Fast Asleep, Wide Awake (FAWA) by Dr. Nerina Ramlakhan
50 minute read
Introduction - Thriving Not Surviving
“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.” - Aristotle
(1) Belief # 1: Our Body Is Amazing
Our body has the capacity to heal itself when asleep. You may start to wonder then why you’re not right amount of sleep or right quality of sleep every night. This may have something to do with your relationship towards sleep. On most days, your body is hard-wired to find sleep and only your mind is preventing you from doing that.
(2) Belief # 2: Sleeping Tablets Are Not The Answer
“There’s nothing more delicious than having a good night’s sleep, but what we’re really after is the potential it has to bring us the next day.”
Sleeping pills, although effective, do not give us the quality of sleep that we need to function on a day-to-day basis. Because your body and sleep is unique to you, having an all-in-one solution doesn’t really do the necessary trick into getting that good night’s rest.
What’s more, resulting to tablets or any other form of sleep inducing substance will only hurt in the long run. Imagine waking up one morning knowing that you won’t be able to take a pill when you go sleep at night later. It’s merely giving a band-aid solution to a permanent problem.
(3) Belief # 3: Sleep Has an Innate Healing Ability
The author introduces the Sanskrit word sattvic, meaning ‘pure’, and this is the type of sleep that the author will refer to throughout the book.
“Sattvic sleep is not the junk sleep that many of us get these days. It is clean, pure, deep, and restorative.”
(4) Belief # 4: Insomnia in the 21st Century Has Its Own Particular Significance
Insomnia has been around for a long time and certainly isn’t a new phenomenon and there are a few factors which have resulted in sleeping issues becoming widespread:
Speed - “These days, the whole world is time-sick. We all belong to the same cult of speed. It’s a strange paradox that while we’ve become obsessed with getting enough sleep we’ve aslo become complacent about taking slices off it because, in comparison with everything else, it seems to be a luxury item that we don’t need and can’t afford.”
Noise - “So many of us have simply lost the ability to be silent and with silence, and now we are starting to feel the effects. Human beings have always needed to be quiet. Isn’t this why we’re called human beings not human doings? We seem to have forgotten that retreating and being silent is not only desirable but also absolutely essential to our being able to replenish and renew our energy before we move to action.”
This speaks volumes personally to me as I’ve also been interested and keen on attending retreats in order to silence my life. In this day and age, we almost always forget to sit and take a few steps back in our lives to just see the whole picture. We almost always forget to look around us and see where we are at now, compared to where we want to go. Mindfulness is scarce, and it’s because we always want to be on-the-go. Silence is absolutely essential to being able to sleep deeply and live vibrantly.
Always On, Always Connected - “To sleep deeply we have to live deeply. We have to engage fully with life. If we spend all our time living on the surface of life, responding reactively to demand, how can we ever expect to go deep in our sleep?”
The challenge right now is to fight our urges to always stay connected. The challenge is to be mindful of what we’re doing and limit them so we can be more productive in something else. And while we are always ‘connected’ with the people that matter most to us via call or text, we still somehow feel that the connection is never enough.
Always On, Always Disconnected - “Digital connections may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship, we’d rather text than talk.”
Which comes down to this point from the author wherein we connect with everyone online, but somehow we still feel disconnected to them. We create an environment for ourselves to always feel attached and updated to what’s happening around us. The sheer excitement of opening your social media accounts to check whether you have messages from your friends already proves it. But what happens when you wake up to find out no one has bothered checking-in on you while you were asleep?
(5) Belief # 5: We Sleep When we Feel Safe
“Technology, with its new ways of relating, has given rise to a kind of biochemical loneliness in which the neocortex drives us to seek out connection, but we’re doing it in all the wrong ways.”
“The dopamine reward from the number of ‘likes’ offers some short-lived relief from the loneliness but she’s left feeling even more wired and unable to sleep.”
Social Media increases our anxiety and stresses us in more ways than it relaxes us. Posting a photo or a story and thinking about the impact and reactions you will be getting from those will definitely hinder you from feeling safe. As you put yourself out there to show the world who you want them to think you are, you are also exposing yourself to the possibility of showing the not-so-good side of you. And this leaves you to always think twice before posting anything online.
