Rest Assured

Alas, the stakes are the highest they have ever been as taxes, inflation, and the cost of living compete for what remains of our stimulus package resources, streams of income and monetary wages as we, here, in the Western World battle the undying pandemic of the 21st century. As the American household dynamic and family structure, socioeconomic climate and immune system suffers the brunt of the compounding stress and strain from the unwarranted circumstance of trivial protocols, mandates, and vaccinations: we are in dire need of rest, rejuvenation and relaxation to combat these budding challenges. During the early stages of this unnatural disaster, the average American was bound to the confines of their home and considered a ‘homebody’ beyond his or her consent and furthermore deemed a ‘bedhead’ by default. To our benefit, frequent lockdowns have spearheaded sleep campaigns and highlighted the benefits of abiding by the ‘5 more minute’ rule to the effect of enforcing a sleep schedule whether it be: rituals before bed, effective practices throughout the night & during waking hours, naps for longevity, or realizing that simply doing nothing is something. This is a how-to guide for the insomniac and a tell-all treatment for the sleeping beauty who knows the power of pause as we affirm why the bedroom is the most the important vicinity in the home, why the most important part of the day is spent sleeping and why the most potent form of productivity is inactivity.

First and foremost, congratulations!! We have all heard the morbid mantra that ‘sleep is the cousin of death’ and yet, here we are, amongst the living defy all odds and gravity as the survival of the fittest, hoping that with every waking moment, death and sleep become distant cousins, preferably estranged. We are advised to tread lightly in these times and regard a nighttime to do list to form effective sleep habits as much as we adhere to a daytime checklist to form successful habits as stable creatures proving that quality sleep reflects quality of life. What can begin as a New Year’s resolution this year can be adopted as a way of life if you heed the disciplines shared here, rewire your thought process surrounding what constitutes a goodnight’s rest and reverse the stigmas that associate sleep with laziness, sloth, unproductivity or the notion that the early bird is the only one that gets the worm. We will regard articles, publications and a dream journal from my personal collection of literature to campaign for sleep hygiene. The most insightful of them is Dreams: How to connect with your dreams to enrich your life by Tree Carr who states, “Sleep hygiene is a combination of behavioural tasks and environmental improvement factors that help aid a better quality of sleep.” while also attributing that, “The idea of sleep hygiene was first developed in 1939 by the physiologist and sleep researcher Nathaniel Kleitman, although similar concepts were explored 75 years earlier by scientist and professor Paolo Mantegazza in his works published in 1864. Many years later, in 1977, psychologist Peter Hauri resurrected the concept of sleep hygiene in his published writings, and the ideas have continued to evolve. A lot of research has gone into creating a template of guidelines to help promote good sleep, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that these tips can provide long-standing solutions for people with sleep difficulties.” With said research in mind, there is no need to reinvent the wheel as this instruction manual is no different in its efforts to encourage you to ‘hit the sack’ more often times, than not.

Where the mind goes - the body will follow.

