pet Junior the Wonder Dog, etc. As soon as I start thinking about or visualize any of these things, my worries dissolve and I can feel my body instantly move back towards its natural "at ease" state. - Quite powerful - play with it.
You probably already do a pretty good job doing the above things on a daily basis. So hear a few other tricks to help with sleep:
Calming herbal tea and homeopathic remedies before bed can be beneficial. But most importantly, make sure your mindset is right. If I were you, as I go down at night, I would focus my thoughts for a minute or so on the quality of sleep that I’m about to get. Visualize yourself creating ease, balance, love and peace during your sleep. Set your intention on enhancing and expanding your ability to sleep deeper, soundly, while efficiently processing stress, restoring, rebuilding and rejuvenating yourself. Visualize your eyes moving from side to side during the REM pattern of sleep and expect to reach this stage. This can make a tremendous change - In fact, don't be surprised if you start to have very vivid dreams for a few nights while practicing this technique.
Dotty – Sorry this response was so long winded but I hope you will find some value in it. Let me know how it goes & if you have any questions - dont' hesitate to contact me.
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