(6) Belief # 6: Sleep Problems Don’t Start When You Put Your Head on the Pillow at Night
Sleeping problems occur outside of your bedroom. These are the times when you take home your work or something in the day that has been bothering you to bed. To have a great night’s sleep, ensure you’ll be able to discharge all those thoughts outside and learn to accept the circumstances.
(7) Belief # 7: The Sleep Problem is Rarely the Real Problem
The author introduces the term The Real Problem which basically finds the root of why you are having sleep problems in the first place. You have to ask yourself why?. Why are you always having problems sleeping at night? What’s causing them? Now that you’ve found the root cause, fix it.
These may be problems from work or life in general. It may be a thought in your mind that is still lingering. Face those problems and learn to let go of them. The solutions aren’t out there. The ultimate solution lies in doing the inner work, The Real Work.
(8) Belief # 8: We All Have Access to Amazing, Vibrant Energy
“A while ago I realized that in helping people overcome their sleep problems something else was happening. Using my sleep formula wasn’t only helping them switch off, lie down and sleep, but also tap into more energy.”
“When we are aligned with life, dealing with it head on and not running away, our life force is unlocked and our energy becomes extraordinary.”
(9) Belief # 9: This Book Could Change Your Life
It’s not about changing your life as changing your perspective on life. How you sleep is deeply affected by how you live your day-to-day life. And by changing your habits, you are setting yourself up to also changing how you sleep and eventually gain the energy you need in order to fully function the next days.
(10) Belief # 10: Your Sleep Problem Might Be a Blessing in Disguise
“As I’ve already said, the root cause of any sleep problem is not just about sleep, as there’s The Real Work that needs to be done. You’ll arrive at the true meaning of your sleep problem and the work then begins about healing in your life.”
“Are you surprised to see how often ’relationship with perfectionism and control’ comes up? Virtually everyone who comes to see me has something going on with his or her relationship with themselves. How they see and speak to themselves. Not feeling good enough. Not loving or even liking themselves.”
“The fear of not being good enough drove them hard, but it came at a cost — they ended up sleepless and exhausted.”
The FAWA Formula which is in four parts is divided in the chapters below. On each part, you will be focusing on different aspects of your life. And as you’ll discover, you would need to take it step-by-step as it is a flow. Starting from yourself, you will be challenged to finding the right pattern in sleeping and waking up before using this pattern to produce more energy.
Warning: Side effects from using the four-stage FAWA formula will include finding peace, inner safety and calm amidst the chaos. You may also find that somehow, for some reason, you simply feel less busy although you still get a lot done. Be prepared because you may also begin to experience more happiness and joy.
Chapter 1 - Getting Ready to ‘Be the Change’
“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” - Albert Einstein
“Possibly the hardest part of learning to sleep deeply and living vibrantly is acknowledging that something needs to change. You need to change. And change can be painful.”
Slow Down and Prepare to Sleep and by this I mean, lighten up, drop your shoulders, and relax. So many sleep/energy problems are simply due to us trying so hard. Stop trying so hard. It is this same rigidity, and desperate bid to control, for perfection, to get right that often stops us sleeping in the first place.
Gentle Discipline is finding that subtle shift in mindset in which you become curious rather than goal-focused and you say to yourself, ‘I wonder what will happen if i do this?’ This makes you more open to whatever happens — and that’s exactly what is needed to sleep.
Learning to Listen Deeply. In our noisy world we’ve become so used to living on the surface of life, talking but not really listening, watching but not really seeing, hearing but not really understanding, and because of this we stop feeling too.
When you slow down, you listen and feel what your body is telling you. Helping people to listen and notice deeply — to become more conscious. I emphasize the word deeply beause, if we can get to a place of deep listening and noticing, then a kind of magic starts to happen and we start making the right, the most intelligent, choices.
Breathe Deeply and follow these steps:
1. Sit comfortably. Place both feet firmly on the floor. Straighten up and breathe deeply into your belly and exhale long and slow.