The mind is the main power source of the body as all bodily functions yield to a chain of command, or synapse, from the brain to the body. Following the natural law of ‘as above, so below’, we have the opportunity to benefit a great deal by adhering to our body’s signals and remaining flexible when moving our schedule around to accommodate our body’s [creature] comforts. This bit of advice operates in tandem with following ones intuitive nudges, gut instinct, the stomach being referred to as the body’s second brain, and regarding the body’s signals as intellectual property. There is a saying that “the body keeps count”, now while this references the body's latent ability to keep a numerical scorecard of violations against the body due to physical abuse, we are not exempt from self-harm until we are advocates of self-help as the body records our pain tolerance, threshold and offender(s) regardless of our ability to numb. Body positivity is an influential campaign in North America currently praising brands that embrace people of all colors, shapes and sizes because of its endless potentiality to combat negative reinforcement which happens, first, in the mind, and then transfers to the body resulting in ‘body shaming’ and thusly, infringing upon our emotional, mental and physical health. Meaning, refrain from going against the grain or against your better judgement when your body opts out of certain arrangements, makes minor to major adjustments to your schedule or delivers an unknown physical response to express discomfort and disagreement with your plan of action. The human body is a fascinating mechanism and nothing short of perfection as it is meant to function optimally, so much so, the computer was modeled after the brain, hence the psychological term ‘brain computer’ and the ‘body’ of the car or automobile being created in the likeness of the human body with parallel features; the more expensive the car the more likely we are to take better care of it. So, as often as we park our cars, power down our phones, restart/reboot our computers, replace the battery or repair the engine when a car stalls, showing the tale tell signs of maintenance, we also require routine service maintenance checks and more time spent parked than on the road. All this to say, relinquish your toxic tendency to resist the natural urge to nap, submit to the soul’s mission to experience higher states of consciousness through sleep and grant the divine specimen, that is the body, the rite to rest. The publication Why We Sleep; Unlocking The Power Of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker, PhD states that, “Humans are not sleeping the way nature intended. The number of sleep bouts, the duration of sleep, and when sleep occurs have all been comprehensively distorted by modernity.”

Doing nothing is something.

Consider the intended use of the mind, body and soul as aforementioned and the time we personally require to change our mind about sleep, or our receptivity to new information in general, that cognitive process entails physical immobility and external inactivity, as does the car that needs a new battery that renders a ‘service battery’ notification until the service is performed. Less is more in this instance, since much of the service required and rendered is internal, such is life when administering anesthesia to perform a surgical procedure, physical unconsciousness is mandatory, even if the mind is awake. Its going to take some R&R just to focus on the arduous task of undoing the pattern of sleep deprivation of our Greco-Roman predecessors and redirect our attention toward configuring a sleep schedule that reflects our life and times. If the pandemic has done nothing else, it has enabled us to catch up on some much needed rest and help to further transition us into a ‘work smarter, not harder’ lifestyle and work ethic so as not to accrue the same bodily tax, toil and labor as our [great] grandparents who physically laid the foundation for the Industrial Era through hands-on occupations in welding, mining, laying railroads, roadways, and highways. It is through this historical lens with which Matthew Walker compares and notes that, “Throughout developed nations, most adults currently sleep in a monophasic pattern – that is, we try to take a long, single bout of slumber at night, the average duration of which is now less than seven hours. Visit cultures that are untouched by electricity and you often see something rather different. Hunter-gatherer tribes, such as the Gabra in northern Kenya or the San people in the Kalahari Desert, whose way of life has changed little over the past thousands of years, sleep in a biphasic pattern. Both of these groups take a similarly longer sleep period at night (seven to eight hours of time in bed, achieving about seven hours of sleep), followed by a thirty- to sixty-minute nap in the afternoon.” The proper way to give gratitude to those industrious ancestors that fought for our rights, endured meager to mediocre accommodations and sacrificed adequate sleep to earn a living is, of course, through regular maintenance and routine upkeep of their life’s work, but also, exercising the possibilities of said rights, and enjoy the fruits of their labor by occupying these infrastructures and the fullness thereof. Paying homage to ancestors has everything to do with the emergence of the Digital Age and the wellspring of electronic resources with ‘smart’ features that encourage our freedom of expression, arrange the privacy to be left to our own devices and accessorizes the capability to perform tasks remotely that would otherwise require a physical commute from point A to point B. To our demise, our attention was merely redirected from workmanship to the honeymoon phase of our toxic relationship with mass media, social media and all things journalism. So, “What becomes clearly apparent when you step back from these details is that modern society has divorced us from what should be a preordained arrangement of biphasic sleep – one that our genetic code nevertheless tries to rekindle every afternoon. The separation from biphasic sleep occurred at, or even before, our shift from an agrarian existence to an industrial one.” Therefore, it is our birth rite and an inevitable feat in the evolutionary process to fall victim to our creature comforts and afford ourselves the luxury of sleeping in and drifting off as a commodity that was previously unaffordable, unavailable and unimaginable to our forbearers.

