an important part of this work is about making better choices. I know that it is with this clarity that a shift in awareness is created that is vital for change to occur.
So please don’t be tempted to skip this chapter as you will learn a great deal here. Of course, I see some pretty extreme cases at my clinic, notably parasomnia – nightmares, night terrors, sleepwalking and talking – but even these can be overcome when you understand exactly what is going on and how, by making small changes, these distressing symptoms can be avoided.
Surviving or Thriving
If you’re out of balance and not sleeping, you might be running on the wrong type of energy. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation because the wrong type of energy affects our ability to sleep, and not sleeping sends us further into the wrong type of energy. But what do I mean by ‘the wrong type of energy’?
So far I have been using two labels, which I will continue to use throughout this book – SAFETY and SURVIVAL. I use them to describe the two energy modes or systems that human beings have evolved to enable us to live.
The SURVIVAL energy system is the ‘fight or flight’ system, discovered by the scientist Walter Cannon in the 1920s. We use this in crisis and when we’re under threat from predators, when there are inadequate food supplies, harsh climatic conditions or poor shelter. This system resides in a primitive part of the brain called the limbic system within the amygdala. Although, for most of us, the nature of threat has changed in today’s world, we still use this survival system when we perceive that we’re under threat. In SURVIVAL mode we run on adrenalised fear-driven energy and we don’t sleep, as it’s not conducive to surviving.
In the SAFETY energy system we produce the hormones of wellbeing – you’ll learn more about these shortly and I’ll actually show you how to produce them in Part IV. The body’s resources are used for healing, repair, growth and development. In SAFETY mode, life feels harmonious and we sleep.
Table 1: The SAFETY and SURVIVAL systems
The autonomic nervous system (ANS) determines which of these energy systems is more active. It runs the length of the body and is divided into two branches:
The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the SAFETY branch of the nervous system – which runs the body when we are in rest, repair, healing and sleep mode – is vital for maintaining everyday functions from the integrity of cell functioning to the heartbeat and how we breathe and sleep. The PNS ticks over quietly, keeping us well via the activity of the vagus nerve, which runs from the diaphragm and abdomen through to the brainstem. This important nerve maintains your health, enabling healing and repair. It is also connected to the circadian timer, the sleep control centre in the pineal gland in the brain. Keep it in mind because many of the tools I’m going to share with you are focused on activating it.
The sympathetic nervous system (SNS), the SURVIVAL branch, kicks in when we’re in fight-or-flight mode, when we feel stressed or anxious. We need this stress-hormone-producing part of the nervous system to help us perceive and react to threat. The body is flooded with adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol, and we are ready to fight or flee. The SNS was essential to our early hunter-gatherer ancestors, as we faced harsh and unsafe conditions, food was scarce and we had to face off wild animals or tribes. But in modern times the SNS is more likely to be activated by a difficult phone call or meeting, the kids playing up in the car or a stressful journey to work and an overflowing inbox.
When we’re in balance these two branches of the nervous system operate in harmony throughout the day, swinging back and forth like a pendulum, affecting our energy levels, the rest–activity balance, our motivation and drive, how we feel – hungry, thirsty, hot or cold, sleepy or focused – and these rhythms produce the fluctuations in our mood and energy throughout the day, the hum of our energy. The pendulum swings back and forth between the SNS and PNS roughly on a 90-minute cycle called the ultradian cycle.5 We will return to this shortly when we look at how the ultradian cycle plays out while you sleep.
The reality is that a healthy balance can be elusive with our 21st-century lifestyle forcing us to go faster and faster. Many people end up in a state of constant hyperactivity in which the SNS is always in go mode – so-called ‘sympathetic overdrive’ – and the PNS shuts down. We begin to run on adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol, we feel as if we can’t stop, life feels chaotic and over-busy, and we get sick as soon as we stop (a classic sign of sympathetic overdrive). And of course we can’t sleep. Or if we do, sleep is noisy, jagged and exhausting.
The Effect of Survival Mode on Our Energy
Survival energy is adrenalised, edgy, anxious, restless, impatient, threatened, fearful, hyper-vigilant at one extreme and then plummeting into exhausted, apathetic, hopeless giving up. With my patients I see greater extremes of manic and psychotic, which fall into the trough of depressed and suicidal. These are the roots of bipolar disorder.
Conversely, when we are running on sustainable energy, on the higher end of the scale, we feel vibrant, joyful, passionate, exhilarated and positively challenged. In its lower state, sustainable energy feels pleasantly tired, mellow and chilled out. Sustainable energy is about feeling safe and in this state we run on the safety hormones of love and wellbeing – serotonin and oxytocin. We produce the hormone melatonin – and so can sleep. We need all of these energy states and feelings but we don’t want to be stuck in SURVIVAL mode. Many people have become so used to existing in this way – they have habituated to this type of energy – and they can’t imagine it being any other way.
Table 2: Survival and sustainable energy
Looking at Table 2 above, ask yourself the following questions and take a note of your answers:
Where do you feel your energy lies at the moment?
How has it been recently?
Are you feeling safe or are you running in survival?
Now let’s look at what happens when you sleep – pure sleep.
Pure Sleep
This is relevant for you even if you consider yourself to be a ‘good sleeper’. Some people define being a good sleeper as the ability to fall asleep and stay asleep easily, and they might say, ‘I haven’t got a problem sleeping but I just can’t get out of bed.’ Remember, there is a vital distinction between sleeping and pure sleep – the ultimately restorative and rejuvenating sleep with just the right amount of dream process and the right amount of deep, dreamless sleep in which you do nothing other than be. Such sleep has an innate organising power: it sorts out our emotional world, clears and tidies our mental filing cabinets, and heals and rebalances the body. From such sleep you wake feeling and looking deeply refreshed, and ready to face life with open arms.
The Benefits of Pure Sleep
According to well-validated Western scientific studies there are three main reasons why we spend so much of our lives sleeping.6
Restore
To help us recover from the demands of being awake.
Protect and Clean Up the Brain (the Cortex)
During