2. Imagine sending that exhalation out through the lower half of your body and out through your feet. Breathe back in feeling your belly expand outwards.
3. Repeat the first two steps, but this time with your eyes closed. And now feel into your body. Is there any tightness? Feel your body, listen to it, what does it want? What is it telling you?
Maintain a Relaxed State of Focus and beware of resistance and protest. You may read something and think this is something you’ve never and could never do. Strangely, this might be the very thing that you do need to do.
Imagine yourself in a vision of what you want to create — see yourself getting into bed and melting gracefully, without resistance, into a deep, nourishing sleep. See yourself waking in the morning, again with gratitude for the sleep you’ve had. See yourself moving with energy to meet your day with open heart and mind.
Chapter 2 - Discovering the FAWA Formula
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A lecture on Homeostasis — maintaining balance and constancy — finally woke me up to the FAWA formula.”
Righting the Balance of a scientific versus a natural experiment. As there was a mismatch between the theory and the practice. It seems to be the small changes are the ones that make all the difference to our lives.
Waking Up
It wasn’t that I didn’t have the energy — but it was the wrong kind of energy: buzzing, hyper, anxious and restless, on edge and running in survival mode. My friends thought I was the life and soul of the party, not realizing that often my ‘gaiety’ was a big lie, masking fear and insecurity, that would later plummet into depression and exhaustion when on my own.
Here everything slowed down and my view of life changed. Suddenly everything became clear to me. I could see that the choices I’d been making had kept me stuck and created dis-ease in my mind and body.
A refuge and stillness as I was able to see life differently and make profoundly different choices. I can only describe this as coming home, or touching God. Whatever it was, I surrendered and let go, and from that moment my life changed.
Deepening the Learning - Western Science and Physics had taught that energy was ‘the physical apaity to do work’ but in the ancient texts it was about ‘Life Force Energy’.
How the FAWA Formula Works
Step 1: Shifting Awareness - an important part of this process is digging deep within so that you can understand why things have become a certain way and, importantly, what you need to do about it, as well as undertaking a personal reality check. Transform these 3 things: awareness, responsibility, choices.
Step 2: Cleaning Up Your Energy - changing your nervous system from a SURVIVAL to a SAFETY mode. There will be the 5 Non-Negotiables (5NNs) where it will help you set a better path to a better physiologically-fit mind and body. Mainly focusing on: Eating, Pre-sleeping, Technology.
Step 3: Refining Sleep Quality and Depth - by adapting the Pure Sleep Programme. You will notice that as you worry less about not sleeping, this in itself — the absence of worry — leads to better sleep. To sleep beautifully you almost need to not care about how you sleep.
Step 4: Doing The Real Work and Tapping into Vibrant Energy - by adapting the Energy for Life Programme. In all of these tools, it aims to show how people can reconnect with a part of themselves that had been missing or neglected. And what is this part? Well, you might want to call it spirit or even soul or God.
Part 1 - Shifting Awareness
“I think the key to transforming your life is to be aware of who you are.” - Dr. Deepak Chopra
Chapter 3 - Understanding the Sleep-Energy Balance
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” - Marie Curie
Surviving or Thriving - In the SAFETY energy system we produce the hormones of well-being. The body’s resources are used for healing, repair, growth and development. In safety mode, life feels harmonious and we sleep.
But in modern times the SNS (Sympathetic Nervous System), in charge of our fight or flight response, is more likely to be activated by a stressful event in our day. The reality is that a healthy balance can we elusive with our 21st-Century lifestyle forcing us to go faster and faster. Many people end up in a state of constant hyperactivity in which the SNS is always in go mode — so called ‘sympathetic overdrive’ — and the PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) shuts down.
Pure Sleep sorts out our emotional world, clears and tidies our mental filing cabinets, and heals and rebalances the body. From such sleep you wake feeling and looking deeply refreshed, and ready to face life with open arms.
The Benefits of Pure Sleep
1. Restore and help us recover from the demands of being awake.
2. Protect and Clean Up the Brain which helps in cleaning up the glial cells in our brains called the ‘glymphatic system’. This protein is renowed for accumulating in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
3. Leaning and Memory Consolidation which helps to sort out our mental filing cabinets so we wake up feeling mentally sharp and clear.