Fiesta, Siesta !!

Rest assured, the concept of sleep has significant stock in research, literature and popular music. With accessibility to the worldwide web and the beaming invitations to join music streaming platforms at the expense of being totally immersed in the sea of all music ever recorded at any given time, its no wonder music possesses the power it does. The search for soothing tunes by the general population has resulted in the content creation of tonal, elemental and binaural sounds by music mixologist, metaphysicists and masters giving newfound meaning to the lullaby and the corresponding phrase ‘sound asleep’. Dictionary.com defines siesta as a midday or afternoon rest or nap, especially as taken in Spain and Latin America. There must be a reason why fiesta rhymes with siesta because both sound like music to my ears! It could be the hispanic contribution to my biogenetic makeup that naturally resonates with the ritual practice of siestas but it was cause for celebration after casually stumbling across excerpts from Matthew Walker's publication, having read that his travels and studies were in alignment with our tendency to snooze during classes in the afternoon, especially following lunch, proving his data was relatable, reliable and viable, and my lack of performance as tried and true! “Accepting that this is our natural pattern of slumber, can we ever know for certain what types of health consequences have been caused by our abandonment of biphasic sleep? Biphasic sleep is still observed in several siesta cultures throughout the world, including regions of South America and Mediterranean Europe. When I was a child in the 1980s, I went on vacation to Greece with my family. As we walked the streets of the major metropolitan Greek cities we visited, there were signs hanging in storefront windows that were very different from those I was use to back in England. They stated: open from nine a.m. to one p.m., closed from one to five p.m., open five to nine p.m.” In celebration of this confirmation and in light of my hispanic heritage, although I do not speak a lick of Spanish, afternoon naps have been incorporated into my sleep schedule for over five years now, serving as an energy boost to fulfill a day's work, an anti-aging serum and beauty secret and an excuse to 'make the bed that I sleep in'. The power of sleep was evident after making yet another debut on Drake's hit single “God’s Plan” when it became the most-streamed song of 2018 in the United States, with 1,565,711,000 on-demand streams (918.87 million audio and 647.84 video). It was also the second best-selling digital song of 2018 with 1,056,000 copies sold, when the unforgettable dialogue between him and a potential love interest exchanged the word, “She says, "do you love me?",” “I tell her,"Only partly. I only love my bed and my mama. I’m sorry.",” blazed the airways as the most notable tagline of the song. I knew then, that between sleep & I, "We're going to Party, Karamu, Fiesta, Forever. Come on and sing along!"

Fabrication.

Whoever said “beauty is pain”, lied! Even Sleeping Beauty knew the beauty secret to beautification was ‘beauty rest’ but even she was too consumed by Delta brain waves to promote it beyond her glass casing. “Delta waves occur during stages three and four sleep and are the slowest waves with the highest amplitude. Delta sleep is the deepest sleep. The waves have a range of 0.1-4 Hz and represent the lowest amount of activity possible. Delta waves typically occur only during deep sleep, and they can also trigger growth and body healing.”, says Tree Carr. A significant contribution that can improve your quality of sleep tremendously and help to achieve that Delta state are the beauty secrets of bedding, I’m talkin’: satin, cotton and/or silk sheets, a variation of pillows and the cleanliness thereof. He insists, “The place where you lay your head down to sleep and dream should be taken seriously! One-third of your life is spent asleep. I would say that’s enough time to warrant a good investment for an ideal bed.” What if I told you that the small decorative pillows that come equipped with a comforter set like the cylinder, rectangle or circle shaped are for circulation, respiratory and contouring purposes? Even our superficial misuse of pillows has been infringed upon when you analyze the wonders pillows can do to support the natural shape of the body. If one sleeps on their side, a body pillow alone, can provide slight elevation to the head and neck to foster an uninterrupted airway for breathing, support the spine and shoulders as a continuum of the skull, and provide adequate separation for the knees which simultaneously relieves the spinal column and pelvis of pressure often accrued from the knees touching for too long a duration throughout the night, all at once. Whereas, the dual use for that set of miniature pillows is décor and contour, so for those of us fortunate enough to make the conscious decision to sleep on our back with little to no transition throughout the night, you will find that the cylinder shaped pillow supports the primary curvature behind the neck, the rectangular pillow fits at the lower back and the third pillow shape can vary but, nonetheless, is positioned under the knees to elevate the legs, encourage circulation and prevent excessive bending, folding, or crossing. "As well as investing in a good mattress and pillows, choose comfortable bedding. Look for 100 percent cotton sheets, which breathe better as you sleep. Synthetic materials can become too hot and scratchy and might disrupt your sleep. Consider the colour theme of your bedding. Soothing colours help promote a soothing mind. You might want to avoid garish and overstimulating colours and patterns.", adds Tree.

