sleep meets
All things sleep
Sleep is one of the most important physiological processes for supporting a healthy brain and body.
In fact, sleep has implications for what seems to be most aspects of our health – ranging from regulating our immune systems, to ensuring homeostatic function, to the regulation of our mood and mental health.
Poor sleep has also been linked to a multitude of chronic conditions including neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety, as well as metabolic disorders such as diabetes.
Sleep is one of the most important physiological processes for supporting a healthy brain and body.
In fact, sleep has implications for what seems to be most aspects of our health – ranging from regulating our immune systems, to ensuring homeostatic function, to the regulation of our mood and mental health.
Poor sleep has also been linked to a multitude of chronic conditions including neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety, as well as metabolic disorders such as diabetes.
MELANiGHTS
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MELANiGHTS
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Below you will find excerpts from short blog-style articles I write about life, sleep, and my learnings for how to live better. If you want to receive these and other musings direct to your inbox, subscribe here.
All articles can be found here.
Have you ever felt like all the helpful information in the world often does not fundamentally change what you actually do in your life on a consistent basis?
You start a healthy habit with the best of intentions. Check. You probably buy all the requisite equipment. Check check.
But, before long, that new habit starts to slip towards G.O.D, or the “Gulf of Doom”. And your best intentions along with it.
Slowly but surely, old behaviours and bad habits somehow manage to creep their way back in.
There’s a reason for that.
When we think about sleep, it can often feel like a circumscribed activity – something we do that is separate from being awake. And in many ways it is – the changes in our level of consciousness are unique for many of our slumbering hours. However, while sleep and wake might seem like night and day – they have an intimately symbiotic relationship.
Most of us are probably familiar with the effect of a poor night’s sleep on how we feel the next day – it can be hard to focus and we might feel tired, exhausted, or irritable.
However, what we do during the day can, conversely, have an equally impactful role in our sleep.
We make choices all the time. Even when we don’t realise we are making them. How is that?
It’s easy to think of choices as decisions we’ve deliberated about, perhaps for a long time, and consciously chosen. But what happens when we take our eyes off the ball – maybe we postpone making a difficult decision, we procrastinate because we don’t have time right now, or because it feels easier to wait?
Ironically, time is good at settling these choices for us.
That conference you meant to book a ticket for. That friend you wanted to get back in touch with. Suddenly the deadline for registering has passed and you missed the opportunity, or your friend has moved far away.
We are constantly making deliberate – and not so deliberate – choices.
We make them when we are busy with life and we forget to remind ourselves to do something, or when we intentionally push it aside to be dealt with later.
“Later” – is the great dustbin of our lives.
So I started meditating in the summer of last year. After many attempts over the years and various online courses to try to learn how to meditate “properly”.
These teachings never resonated with me, to the point that I had resigned myself to the fact that meditating was just not for me. They all somehow made meditation feel like this esoteric exercise and state that you could aspire to reach and be ready for.
I never was.
There were too many obstacles, too many rules of engagement, and the high expectations this invoked – and the barriers to entry – felt unrealistic.
What I realised over the past months – and what has sustained a beautifully simple and relatively consistent practice over the past year – was the realisation that meditation is not a thing you “do”. It’s not an exercise – and it certainly doesn’t require any special equipment, clothing, or even time of day. Meditation is ubiquitous. It is synonymous, and entirely compatible, with real life.
…make lemonade? But what if you don’t have sugar.
Do you have this thing where whenever something bad happens – and it’s a real pain – you somehow have this sense that something really good must be about to follow?
I feel like this is something we’re taught early on. In school, or in Disney movies. In any case, it feels like one of those irrational beliefs, or assumptions, that just seem to take up space in our minds, without any real merit.
In this section you will find excerpts from short blog-style articles I write about life, sleep, and my learnings for how to live better. If you want to receive these and other musings direct to your inbox, subscribe here.
All articles can be found here.
Have you ever felt like all the helpful information in the world often does not fundamentally change what you actually do in your life on a consistent basis?
You start a healthy habit with the best of intentions. Check. You probably buy all the requisite equipment. Check check.
But, before long, that new habit starts to slip towards G.O.D, or the “Gulf of Doom”. And your best intentions along with it.
Slowly but surely, old behaviours and bad habits somehow manage to creep their way back in.
There’s a reason for that.
When we think about sleep, it can often feel like a circumscribed activity – something we do that is separate from being awake. And in many ways it is – the changes in our level of consciousness are unique for many of our slumbering hours. However, while sleep and wake might seem like night and day – they have an intimately symbiotic relationship.
Most of us are probably familiar with the effect of a poor night’s sleep on how we feel the next day – it can be hard to focus and we might feel tired, exhausted, or irritable.
However, what we do during the day can, conversely, have an equally impactful role in our sleep.
We make choices all the time. Even when we don’t realise we are making them. How is that?
It’s easy to think of choices as decisions we’ve deliberated about, perhaps for a long time, and consciously chosen. But what happens when we take our eyes off the ball – maybe we postpone making a difficult decision, we procrastinate because we don’t have time right now, or because it feels easier to wait?
Ironically, time is good at settling these choices for us.
That conference you meant to book a ticket for. That friend you wanted to get back in touch with. Suddenly the deadline for registering has passed and you missed the opportunity, or your friend has moved far away.
We are constantly making deliberate – and not so deliberate – choices.
We make them when we are busy with life and we forget to remind ourselves to do something, or when we intentionally push it aside to be dealt with later.
“Later” – is the great dustbin of our lives.
So I started meditating in the summer of last year. After many attempts over the years and various online courses to try to learn how to meditate “properly”.
These teachings never resonated with me, to the point that I had resigned myself to the fact that meditating was just not for me. They all somehow made meditation feel like this esoteric exercise and state that you could aspire to reach and be ready for.
I never was.
There were too many obstacles, too many rules of engagement, and the high expectations this invoked – and the barriers to entry – felt unrealistic.
What I realised over the past months – and what has sustained a beautifully simple and relatively consistent practice over the past year – was the realisation that meditation is not a thing you “do”. It’s not an exercise – and it certainly doesn’t require any special equipment, clothing, or even time of day. Meditation is ubiquitous. It is synonymous, and entirely compatible, with real life.
…make lemonade? But what if you don’t have sugar.
Do you have this thing where whenever something bad happens – and it’s a real pain – you somehow have this sense that something really good must be about to follow?
I feel like this is something we’re taught early on. In school, or in Disney movies. In any case, it feels like one of those irrational beliefs, or assumptions, that just seem to take up space in our minds, without any real merit.