4. Restore Life Force Energy by not just having a good night’s sleep, but by rekindling the passion, inspiration, and courage of our minds.
5. Self-Healing which activates all 75 trillion cells in you body and prepare them for repairing, regenerating, and rebalancing.
The Five Stages of Sleep
Sleep can be divided by two entirely different states: REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and non-REM
1. Stage 1 and 2: Light Sleep - initiated when your melatonin levels and sleep debt (level of sleepinss built up throughout the day) are at their highest and, while it could be the easiest phase to slide into, it must be entered with care.
Have you ever fallen asleep and then woken with a jerk and a sensation of falling? This is called a ‘hypnogogic jerk’ and it’s most likely to happen in the early stages of falling asleep and releasing the tension of the day.
2. Stage 3 and 4: Deep Sleep - The earliest part of your sleep houses your longest and deepest phases of deep sleep. People are missing out on this stage of sleep because they delay going to bed. Often it’s because we worry we have too much to do, emails and social medial to check. These ‘sleep intrusions’ are being caused by over-exposure to technology. Delayed sleep and Beta intrusions suggest that many people aren’t sleep deprived as such but are deep sleep deprived; hence their exhaustion and perception that they’re not getting enough sleep.
3. Stage 5: REM Sleep - are the results of the brain trying to scan the events in the dream world. If you look left and right in your dreams, your eyes will then follow the dream and move left and right under your eyelid which is known as the ‘scanning hypothesis’.
The REM stages vary in duration throughout the night. The first REM stage is typically the shortest at around 7-10 minutes, but as sleep progresses through the night the REM stages become longer — around 45 minutes.
In today’s information-filled world we really rely on this phase to pack away the information of the day in the brain’s working memory so that we wake up feeling mentally sharp and clear.
The ‘hypnagogic trance’ is an open-eyed trance state in which we are neither awake nor asleep but the brain is vitally seeking to clean up and clear up information. You may find you are in a trance when you are staring at something for a very long time within the day.
There are three factors compromising our deep sleep: delaying the first sleep phase, beta intrusions, increased need for REM sleep.
Dreaming Sleep where Sigmund Freud believed dreaming was a ‘safety valve’ for unconscious desires. While most mammals and birds show signs of REM sleep, reptiles and other cold-blooded animals do not.
REM Sleep Disorder the person starts to physically follow their dreams. These people are those who sleep walk/talk at night. The link between creativity and enhanced dream states and REM sleep is an important one. Many people medicate their creativity because they feel their behaviour at night is pathological in some way, without realizing that there might actually be a gift buried in this so-called abnormality.
Experiencing bizarre dreams and sleep behaviours suggest you may be holding back or repressing your creativity. There’s an important message here: What is it that you need to express?
The REM State is vital as we dream and create, make sense of our emotional world, consolidate memories, learn and store information, tidy our mental filing cabinets and working memory.
Typical Sleeping Problems
1. Difficulty getting to sleep or sleep initiation problems.
2. Difficulty staying asleep or sleep maintenance issues.
3. Sleeping but feeling as if you’re not sleeping (mentally busy) - this is called paradoxical insomnia.
4. Oversleeping or hypersomnia and still feeling exhausted.
5. Restlessness and restless leg syndrome (RLS).
6. Parasomnia such as sleepwalking, sleep talking, nightmares, night terrors, teeth grinding (bruxism).
7. Delayed sleep phase syndrome - can’t get to sleep until late (midnight or 2am). Technology often plays a big part here.
8. Circadian rhythm sleep disorder typically due to shift working.
Broken Circadian Timer are people who’ve never had problems sleeping in the past but something has happened — events or a hange in lifestyle — that has affected the working of their timer. Usually happens to the people below:
1. Shift worker.
2. Mothers / Fathers with newborn babies.
3. Addiction patients.
4. Habitual Night Owls.
Chemically Induced Sleep - Why Sleeping Tablets Don’t Work
The author recommends to never suddenly come off medication but to work to restore healthy sleep while gradually reducing dependence on the drugs. Over time sleeping medications simply don’t work but your brain may be tricked into thinking that they do. Sleeping pills cause poor, fragmented sleep but because they also induced amnesia you might not recall how poorly you’ve actually slept.