Tea & Crystals

As a tea enthusiast, dietitian and nutritionist, there is so much to say about the power of plants and herbs and their due diligence in our diet but we will primarily focus on the beverages that induce sleep, provoke dreams and service our internal and external environment and wellbeing as it relates to quality of sleep. Tea preparation spans across many cultures, it is herald as a staple in many households and signifies a ritual display of etiquette, status and health. Purposely avoiding the promotion of caffeinated teas, we will instead probe the herbal and flowering teas that coddle our nature to be soothed, cater to the dream process and cradle the sensation to be satiated. Everything from the preparation, aroma, to the taste and the warmth of ones favorite tea mug appease and appeal to all the senses simultaneously while exhibiting the power to yield a desired effect. The tools, apparatuses and methods associated with tea preparation evolve with intelligence, technology and often associated with masculinity but it is the effervescence of lavender, chamomile, rose, blue butterfly pea and jasmine tea that give the art of tea its feminine characteristics, instantly releasing dopamine, relieving compounded stress and relaxing all tension in the body. Tree Carr overviews Dream Tea Ritual and advises that, “If drinking herbal tea is for you and you want to incorporate dream plants into your conscious dreaming practice, you can establish a dream tea ritual before you go to sleep. Dream plants can improve your dream recall, trigger more dreams and assist you with any advance dream work that you are engaging in, such as lucid dreaming, mutual dreaming, and precognitive dreams. It’s good to note that, like all things, its best to use herbs and dream plants in moderation. Test what works for you but refrain from going overboard.” As a crystal connoisseur, how could one remiss the chance to cross-promote and prescribe a host of crystals that induce restful sleep like amethyst which have the ability to prevent nightmares and night terrors, rose quartz being energetically soft and harmonious with all other stones enough to keep handy at ones bedside and on ones person, notwithstanding, the potency of the kyanite classification of crystals and their ability to invoke lucid dreaming, elicit vivid dreams, and heightened overall dream quality whether it be blue, green, black or indigo kyanite. If those crystals are not readily accessible as they sound, then howlite will prove to be an effective mineral for beginners and a perfect gem for crystal aficionados who use dream enhancing crystals and wish to follow-through with a dream recall crystal for the purpose of dream journaling, interpretation and awareness. These are only a few noteworthy minerals that occur in abundance among the hundreds that exist within and throughout the mineral kingdom, many of which exist naturally yet mined and sold wholesale for your convenience at your local metaphysical establishment or better yet, by any online presence that specializes in natural resources. Another additive from a trusted resource, namely Robert Simmons, and his miniature version of crystal classification, The Pocket Book of Stones: Who They Are & What They Teach, introduces readers to the journey of unearthing hidden gem as Robert incites that, “My own books are nourished by the roots of these ancient traditions, and are addressed to the large community of spiritually-oriented stone lovers that sprouted in the early 1980s and has grown exponentially since then. Like the alchemists, we look beyond the outer appearances of crystals and minerals to link with their quintessential energies, and to open ourselves to their influence. The hope and intention we carry is for transformation to occur. The sorts of changes we seek run the gamut from self-healing to spiritual awakening, from grounding to ascension. We discover new capacities and deeper sensitivities. We experience visions. We begin to feel the awakening of heart awareness and body consciousness. We sense the dawning realization that stones are more than useful objects – there is Someone there, a helping spirit that has its own nature and is ready to join us in cocreation.”

