The question is often asked – how much sleep do we need? There are lots of ideals and beliefs around how much sleep we need, and how this changes due to our age or what we do. I learned a lot about this when I was studying for a diploma in Herbal Medicine.
But I have noticed that it’s not really about how long I sleep, but the quality of sleep that I am getting.
If I go to sleep with unresolved emotional issues, and a million thoughts going through my head, or if I have had a tough day with my daughter and not taken the time to discuss it with her, it really affects the quality of my sleep. I may have the suggested 8 hours sleep but the quality is poor due to the fact that I have so many undealt-with issues.
All of these things that I take to bed with me can be very tiring because on some level my body is still processing them all night long – and when I wake, I feel tired and as if I haven’t really slept at all.
What’s the solution? What changes to sleep and the quality of my sleep have I made?
- First of all, there is no such thing as perfection, so just taking baby steps is a good start. I sometimes forget and just fall asleep in a state of exhaustion, but that is changing with time.
- I have committed to communicating with my family and loved ones so that if anything comes up, it can be dealt with there and then before I go to sleep, rather than brushed under the carpet to be dealt with when there is time. There is never enough time and all these issues just keep building on each other until the pile is massive and much harder to deal with.
- I prepare myself for sleep. I try to not get too excited or do activities that are stimulating my nervous system for a few hours before my sleep time. So no doing accounting or business emails after 5pm! I have recently been taking the time to have a shower – not just to get clean, but as a loving ritual for myself… and I really enjoy it. After my shower it feels great to spend a little time putting cream on my body and giving myself a massage. My skin really needs it as I have neglected it most of my life.
- I make time to wind down, to be with myself and relax. This helps because then I don’t end up in bed wired, feeling like I will never fall asleep.
- When I do go to bed, I put myself to bed as if I were putting a baby to bed. I really take the time to get comfortable, so that my body feels fully supported.
I deserve to love and care for myself fully, and it’s something that I had never really taken time to do. We often give this much care to others and our children but forget to also give that same care and dedication to ourselves.
So I have discovered that it’s not so much “how much sleep do we need?” but how I am living before I go to sleep, and how that affects the quality of my sleep. I learned these simple ways from presentations by Serge Benhayon and Natalie Benhayon, and from my own experimenting and experience.
By Rosie Bason, Mullumbimby, NSW
1,104 Comments
‘I put myself to bed as if I were putting a baby to bed.’ Recently I shared an accommodation with 3 other students and we started a ritual with tucking in and a good night kiss. The tenderness and deep love touched all of us, provided a new level of intimacy and offered a great foundation for sleep.
If I go to sleep with unresolved emotional issues, and a million thoughts going through my head, or if I have had a tough day with my daughter and not taken the time to discuss it with her, it really affects the quality of my sleep.’ If we ‘mis-use’ sleep to deal with things that happened during the day, we deny ourselves the deepening that is on offer during the night.
Great to reflect on the extent to which we make our life about quality and the presence of our being, or the ideals – the pictures of how/what we think we/life should be. The former brings a richness and a depth to our life and our relationships, the latter dampens it down and disconnects us.
When I take the time to prepare myself for sleep by taking a warm bath, moisturising my skin, blowing my hair dry so it feels lovely in the morning and organising my sheets and bed clothes before I sleep, the way I wake feels completely different to if I get caught using a screen before bed and going onto social media which has a way of sucking me in and totally disturbing my sleep,as I go to bed later and feel far less rested in the morning.
“….it’s not really about how long I sleep, but the quality of sleep that I am getting.” I have come to realise the importance of this quality too, and how dependant it is on how I have spent my previous day. Which brings a responsibility of how I am choosing to live and interact with everyone I meet.
I find the quality of my sleep is down to how settled I feel at the end of the day – and how settled I feel is down to if I have given the day my 100 percent – in my work, in all my responsibilities at home and in all my relationships, then when you lie down at the end of the day my body can deeply rest, otherwise there is a constant tension of not living or not giving what I know i could have.