Chapter 4 - East Meets West
“In the modern world of medicine and healing, East and West have become separated, yet everything is connected.” - Barbara Wren
I’d swap medication for meditation as it brings about a healing at a deeeper level — in my relationship with myself and others (particularly my family) and my ability to deal with big life traumas.
What I learnt by exploring thee ancient practices is what I have so far ben referring to as ‘vibrant energy’ or ‘life force’. In Eastern medicine the word kundalini is used to describe a latent dormant form of this vibrating energy and prana refers to the life-iving force of the breath — as in Hindu-based yogic practices.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) it is referred to as chi or qi, and is the vital energy that circulates around the body in currents.
Whatever we choose to call our life force, the trust is that we live in an energy-abundant world. All around us is energy. Everything is energy. We are energy and the life force that flows through us is energy. We even relate to each other through our energy, whether we, or others, are dynamic or lacklustre.
A Holistic Approach to Sleep and Energy as both types of medicine (Eastern and Western) indicate that the different phases of deep sleep reblanace the mind and body by working on different organ systems and emotions.
Types of Sleepers
1. Night Owls may find it hard to get up in the morning and feel mentally foggy, or have difficulty concentrating during te day. To help them keep going, they often resort to stimulants or refined sugars.
2. Sad and sleepless or people suffering from depression wake in the early hours and miss their 3-5 a.m. sleep which is vital for rebalancing sadness and grief.
3. Over-sleepers often feel stagnant and stuck in life, lacking in motivation and purpose.
4. Angry, Impatient, Active Addiction are those having a toxic lifestyle of too much alcohol and caffeine will overload the third phase of deep sleep which is vital for liver and major organ rebalancing. They begin to heal when they start getting deep sleep and their mood improves and they start to feel calmer and more settled.
Delving Deeper, Working Deeper
“I began to sense that in order to work effectively I needed to go deeper and right into the source of the sleep problem. I use the word ‘sense’ because this is exactly what was happening — I was sensing exactly where the sleep problem was coming from in the person’s body and then finding a technique to work exactly on that area.”
TCM and Ayurveda work with “Shen and chakras”. The Shen is best translated as the spirit of the person in a non-religious sense and many forms of TCM treatments are focused on calming the Shen. In TCM disturbances in your sleep might be called Shen disturbances where your energy and attention are somewhat scattered or somewhere else. When the Shen is displaced we can’t sleep or our sleep is restless and ‘out there’. To deeply sleep we need to be in our body.
“Remember, sleep problems are not created when you put your head on the pillow at night. Practices such as chi kung and tai chi work by helping to realign and rebalance the Shen by moving chi energy through the body.
Charkas in Indian science or Ayurveda are energy centers of the body. These energy centers enable us to derive our balance and determine our ‘state of consciousness’ or how we perceive the world.
Consciousness as defined by Antonio Damasio is the key to a life examined, for better and worse and what allows us to develop a concern for other selves and improve the art of life. Can also be defined as “What I know that I know”. It is what our mind is aware of and what we know that we know. Whereas being ‘unconscious’ is the state of not knowing what you already know.
The journey of becoming a more conscious human being therefore is about becoming more aware of how you are thinking, feeling and behaving so you can make better choices.
1. Root and Lower Chakra Disturbances is usually on the issue of the relation of safety and sleep. If we don’t feel safe enough to sleep andd will often have sleep-avoidant behaviors or even addictions due to living in the base charka, or SURVIVAL mode.
2. Solar Plexus Chakra Disturbance is associated with personal power. Then Shen is very displaced and we might even experience gastric problems such as acid reflux, which results in ddisturbed sleep or repeated waking.
3. Heart Charka Disturbance where we experience love. Imbalance here are associated with going to bed with sadness and grief, feeling lonely and unsupported, unable to let go and trust life, unable to accept help.