Rhythm & wind.

I’m no sleep expert but I am an expert at sleeping when it concerns matters of the heart. The circadian, heart and breathing rhythms are all essential data when measuring quality of sleep. “Today, few of those signs remain in windows of shops throughout Greece. Prior to the turn of the millennium, there was increasing pressure to abandon the siesta-like practice in Greece. A team of researchers from Harvard University’s School of Public Health decided to quantify the health consequences of the radical change in more than 23,000 Greek adults, which contained men and women ranging in age from twenty to eighty-three years old. The researchers focused on cardiovascular outcomes, tracking the group across a six-year period as the siesta practice came to an end for many of them.” Applying the methods discussed, herein and thereafter, will prove substantial to the body's overall orchestration. We can only imagine the high-volume task of the heart to regulate circulation, how the respiratory and circulatory systems work synergistically in combination one another to filter oxygenated blood throughout the body while activities ensue when they body is innately expecting a break, now, having to overcompensate without rest. If we respect this illustration as body language, although out of sight -- out of mind, we would be more respective to the overall composition of the body and empathic to the extreme measures we exert upon the body, specifically the heart. Matthew delivers feedback from the experimentation, noting: “As with countless Greek tragedies, the end result was heartbreaking, but here in the most serious, literal way. None of the individuals had a history of coronary heart disease or stroke at the start of the study, indicating the absence of cardiovascular ill health. However, those that abandoned regular siestas went on to suffer a 37 percent increased risk of death from heart disease across the six-year period, relative to those who maintained regular daytime naps. The effect was especially strong in workingmen, where the ensuing mortality risk of not napping increased by well over 60 percent.” All it takes is compassion to be cognizant and conscientious of our body's fragility and sensitivity to haphazard behavior and the dangers of sacrificing the downtime meant for showcasing the marvels of our mechanism when "you miss 100% of the naps you don't take". What a time to be alive and yet we squander days of our lives and shave minutes from our clock when we deny ourselves the slumber we yearn for all day. There is a backlog of attention we owe ourselves to get back into the swing of things, so get your groove back and find your natural rhythm and realize that you are the choreographer of this dance called life, so keep in mind, your performance dictates the closing of the curtains. Give'em an encore!

Dream, dream, dream.

For those of us who exercise rest avidly and swear by bedtime and naptime, we cease every opportunity to abandon our virtual reality for the alternate reality of dreaming. From childhood and for as much as we can remember, we experience the enigmatic presentation of dreams, whether it be instances from waking life that tend to loop, a goulash of relative and foreign material, nightmares that address our fears, traumas or phobias, or a recurring dream, our dreams draw upon significant occurrences from our past, present and potential future vying for our attention and close examination through our brain’s nightly portrayal of a motion picture. The introduction of my dream journal is as follows: ‘This is the necessary spiel that must be written by the author and read by the audience disclosing exactly what is enclosed, encased, and encompassed in the pages lain before and after these that serve as introductory and conclusive. This ‘dream’ journal will serve as keepsake for the monumental moments and mementos, whether during sleep state or waking life, worth archiving, recording and remembering. Right now, its use is utilized on a need-to-know basis but will soon be a daily ritual for collecting the relative stimuli between sleeping and waking life, not to mention, the paralleling signs, symbols and synchronicities. This journal will be primarily used to log ‘dreams’ in general; dreams as in ones hopes, wishes and near to distant aspirations, but also the latent form of storytelling experienced during various states and transitions of consciousness. Along with the dream material recorded, researched and recalled will be the corresponding crystals, herbs, and practices like diet, ritual, and habits exercised before bedtime will also be noted. The quality of life (Qol) and quality of sleep (Qos) as it pertains to the quality of dreams rendered will be mentioned to provide a means of cause and effect analysis, conscious maintenance and dream awareness. To engage in dream interpretation, a sufficient and thorough method of defining, decoding and dissecting dreams will be performed and practiced on a case-by-case basis by referencing resources like websites, articles, books and their authors, tales, myths, folklore in association with dream meaning will be analyzed. While keeping in mind what is already known about the power, potentiality and premise of dreams, in tandem, will exist new information and budding theories about that which remains unknown, uncovered and untold by dream theorists, journalists, and experts.

