Blog 11 (Self-Help) - Sleeping Better

''Closed eyes see darkness'' - Japnese Proverb.

Lucky are the people who sleep as they get into the bed, on the other hand, some have to take efforts. Which one are you? Nothing bad about it. It’s a natural thing but with a complex mechanism behind how we get to sleep. I’m going to discuss the transition you can go through to help understand the mechanism better and improve your sleeping patterns.

When we sleep, our sleep is mainly divided into 3 stages. First is the immature stage where our mind tries to shut down the ongoing thought processes, our mind also puts our body into auto mode assigning activities to our body these activities are the reflex activities that our body does when we are sleeping namely breathing, changing sides from left to right or vice versa, digestion of food and if you have kept an alarm the mind instructs the ears to respond to it. Once these processes are done the mind goes into the second stage that’s the deep sleep stage. In the deep sleep, we are totally in a state of rest. Although the brain doesn’t stop working our memory doesn’t really remember whatever we think in our deep sleep. The third stage is the pre wake up stage where our memory gets active and we can sense whatever the brain is thinking, it’s called seeing a dream, this is because our body has totally recovered from the previous day fatigue and now our biological clock is asking us to get ready to wake up or in some cases to wake up.

The reason why there are 2 types of sleeping patterns is that some people have an active mind which is normal, they can sleep quickly, most of the time. On the other hand, some people have a hyperactive mind, these are the people who have to take efforts to sleep. Let me be very clear, there is nothing wrong with either of this kind of people.

The problem starts when we don’t get to sleep at all or in some cases we sleep for a brief time and then we can’t. Have you ever got really tired and just went to bed without even getting into your pyjamas? Or do you feel sleepy while reading a book? Or while studying? Or after a heavy meal? Or during a boring meeting? Or a lecture? The mental fatigue is the major factor here. Our brain is a very complex organ that is governed by numerous factors like interest, love, hunger, excitement and many more. When it comes to feeling sleepy during your not-sleeping hours during the boring stuff, the brain tries to go into a minimum energy conservation mode, however, to avoid the brain from sleeping the body has a coping mechanism that it initiates, it’s called yawning. It is kind of a boosting your brain technique taken by the body. The body boosts the brain with a large dose of oxygen that’s why when we yawn we breathe through our mouths open and sometimes we get tears in our eyes. These tears are the residual liquid in our eyes that needs to be discarded from the body to replace it with fresh oxygen-rich liquid to make us active.

With all that's said, what can we do to sleep better? How can we sleep quicker and how can we get into a deep sleep so that we feel refreshed when we wake up. There’s is a technique that I’ve been following for years now. Firstly make sure that the place where you sleep is having the temperature that you can withstand without taking a blanket, not too cold not too warm. If you want to sleep really quick make sure there is no bright shining light on your eyes. When you sleep to make sure the maximum surface area of your body is in contact with the bed or the sleeping surface. Don’t get the habit of putting music or any kind of sounds to sleep better. Once you are done with the physical attributes now comes the interesting part, that is closing your active brain processes. 

For centuries now, people have advocated the thought of counting numbers till the time you get to sleep or much more boring counting sheep. I am not saying these techniques don’t work but what if you have a better technique that will connect our mind to the deep sleep mode and moreover it will be in your control? Sounds great, isn’t it?

So, to do that imagine you are in the front of an engine on the tracks that have twists and turns. And you are travelling through those twists and turns up and Down. While doing this you have to keep in mind 3 things to observe. First, how the track would look if you see them, second imagine the tracks go in tunnels through curves that go up and down, and third try to add some special effects like an ice tunnel or an underground tunnel add waterfalls, you can even have the rail tracks going into the sky!!. Subconsciously our brain will slow down the active thought processes and we sleep in an instance.

Maybe this video will give you an idea of what you are supposed to imagine. From personal experience, it works 9 out of 10 times. 

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