Awareness Journey

How do you get to stay awake during meditation? I fell asleep after 30 minutes?

Thirty minutes of being awake in meditation is a fantastic thing. I don’t know why one would want to stay alert in the meditative state longer. It would help to look at the goals or intentions behind the practice. Looking at a single session of meditation and having goals around how long to sit in a is not very helpful. It would be more helpful to look at a regular daily habit around the practice. Also a few other questions are needed to be addressed before looking at how to stay awake for longer than 30 minutes during meditation.

The first is, it are you enjoying sufficient wholesome sleep? Please read the following two articles to see what is wholesome sleep and how to ensure that we get sufficient wholesome sleep.

Icon for Awareness Journey

Awareness Journey · November 17, 2022

The self care series Part – 1. What is Wholesome Sleep? The self care series will be of five parts namely: 1. What is wholesome sleep? 2. How to enjoy wholesome sleep? 3. Water can be the elixir to everlasting health and well-being. 4. What is healthy and mindful eating? 5. What is mindful wholesome physical activity? Wholesome sleep is something basic, natural and effortless for all sentient beings just like breathing. As a species, we evolved as humans and have inhabited planet earth for almost a million years and never before in this long history of humankind have we ever struggled with sleep as we do in the present millennia. That turning point occurred just about a hundred and fifty years ago when humans invented the electric light bulb! To understand this, let us see what happens in the physical body when we get ready to sleep. The body starts to produce a hormone called Melatonin also referred as the sleep hormone. This is a light sensitive activity and as sunlight fades into the darkness of the night, gradually this hormone is produced and it puts our physical body to rest. Fading light or darkness triggers melatonin secretion and conversely exposure to light inhibits it totally. Especially exposure to blue light, which is the light emitted by all the devices we use such as television, laptops, desktop computers, tablets and smartphones, also most of the ambient lighting such as florescent bulbs, tube-lights, LED lights, neon-lights, mercury lights, etc. inhabits melatonin. Natural wholesome sleep is not one night long period of unconsciousness. It is an amazing wondrous pattern of cycles called the sleep-cycle. Each cycle consists of four different phases and each cycle lasts for anywhere between sixty to ninety minutes. The first phase is a relaxed state between sleep and wakefulness, and it can be called relaxed wakefulness. The second stage is light sleep. In this stage sounds like doorbell or phone ringing could wake you. The third stage is deep sleep when short of physically shaking your whole body, nothing else could wake you up. The fourth stage is REM sleep or the dreaming stage, which is accompanied by a rapid eye movement as if your eyes are watching a fast moving movie within. Each of these stages are of varying durations but all put together takes about 90 minutes for most humans. For some it could take lesser than 90 but not below 60 minutes per cycle. A wholesome sleep requires at least five sleep cycles each night. Typically if your sleep cycle is 90 minutes, you would need 450 minutes or seven and half hours of sleep. Anything less than four cycles consistently would put you into severe sleep deprivation and disease. Therefore a bare minimum of six to seven hours of sleep daily is absolutely necessary for a healthy life and whatever minor shortfalls can be compensated over the weekends or with daytime naps. Each stage in the sleep cycle has a specific purpose and rests or rejuvenates a different aspect of your mind-body combine. You begin the sleep with stage one but you don’t end the sleep with stage four, you end it after another stage one. Let us see what happens in each stage, you can study more details of this by reading some good books – I recommend – Ariana Huffington’s The Sleep Revolution. Information online may be conflicting and confusing but if you read only researched information form authoritative sources, there are a lot of good research work on sleep in recent times and you can learn a lot of useful information. In stage one the body has gone to sleep and the mind is awake winding down the day that went by and getting ready to let go and relax. In stage two both the mind and body are diving deeper and deeper into a state of rest. Stage three is the deep resting stage when the body healing, repairing mechanisms are active. In stage four the emotional mind is awake while the rational mind is still sleeping. Your dreams are pure expressions from your emotional mind and helps you express and release pent up emotions. You would naturally wake up in the middle of the night for a visit to the toilet when one cycle is complete and you begin the stage one of the next. In the first part of the night stage one and two occupy larger part of the cycle and in the middle of the night the stage three deep sleep occupies larger part. As you near the later part of the night, the REM sleep takes longer time. That is why if you have had lesser than the minimum seven hours of sleep, your body and mind might be rested but your emotions are still imbalanced. For a balanced and grounded emotional state of mind therefore, five cycles of wholesome sleep is a must. Children, teenagers and sports people may need more than five cycles of sleep and older people may need lesser. Read the next article to learn how to inculcate habits that could help you enjoy wholesome sleep. The habit of daily meditation could greatly enhance your sleep quality and lead you to better health, physical, emotional as well as mental.

