Be Early to Bed – 10.00pm ‘ish’:
Conventionally, most of us focus on how many hours of sleep we get. However, in Ayurveda, and other approaches that understand nature’s intelligence – it’s not just the quantity of sleep – MORE IMPORTANT is the QUALITY.
As with everything in our body, TIMING is everything – particularly in terms of sleep. From around 10pm – 2am each night, is when your body is geared up for it’s peak internal cleansing and rejuvenation cycle. Riding the wave (i.e. resting/sleeping) at this time maximises this process resulting in you waking lighter, fresher, more energetic and positive. 8 hours sleep from 12.00pm – 8.00am will give completely different results to 8 hours sleep from 10.00pm – 6.00am. As the old wives tale (not!) goes – “An hour before midnight is worth two after”.
ln a month or two many of us will all be into the pre-Xmas hustle bustle & late night party time. So in the coming month or so it’s critical to get a few more early nights.
Tips:
1. Aim to have (at least) 2-3 ‘early to bed’ nights/week (before 10-10.30pm). Earlier is okay/good, as long as dinner has been digested – see below. Focus on early nights, ‘early’ in the week as obviously come Friday, Saturday nights you will be painting the town red (like the colour of your eyes & face when you wake up the next morning…afternoon!!) – Doing this will help to realign your body’s cycles and set you up for good energy and clarity for your whole week.
2. Remember that early to bed is only useful if you have largely finished digesting dinner. If you go to bed at any time with a gut full of food, all your body’s resources will need to be sent to your stomach to ‘try’ to digest that 3 inch steak or ‘Whopper burger’ and thus not be able to repair & rejuvenate the rest of your body. So make sure you also ‘Eat Light at Night’ to really get all the Peak Performance benefits that sleep will naturally bring.
3. Remember also that ‘early to rise’ is almost as important as ‘early to bed’ – ‘The early bird catches the worm’… ignore the fact that it’s the second mouse gets the cheese’- hehe!. According to Maharishi Ayurveda, the more one sleeps in after 6 – 6.30 am, the more heaviness & dullness you accumulate. So unless you are really fatigued/have had a big night out, as a general healthy routine, gradually aim to get up earlier also.
Sleep Laughter:
A policeman, fire chief, and a lawyer were driving through the country when their car broke down, so they sought assistance at a nearby farmhouse.
The farmer told them that the local garage was closed, and that they were welcome to spend the night, but that he only had one spare bed. He told them that somebody could sleep on his couch, but that one of them would have to spend the night in his barn.
The policeman announced that he would volunteer to sleep in the barn. A short time later there was a knock at the door. It was the policeman complaining that he could not sleep. There were pigs in the barn, and the stench was too much.
The fire chief stated that he would trade with the police chief, and went out to the barn. A short time later, again there was a knock at the door. It was the fire chief, who said there were pigs in the barn, and the stench was too much.
The lawyer then declared, “You two are such babies. I will go sleep in the barn.” A few minutes later, again there was a knock at the door…….It was 30 pigs standing there holding their noses.
Something to inspire you:
We have just received an email from an attendee to one of our seminars. He wrote as follows:
Hi Mark
Just a quick note to say thanks for some great advice in your book– ever since the FMG conference earlier this year – I’ve been meaning to put into practise some of your tips but you know what it’s like – putting off and putting off and then in July my wife and I went overseas for almost 2 months on holiday etc., which made the advice about changing sleep patterns to the more healthy difficult to implement until we got back.
But finally, and since Thursday night of last week, I’ve been making sure I’ve been in bed and asleep by 10pm each night. This would be a first time for me since childhood??? – as its usually either close to midnight and often after that I normally go to bed and then struggle to arise at 7am. Worse I sleep-in on weekend mornings thinking that was doing me good – but feeling no better.
Well – the results so far have been amazing – usually it’s an on-going war with the bedside clock to drag myself out of bed – but only after 5 days I’m now waking at around 5am bright and alert and could easily get up then. My sleep too has been very deep and satisfying….Next step is to actually get out of bed AT 5am J
I’ve also started putting into place having only a light dinner meal and have implemented that at the same time…things are looking up! Thanks again mate
All the best Mike
Michael Harvey
Head of Research – FMG New Zealand