The purpose of this written record is to make spiritual, emotional, physical and mental note of our brain’s ability to cast, compose and collect information [in a way] that can serve a vital, essential and monumental role in our daily lives, be it, in hindsight, with foresight or for insight purposes. The idea, here, is to personally manage the dream process by logging daily entries, studying recurring dreams and recalling past dreams as often as needed and as much as humanly possible.’

Long live the King sized mattress.

One of the six best doctors alongside sunshine, water, diet, air, and exercise, is rest. Health and wellness are indicative of rest, possessing effects of longevity, anti-aging and healing hence the term ‘well rested’. We often consider a nap only after struggling with depression, anxiety and the overwhelming stresses of waking life but commitment to a rest schedule would act as preventative measure to these extreme emotional diagnostics, if not the first line of defense to those pathologies. Matthew Walker does not hesitate to mention that, “Apparent from this remarkable study is this fact: when we are cleaved from the innate practice of biphasic sleep, our lives are shortened. It is perhaps unsurprising that in the small enclaves of Greece where siestas still remain intact, such as the island of Ikaria, men are nearly four times as likely to reach the age of ninety as American males. These napping communities have sometimes been described as ‘the places where people forget to die: From a prescription written long ago in our ancestral genetic code, the practice of natural biphasic sleep, and a healthy diet, appear to be the keys to a long-sustained life.” We often avoid the morbid thoughts of death by shooing the idea from our mind but if we invested as much time into actually napping, resting and reinforcing methods of longevity, it would be as avoidable as it is distant. Consider the latter.

1st and 10.

Ironically enough, this is not a football reference as much as it is a reminder to reserve the first 10 minutes of your slumber for deprogramming and reprogramming the mind to operate in a manner that is conducive to your performance once you are “up and at’em”. We are the most sensitive within the first 10 minutes of wakefulness and it is recommended that we make polite use of that window of opportunity by envisioning our day, reciting affirmations and programming our mind with the possibilities that are ultimately limitless to us as a means of manifestation. Keeping in mind, that within this timeframe we are also recuperating from unconsciousness and still retrieving our known strength. If you have never tried: ball your fist first thing after waking up and you will find you cannot squeeze your fist. We are not intended to hop out of bed at the drop of a hat and rush out the door as much as we are to engage in ritual activity that maintain the restful state of the body while respecting the climb of conscious states, sleep stages and wakeful coherence to consciousness. So next time your alarm sounds, hit the snooze button.

Kitchen is closed.

Growing up in a blended family environment with many others, we did not have the pleasantry of raiding the food pantry at our leisure and were forced to eat in rhythm and alignment with our circadian clock. To ensure a full night’s rest and ward off any temptation to eat after bedtime, our parents would confiscate our cellular phones, lock the pantry, and sometimes zip tie the refrigerator closed complete with signage that read “Kitchen Closed”. Now, while the long-term benefits and discipline garnered from that boundary being set elicit an immediate payout in quality of sleep, it also paid dividends in the long-run in its ability to ward off sleep struggles and pathologies. Those in the psychospiritual community believe and know that: “Going to bed on an empty stomach induces more vivid and lucid dreams. This is because hunger stimulates the production of DMT in the brain. When we eat before bed our body works all night on digestion, which takes away energy from the brain. By producing more DMT naturally, we can achieve deeper states of meditation, stronger connection with our higher self and easily tap into Infinite Intelligence.”

So, while this may be unchartered territory for some, the idea is to make the bedroom commonplace for all. So I wish you sweet dreams, divine rest and a goodnap!