https://qr.ae/pvQa6W
Icon for Awareness Journey

Awareness Journey · November 17, 2022

How to enjoy Wholesome Sleep. Some people are gifted with good sleep and irrespective of what they do or don’t do, they happen to enjoy wholesome sleep effortlessly. This article is for the rest of us who are not endowed with such a gift. I was not and I used to suffer for decades with sleep trouble which started right after my teens and sometimes became full blown insomnia. Luckily, I never started using alcohol or sleeping pills and instead just endured through strings of sleepless nights almost all through my life, until I stumbled upon this secret I am sharing here, that completely changed my life and health. Preparation for a wholesome sleep actually begins right in the morning. There are two parts to understand and practice, one relates to preparing the physical body for wholesome sleep and the other relates to the mind. During the day the body needs sufficient physical activity and sufficient exposure to natural sunlight and the best way to ensure both is an hour of early morning walking or running or any other outdoor activity such as yoga or aerobics. If this is not possible, just an active day at home with all windows open to let in sunlight would suffice. Please read the blog about physical activity to learn about the body’s minimal need for activity. Exposure to bright sunlight during the day and contrasting it with relative darkness as the day comes to an end and finally one hour of complete darkness before actually settling down to sleep ensures sufficient secretion of melatonin for a full night sleep. An important physical care is to ensure that our body is not engaged in digesting a heavy late meal, which severely affects sleep quality. Dinner needs to be your lightest meal of the day and dinnertime needs to be at least two hours before bedtime. Substances such as caffeine and nicotine also affects sleep quality. These substances remain in the blood stream for six to eight hours after ingestion. Hence it is advisable to drink coffee, tea, coke, energy drinks, etc only before lunchtime and completely avoid it after 3pm in the day assuming that your sleep time is 11 pm. Alcohol and narcotic substances also inhibit wholesome sleep because what they induce is an unconscious slumber that doesn’t allow the body to deeply rest and heal as the natural sleep cycle does. If you cannot avoid alcohol, try to reduce it as much as possible and ensure you stop drinking at least two hours before bedtime. Preparing the mind is a little more tricky, especially for those of us prone to overthinking, worrying, stress and anxiety. Our active thinking mind needs to wind down and let go of the day that went by and stop planning for the next day and come back to the body to rest. One effective way of doing this is to write a dairy or journal log about the day that went by and make a to do list for the next day. Putting this down in paper sometimes releases it from the mind and allows it to become quiet. Talking about your day, sharing it with your partner also could help. The most common problem with sleep is that you would be very tired and sleepy before going to bed but the moment you lie down and close your eyes your thoughts pick up speed and goes racing round and round and sleep becomes elusive. This is because we associate closing our eyes with deep thinking and when the mind is far away deeply engaged with thoughts involving the future or the past, the body cannot go to sleep even though it is tired and enough melatonin has been secreted. Not knowing how to tame this restless mind, people often resort to pills or alcohol or narcotics. Physical movement is the best solution for this. Gentle physical movements such as yoga stretches ( https://youtu.be/m7dIBVswWtk ) – do it very slowly and gently so that the body doesn’t get energised or activated. You can have a bath and dissolving some rock salt in cold water or just lukewarm / room temperature water would be best. Avoid very hot water bath just before sleep. You can also learn some very effective Energy Movements that are very effective when you subscribe to either the Awareness Journey course or seek Sleep Mentoring / healing with @SelvanSmentoring. Finally when you settle down to sleep, just remain sitting with back resting on the backrest of the bed or wall or leaning against pillows, keep your eyes open and gazing at the blank wall or ceiling in front and gently tapping and holding your breath in awareness. This is a type meditation (Refer Blog no.15 for details) which you can keep practicing till you fall asleep. You can use this technique once again later in the night if you happen to wake up and find it difficult to go back to sleep. Here is a summary of do’s and don’ts to help with wholesome sleep. 1. Brisk physical activity and exposure to natural sunlight during the day. 2. Have a fixed bedtime and do not deviate much from this. 3. Avoid coffee, tea, coke or other caffeinated drinks after 3 pm. 4. Eat a light dinner two hours before going to bed. 5. Avoid alcohol or limit the quantity and finish it at least two hours before bedtime. 6. Switch off bright lights and electronic devices one hour before bedtime. 7. Write the day’s journal and next day’s to do list using diffused lighting. 8. Talk and share your day’s experience with family. Or write your journal or dairy. 9. Do gentle yoga stretches or Energy movements before going to sleep. 10. Sit with the Look, Breathe, Tap meditation- Don’t close eyes, Don’t lie down until you fall asleep. 11. Don’t switch on lights or phone if you wake up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. 12. Cultivate a habit of sitting to meditate everyday. Wholesome and sufficient sleep is the most important requirement for a balanced physical, emotional and mental health and well-being. The self care series will be of five parts namely: The self care series will be of five parts namely: What is wholesome sleep? How to enjoy wholesome sleep ? Water – the elixir for everlasting health. Wholesome nourishment from food. Bare minimal physical activity for healthy life.

https://qr.ae/pvQa3w