I love what you share here, Meg and I can relate to it a lot. For me without completion in all areas of the day is key in how I can surrender my body over to sleep. Checking out doesn’t work for me and leaves me feeling tired in the morning.
I love what you bring into your wind down routine to support you to have a quality sleep, ‘I make time to wind down, to be with myself and relax. This helps because then I don’t end up in bed wired, feeling like I will never fall asleep.
When I do go to bed, I put myself to bed as if I were putting a baby to bed. I really take the time to get comfortable, so that my body feels fully supported.’
I find I can still do work before going to bed but it is the quality of the way I work by not taking it on or getting caught in any issues that allows me to surrender and let go in my sleep
Bringing awareness to how, or more so the quality in which I go to sleep has been life changing. I now understand the incredible opportunity we have to maximise our rest, our bodies restoration and rejuvenation and deepening in connection to our being through the quality in which I wind down, approach and go to sleep. And yes agreed with quality as the focus the quantity has been redefined and has my vitality upon waking with a readiness to live the day that awaits.
Thank you Rosie, I still have a lot to learn about sleep and quality of sleep. Your words here really rang true for me “All of these things that I take to bed with me can be very tiring because on some level my body is still processing them all night long – and when I wake, I feel tired and as if I haven’t really slept at all.” I really know this as it happens a lot, thank you for the clarity of what you have expressed, it’s also given me a lot of inspiration for taking better care of myself and my quality of sleep.
I noticed last week that our bedroom didn’t feel right anymore. And I was wondering if that is the reason also why I slept not good lately.
So me and my partner looked why we didn’t like the room. The love and stillness was missing. The room felt empty and more dark. We both could feel that we did not really honour our bedroom and our time together. from there we started to reorganise our room. It was amazing, we felt in 5 minutes time already a shift in the room.
And even better, I slept very well and woke up feeling all the love within and around me.
I have been looking at changing the way I put myself to bed in the evenings and have found that I still brush over very basic levels of self care such as taking time for me to put cream on my skin and the way you describe it here ‘After my shower it feels great to spend a little time putting cream on my body and giving myself a massage. My skin really needs it as I have neglected it most of my life.’ feels so caring towards yourself and is in fact a very basic level of self care.
Sleep is not so much about the act per se but about what comes before it. Are we cherishing ourselves enough for example to prepare for sleep so that we can receive the rest we need?
When we do things with true purpose we find we have more energy, do things for any other reason and we will feel like we are wading through mud. Far better to go with the flow of the universe rather than resist God’s flow.
Last night I committed to taking great care with the way I put myself to bed being aware of when I was wanting to reach for sugar and why. It wasn’t that early when I fell asleep and certainly not as early as I would have liked but it didn’t matter as the quality was there and today I have woken up naturally early feeling well rested and very much alive.
I find building a rhythm in my body of going to bed early deeply supports my quality I am in during the day.
My rhythm is my foundation – if I take this away life becomes far more strenuous then it needs to be.
This blog reminds me of when we have an issue we are encouraged to ‘Sleep on it’ and then tomorrow things will be brighter, or it will be alright in the morning. I question the quality of sleep we get when we sleep on it?
That’s such a good point Julie, wait and see how you feel in the morning is commonly said to children when perhaps what is needed is a more honest conversation about what has lead to a child feeling exhausted and or emotional, have they eaten sugar and or not been getting enough sleep and if those simple elements are addressed first then this issue is no longer such an issue.
How much quality do we need everyday? A universe full! There’s no end to the depth we can live – if we want things to change it starts with this.
The way I go to bed affects my sleep quality as well as how I will face the next day. Knowing that this is a cycle in which each moment feeds the next one, gives me the understanding of how every choice matters and from there, I can establish a daily supportive and detailed routine that supports me to rest and vice versa.
