Sleep

As you start your day, do you mostly feel like Sleeping Beauty or the Grumpy Troll under the bridge ready to bring anyone down to dares to cross you?

SLEEPING Beauty may be a childhood fairy tale where a troubled female wakes to the kiss from her dream man, but the act of ensuring we get horizontal when we are overwhelmed, holds real lessons still valid today.

The beauty in SLEEPING is something as adults we value but sometimes the state of surrendered SLEEP remains elusive.

Without quality SLEEP we are unable to fully appreciate beauty in ourselves, others and our life.

The amount of SLEEP we require varies with age and our energy output; nonetheless being vigilant in allocating adequate time for ourselves to rest as we do for young children … is an act of nurturing self care.

Our brain needs to shut down so it can clean house, as a nightclub needs to shut its doors to clean ashtrays, carpets and restrooms. Our dream state creates a place for our head, heart and body to connect, download, take out the trash via nightmares and bring in for us the fresh morning milk of hope.

As we allow ourselves to dream in the privacy of our sacred state of SLEEP, we get relief and escape from the noise and responsibility of our world (i.e. “I’m dying to get some SLEEP”) without the commitment of actual death. Even if we do not recall dreaming this process happens as we consent to SLEEP. When we reboot our head, heart and body reopen for business refreshed. Brain chemicals have reset, the body has rested and the heart processed emotions we don’t give ourselves permission to admit in the public light of day.

SLEEP is the golden chain that binds our health, heart and body together. NASA studies reveal that a 26-minute nap improved a pilot’s performance by 34% and a 45-minute nap produced a boost in cognitive performance that lasted more than 6 hours. So even small 45-minute power naps, reboot our brain. Let’s worry less about the volume of time we actually SLEEP and relax and rest more? Even dropping off just for an hour or so is definitely still beneficial.

The true beauty of SLEEP is that it has the ability to transform irritable people we are grumpy with as we climb into bed overnight, into people we are glad they put up with us as we wake in the morning. A good morning follows the ritual of saying “good night”. We have a good morning when we can smile in the bathroom mirror at ourselves with good humour and be grateful for the morning faces of those we love.

More beautiful realities about SLEEP is that it helps us better appreciate lovers, partners, flat mates, children, pets, the person who makes our morning cuppa or even just be calm enough to see the friendly willy wag tail on the fence. We see beauty with a clearer lens when we have given ourselves the gift of SLEEP. The world is a better place when we are not tired and neglecting basic self-care.

SLEEP deprivation is used in times of war as a powerful form of human torture. Let’s ensure we cease-fire if we are at war with ourselves and surrender with some self-care so we can finally get some well-deserved SLEEP?

It is important to prioritise a little more about the importance of putting ourselves to bed. Let’s ensure we indulge in quality down time and give ourselves the gift of some of SLEEP even if it is just 45 minutes? If we have trouble surrendering to full on SLEEP, the benefits of still saying “good night” to the day that’s been, does give us a sense of closure and allows a new day to start.

Why not gift ourselves daily with the opportunity to at least allow our busy selves to rest … even if we’re too troubled with fear or too excited with love to actually surrender to SLEEP?

It’s so very essential for our Emotional Fitness to surrender the vertical position and get horizontal, lay our tired body down to rest a while.

For if we don’t rest, we become restless and instead of waking refreshed like SLEEPING Beauty we spend our day as the Grumpy Troll under the bridge!

Lotsa love Cynthia xxx