survival.’
Aristotle
Allow me to share some beliefs that have been very influential in my work and what I am going to share with you in this book. I have arrived at these beliefs as a result of living what I teach for the last 20 years, studying and working with thousands of people. I invite you to take your time and reflect on each belief as each one has the potential to change your relationship with your sleep and energy.
It might be helpful to have a notebook or journal and pen handy to record your thoughts, learning and questions as you read through the book.
Belief #1: Our Body Is Amazing
I am a physiologist and have studied human physiology both for my academic research and out there in the real world. Twenty or more years later, I’m still learning, but our body’s capacity to heal and self-regulate never ceases to amaze me.
I know many of the people who turn up at my clinic and in my therapy groups do so because they have lost faith in their body’s ability to be at rest and sleep. And if you’re feeling shattered due to sleepless nights then it’s likely that you too may find it hard to believe. But the simple fact is this: Your body, all 75 or so trillion cells, has an innate intelligence. Each cell contains about 10,000 times as many molecules as the Milky Way has stars.
Our ability to sleep is embedded within our DNA.
Your body knows how to sleep, so what’s gone wrong?
A number of factors affect our relationship with sleep and can ‘muddy’ our sleep engineering, affect our beliefs and attitudes towards sleep, our biochemistry and our brain’s ability to regulate our ability to sleep. So you’re in the right place because I am going to show you how to clean this all up. I am going to help you to remember how to sleep deeply and effortlessly again.
Belief #2: Sleeping Tablets Are Not the Answer
Your relationship with sleep is unique to you. Your body is designed to create the right type and amount of sleep for you. This means the right amount of dreaming sleep, the right amount of light sleep and the right amount of deep sleep. Your requirements will be different from mine, your partner’s or anyone else’s. Your biochemical makeup is a unique cocktail of hormones, neuropeptides and neurotransmitters that are designed in a way that is particular to your uniqueness, and is designed to give you perfect sleep. So when you hear about ‘the amount of sleep you should be getting’, this is just a statistical average that fits most of the population – but does it really fit you?
Sleeping pills are a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer approach to treating sleep disorders and so will never be able to give you the type of sleep that you need. Most importantly, they will never be able to give you the type of energy that you need to live your life joyfully and with meaning and purpose. After all, that’s why we all want good sleep, isn’t it? There’s nothing more delicious than having a good night’s sleep, but what we’re really after is the potential it has to bring us the next day.
Belief #3: Sleep Has an Innate Healing Ability
We are meant to spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping. I still find this statistic astonishing. Why are we designed this way? There must be a reason. There’s still so much more to learn about the mysterious process of sleep but what is abundantly clear is that pure sleep has the ability to restore, heal and reorganise those 75 trillion cells. In Sanskrit there is a word sattvic, meaning ‘pure’, and this is the type of sleep that I’ll refer to throughout the book.
Sattvic sleep holds the key to healing potential and vibrant energy.
Sattvic sleep is not the junk sleep that many of us get these days (and nights!) – sleep that is muddied by the noise and stimulation of the day – it is clean, pure, deep and restorative.
We need this sleep. Our world is so fast-paced and busy that when we lie down at night we need to recover from the day’s demands and allow ourselves to tap into this healing potential.
Belief #4: Insomnia in the 21st Century Has Its Own Particular Significance
Insomnia has been around for a long time and certainly isn’t a new phenomenon. There are, however, at least a few factors of modern living that have resulted in sleeping issues becoming much more widespread and, in certain scenarios, the ‘norm’.
Speed
Life for most of us is challenging, overwhelming, too busy and way too fast – and this pushes us to do more. This is without even factoring in the real heartbreak stuff that’s thrown at us from time to time: illnesses, losing our loved ones, children growing up, parents growing down, relationships falling apart and so on. We cut corners in a futile attempt to get through our inbox or to-do list and regain control, so we eat faster or skip meals, breathe quicker, hug less, laugh less, cry less, love less, feel less – all of this just takes too much time. As Carl Honoré, author of In Praise of Slow, says, ‘These days, the whole world is time-sick. We all belong to the same cult of speed.’
It’s a strange paradox that while we’ve become obsessed with getting enough sleep we’ve also become complacent about taking slices off it because, in comparison with everything else, it seems to be a luxury item that we don’t need and can’t afford. The result is that we prioritise staying awake over resting our bodies and minds, saying, ‘I’ll get an early night tomorrow … at the weekend … when I’m on holiday … when I retire.’ But we can’t. Sacrificing sleep night after night leaves us grey and lacklustre and praying for the day when we can take a break. But by the time your backside hits the sunlounger you’ve fallen prey to some sort of itis, or worse. How many of us are walking around saying, ‘I’m okay as long as I don’t stop. It’s only when I stop that I get sick’?
Noise
We seem to have lost the ability to be quiet. Deep restorative sleep is quiet and still. No noise and very little movement. To have this at night we need to touch this depth in our waking hours too, otherwise we become like a hyperactive child – exhausted but unable to settle and sleep. For many, sleep is noisy and fitful. Many of my clients report feeling as though they are neither asleep nor awake. Others say they have to sleep with some noise in the room – a TV or radio. For them, silence feels almost alien and even the sound of their thoughts is threatening. As the 13th-century mystic and theologian Meister Eckhart said, ‘There is nothing in the world that resembles God so much as silence.’
So many of us have simply lost the ability to be silent and with silence, and now we are starting to feel the effects. Human beings have always needed to be quiet. Isn’t this why we’re called human beings not human doings?
The effects of silence on the brain are measurable and studies show that the brain is healthier and less prone to neuro-degeneration with regular daily doses of silence.1, 2 Until fairly recently, quiet time has been innate and not something we’ve had to engineer. That is, until the world started getting noisier, faster and busier, and we lost our natural and automatic ability to draw our energy and ourselves inwards. No wonder the yoga, meditation and mindfulness movements have become increasingly popular over the last 15 years or so; it is exactly in parallel with the growth of technology that seeks to constantly draw us outwards to connect. We seem to have forgotten that retreating and being silent is not only desirable but also absolutely essential to our being able to replenish and renew our energy before we move to action.
Silence is absolutely essential to being able to sleep deeply