We can sleep less hours and feel just as invigorated for the start of each day when we choose to make our day one of checking in with our body and listening rather than ignoring its call.
Yes this has been my experience also. The more I allow myself to be guided by the wisdom of my body the deeper, more rejuvenating and healing my sleep and the more connected and vital I awake.
I too find that the quality of sleep I have makes a big difference to how I feel when I wake and that how I’ve been living before going to sleep does impact that quality and it’s worth finding out what truly makes a difference to this, something I keep learning with.
How my day has been lived, how I am feeling as I wind down for sleep, do have an impact on how I sleep, and that then has an impact on how I wake and feel the next morning, everything is connected.
We think we are at the mercy of our day and that we have so little control over our sleep but that is untrue. We make so many choices that result in the body we take to our beds, it is worth laying some foundations that, as you share treat us like a newborn baby.
So many people struggle with sleep and the impact this has on their lives is enormous. The ‘sleep experts’ don’t seem to have the answer and yet by reading this blog and others like it, the answer seems so simple.
One very important point when it comes to the amount of sleep we have is that if we wake up early and ready to go and then we decide to go back to sleep that can actually make us more tired and drained. I find I almost always feel brighter and more alert the first time I wake up than the second – which proves it’s not the amount of sleep we have but the quality.
This is something that I had not considered in the past, and I love the way it is phrased in this article….”All of these things that I take to bed with me can be very tiring because on some level my body is still processing them all night long…” We all know how we wake up thinking about the things that we were thinking about the night before….if my body feels these from those thoughts if I have not resolved them, then I agree a level of tension remains. This is something for us to look at in our every day lives, what do we leave unresolved, and is there something we can do that prepares us more for sleep? Great suggestions and inspiring us to consider how we care for ourselves in our daily lives.
In the last eight days I have become so aware of my need for sleep and the quality of it. I have been coughing on and off all day, and by the time night arrives I am so ready to go to sleep but no, that has not been happening as once my head touches the pillow I start to cough, and cough, and of course sleep is elusive. And if I manage to have a few hours the quality is not what it would normally be. I am starting to feel the effects of the lack of sleep, like being slower to understand something and rather clumsy at times. But I can’t go into stress and worry about it, simply allowing the healing process to unfold and my cough to heal. Then I know that my lovely supportive rhythm of sleep will return!
How I live affects how much sleep I need and now that I am committed to taking more loving care of myself the quality of my sleep has generally improved dramatically and my vitality and zest for life has been transformed. Despite experiencing all of this I have recently been making some less loving choices which have impacted the quality of my sleep and been observing how I am finding it challenging to get back on track despite ‘knowing’ what I need to do.
Sleep has become such a problem for so many. It’s interesting that we don’t look at the problem from the angle of how we live during the day and the quality we live in. If we live in drive, anxiety, stress and emotional angst then it makes sense that the body will have difficulty in winding down and sleeping at night.
And it will make sense that we get to a point that we need support to go to sleep! If we are willing to be honest then we will know how we got there and we will know how to redress the balance.
What supports me to have a great night’s sleep is to express all that I need to during the day. That way I am not going to bed with things unsaid and therefore nothing to distract me from sleep.
How we sleep is so reflected in how we live our day, take away all stimulants, TV, films, coffee, sugar and emotional upheaval and we have a chance to connect each night to the deep wonder and magic of the universe
Great call ‘So I have discovered that it’s not so much “how much sleep do we need?” but how I am living before I go to sleep, and how that affects the quality of my sleep’ and something I am still very much learning!
And there is this huge difference between sleeping and resting. If I make sure there is rest and space in the day, then the amount of sleep I have had is alot less important than if I am go, go, go. That way of living wears me and my body down and I quickly become exhausted no matter how much sleep I have had.
Great point Simon. I too am making more space for myself and also resting in the day for short periods when my body calls me to do so. This makes a big difference to my overall well being and the quality of sleep I have at night.