4. Throat Chakra Disturbance is associated with personal expression. Being unable to speak up and express truthfully, creatively blocked, vivid disturbing dreams, teeth grinding, nightmares, sleepwalking and talking.
5. Crown and Higher Chakra Disturbance is when we are ungrounded and unable to switch off at night and experience exhausting and vivid and creative dreams. Highly empathetic and sensitive people would usually get these disturbances as well.
Chapter 5 - Your Personal Reality Check - Who Are You?
“When we peel back the layers over and over again, we are able to find the wisdom and truth of our being, the essense that we are here to share.” - Rebecca Campbell
The following will be reflection questions to ask yourself in order to gauge where you are at the moment. Your answers are designed not just to give you information but also clarity, so that you ccan understand your own story. I hope that by reflecting on your answers, and then linking them with the sleep theory many connections will begin to fall into place.
Personal Reality Check
1. How have you been sleeping recently?
2. Do you find it difficult to get to sleep?
3. Do you find it hard to stay asleep — waking in the early hours (usually 2-4 a.m.) and then find it hard to get back to sleep?
4. Do you worry about going to bed (for example, feeling fearful about not being able to sleep)?
5. Do you feel as if you are half awake/ half asleep all night? Thinking all night?
6. Do you feel restless at night, as if you just can’t stop moving youor legs?
7. Is your sleep refreshing or do you wake up feeling exhausted even if you’ve slept for 7-9 hours
8. Do you wake up feeling as if you haven’t slept at all, even if you’ve slept several hours?
9. Have you been experiencing nightmares or night terros?
10. Do you grind your teeth at night? Or wake up with tightness in your jaws?
11. Do you worry about how much sleep you are or aren’t getting?
12. Do you feel if you ccould just get more sleep you would be able to cope better with life?
13. Does the moon (and partiularly the full moon) affect your sleep?
What Type of Sleeper Are You? - There are two types of sleepers, the Sensitive Sleeper or the Martini Sleeper. Sensitive Sleepers wake up at the slightest noise; having to sleep on a certain side of the bed. Sensitive sleepers usually have these characteristics — perfectionists, hard on themselves, teeth grinding at night, tightness in neck, over-empathize.
Martini Sleepers can sleep any time, any place, anywhere, but being able to sleep easily doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re getting pure sleep, and many Martini Sleepers wake up feeling exhausted.
Thinking About Your Lifestyle are questions that will help to understand the root cause of your sleeping issues.
1. What is going on in your life?
2. What has been happening lately in your life?
3. Are you happy at work?
4. Do you work long hours? And work on the way to and from work?
5. Are you happy in your close relationships?
6. Have you been through something upsetting or traumatic recently?
7. Have you experiened any major life events, such as moving house, sitting examss or getting married?
8. Are you experiencing any other symptoms or medical problems?
9. How are you looking after yourself?
10. Are you exercising regularly?
11. Are you eating healthily?
12. How much water do you drink throughout the day?
13. How many caffeinated drinks do you have a day?
14. What time do you have your last caffeinated drink?
15. Do you eat breakfast?
16. Do you snack during the day? If so, what sorts of snacks? Are they healthy or highly processed?
17. Do you crave sugar or junk foods at certain times and/or particularly in the evening?
18. What is your relationship with technology?
19. Do you spend a lot of time on your phone and/or email?
20. Do you sleep with your devices beside you at night?
21. Do you look at your phone during the night?
22. Do you take breaks from technology during the day?
23. What is your body telling you?
24. Do you suffer from tightness in your neck and shoulders? Or do you have any other back problems?
25. Do you delay going to the lavatory because you get so caught up in what’s on the screen?
26. Do you forget to eat?
27. Do you find yourself holding your breath or sighing a lot throughout the day?
28. Are you experiencing a lot of headaches?
Understanding Your Energy and knowing if you are on a SURVIVAL or SAFETY mode:
1. How has your energy felt recently? If you had to give yourself a score out of 10, where 10 is feeling energized and 1 is feeling exhausted, what score would you give yourself?
