Connected
The way we have reacted to technology is causing us some problems, including sleep and energy problems.
Notice that I haven’t said that this is due to technology but rather the way we’ve reacted to it. We are responsible.
This is not a rant against the Internet and other smart devices – I like those things too. Technology was designed to make life easier and in many ways it has, hasn’t it? That I can speak to my elderly mother thousands of miles away and see her. That I can sit in my garden studio and communicate with hundreds of people around the world at the same time and make a living from it. That I can reconnect with friends and family I haven’t seen for decades and who are now in my life again in a meaningful way. That’s good stuff, isn’t it?
The problem is that being constantly connected via the Internet has become so pervasive and seductive, so hard to put down, that we just can’t switch off and end up running faster, doing more, to keep up – and the impact on our sleep?
Later in this chapter you’ll find out what happens to the body and the sleep mechanism when it is constantly bombarded with technology, but for now I’ll keep it simple. To sleep deeply we have to live deeply. We have to engage fully with life. If we spend all our time living on the surface of life, responding reactively to demand, how can we ever expect to go deep in our sleep?
Always On, Always Disconnected
We have a whole layer of newly evolved brain, the neocortex, which has the specific purpose of connecting with others, and forming strong bonds and attachments. For relating to others and meeting our basic emotional needs for love, intimacy and trust. However, as Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in Alone Together, ‘Digital connections … may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship … we’d rather text than talk.’ You may be wondering what this has to do with sleep, but it brings me to an important belief that underpins my work.
Belief #5: We Sleep When We Feel Safe
As I mentioned right at the beginning of this book, I have this simple belief that we sleep when we feel safe. Connection – true intimacy, love and trust – is one of the fastest routes to feeling safe. It changes our biochemistry, our brain, our ability to trust, let go, relax and sleep. Technology, with its new ways of relating, has given rise to a kind of biochemical loneliness in which the neocortex drives us to seek out connection, but we’re doing it in all the wrong ways. An obvious example is the teenager who reaches for her phone in the early hours to check her social media feed. The dopamine reward from the number of ‘likes’ offers some short-lived relief from the loneliness but she’s left feeling even more wired and unable to sleep.
Every living organism needs to feel safe.
In his book Feeling Safe, William Bloom, a leading holistic teacher and author, says, ‘Feeling safe is one of the foundations of a normal, happy and fulfilling life. You simply cannot get on with the basic business of living if you feel insecure, frightened, or anxious.’
I extend this to say that to sleep well we need to feel safe. And we need to feel safe regardless of what’s going on out there: worries about terrorist attacks, worries about our relationships, our children, elderly parents, our health, our financial and job insecurities, and our overflowing inboxes. Some of this is the real, gritty stuff of life but in order to sleep well – so that we wake with the energy and resilience for whatever needs to be dealt with – we need to get pure, deep sleep.
And herein lies a big problem. Sattvic sleep becomes unattainable when we are running in survival mode because we’re operating from the wrong part of our physiology, the part that doesn’t allow us to sleep because we need to remain vigilant to fight or flee from the threat (real or perceived), to clear that inbox, meet the demand. Too many of the people who walk through my consulting room door or are sitting in the corporate auditoriums listening to me speak are running in survival mode.
In order to feel safe to sleep we need to break the cycle of surviving.
Belief #6: Sleep Problems Don’t Start When You Put Your Head on the Pillow at Night
Every thought, every behaviour, every choice that you make during the day impacts what happens when you place your head on the pillow at night. You carry these energetic vibrations of the day into your sleep and they reverberate within you, keeping you awake or jolting you into sudden heart-thudding wakefulness. Sometimes they slide even deeper into your sleep, creating the stories of nightmares and night terrors, or overwork your muscles so that you wake up drenched and cold with night sweat.
So when I talk to my patients and clients about sleep, it is an invitation to talk about the choices they are making in their waking hours and my next belief.
Belief #7: The Sleep Problem Is Rarely the Real Problem
If you come to see me with a sleep problem I’m going to do my best to help you sleep. During the consultation I’ll ask all sorts of questions – you’ll learn about some of these questions later – but the simplest and most obvious question I ask is ‘Why?’ Why is this person not sleeping? I ask this question over and over again (in my mind) during the consultation. Why? Why? Why? Ultimately I want to get to the deepest, innermost source of the problem.
Now I might not, at the time, share the deepest reasons for my client’s sleep problem – perhaps they are exhausted and not in a state to hear and/or they know it anyway (although they might not know that they know it). My job – at least initially – is to get them to a point where they’re getting some sleep, feeling more energised and robust, and then they are ready to look at the true cause of the sleep problem. This is doing what I call ‘The Real Work’.
So if you’ve been struggling for a while, your sleep problem is likely to be a life problem. You might feel it’s related to the 10 cups of coffee you are drinking – of course this will stop you sleeping. But why are you drinking 10 cups of coffee? Why do you need 10 cups of coffee to fund your energy? Why is your energy running on such a deficit that you need 10 cups of coffee? This is where The Real Work lies. And this is why superficial sleep hygiene methods and sleeping pills don’t and won’t work.
A lavender-steeped bath, pleasant as it is, isn’t going to truly tackle the source of your sleep problem. Nor is that drug, which is pharmacologically designed to artificially induce a state of sleepiness. Often this is why those with chronic sleep problems end up going from one therapist to another, one book to another, in the hope of finding the solution to their sleeplessness … and never finding it.
The solutions aren’t out there. The ultimate solution lies in doing the inner work, The Real Work.
Belief #8: We All Have Access to Amazing, Vibrant Energy
I have arrived at this belief not just as a result of having studied a lot of theory, but I’ve also worked with a lot of people and, as a result, have learnt a lot about energy. My work has brought me in front of a diverse range of human beings: stressed-out mothers, city employees, children, Premiership footballers, movie and pop stars, prime ministers and their wives, lorry drivers in oil depots, princesses from the Far East. Believe me, I could tell you some stories! Don’t forget, along with being a sleep expert, I’m also an energy expert and my work is also about helping people to tap into the amazing, vibrant energy that we all have access to.
Recently I spoke at a conference with over 500 people from a management consultancy firm and asked the question, ‘Would you prefer me to