2. Are your energy levels low in the morning? Does it take a long time to get going?
3. Do you press the snooze button several times before you’re able to get out of bed?
4. Do your energy levels drop mid-afternoon? If so, do you still feel able to concentrate and perform well at any given task? Or do you feel exhausted?
5. What are your energy levels like early evening when it’s time to finally relax?
6. Do your energy levels lift in the evenings just before going to bed? Do you then find it hard to get to sleep?
7. Do you need caffeinated drinks to get you through the day? If so, how many?
8. Are you tired at the weekendds?
9. Do you feel if you had more energy you would feel/live differently?
10. What do you believe about sleep?
11. Do you know that your beliefs about sleep can affect how you sleep?
List of Unhelpful Beliefs Affecting Your Sleep
1. I Can Catch Up - the timing of your sleep is key because while you can catch up lost sleep to some extent you can’t fully recover it. For this reason, it is important to get into a good regular sleep routine so that you’re not missing out on all of the vital aspects of healing that sleep brings.
2. I Shouldn’t Wake Up During the Night - the theory is that this sleep-wake cycle evolved for our survival and safety; we come into a semiconscious state to check that all is well and we are safe and then slide bak into sleep.
3. I Need to Know the Time - if you check the time and then slide effortlessly back to sleep then it’s not a problem, but if checking the time obsessively is keeping you awake, why do it?
4. If I Sleep Badly It Will Affect My Performance Tomorrow - it is often the case that the more we try to sleep the less able we are to do so. Focus on resting in bed and forget about sleeping at night.
5. I Need 7-8 Hours of Sleep to Function - our sleep requirements are affected by so many factors and the key is to pay attention to how you feel when you wake up. If you wake up feeling refreshed affter just 5 hours of sleep then you’re probably getting enough sleep for you.
6. It is Useful to Measure My Sleep - measuring your sleep is just going to make you more anxious about how much sleep you are or aren’t getting and most measurement devices aren’t actually accurate, let alone helpful. To sleep well you need to let go, trust and relax and not measure, control and calculate.
7. Sleep Is What Happens When My Eyes Are Closed - being in a ‘hypnagogic trance’ or basically daydreaming is also still sleeping and is a vital relaxation state that enables you to consolidate information, learn and refresh the working memory thus enabling you to stay sharp and focused.
8. I Shouldn’t Nap During the Day or I Can’t Nap - everyone can learn how to nap and if you think you can’t nap it’s probably because you don’t fully understand what a nap is.
9. Insomnia Runs in My Family or My Sleep Problem Can’t Be Fixed - stay open to the possibility that you can change your relationship with sleep — even if you don’t entirely believe it at this stage.
10. I Need to Take Sleeping Tablets - not necessarily, but if you were advised by your doctors to take any sleeping tablets it may be for the right reasons.
Part 2 - Waking Up: The Energy Clean-Up
Chapter 6 - Cleaning up Your Energy with the ‘5 Non-Negotiables’
“Healing can only occur with a surplus of resources.” - Chris Sritharan
“We cannot heal unless we are in a resourceful state and have the energy to do the work that will bring about healing. The first program will help you to create this resourceful state by cleaning up and recalibrating your energy, and this will shift you from running in SURVIVAL to SAFETY mode. Don’t be tempted to fast-forward to the Pure Sleep and Energy for Life Program because these techniques won’t work as effecitely unless you’ve cleaned up your energy first.
You’ll begin to notice positive changes to your sleep and energy levels including: shifting from survival to safety, reducing stress levels, reducing reliance to stimulants, reducing dopamine levels, priming the circadian timer.
How To Use the 5 Non-Negotiables (5NN)
NN1. Eat breakfast every day within 30-45 minutes of rising.
NN2. Drink 2 liters or water (preferably alkalized) every day.
NN3. Reduce your caffein intake or abolish completely.
NN4. Start an electronic sundown 1 hour before getting into bed.
NN5. Aim to get at least four pre-midnight sleeps per week.
NN # 1: Eating Breakfast Every Day within 30-45 Minutes of Rising
“Eating breakfast stops you relying on your survival system (SNS) and switches on the safety system (PNS) in which your circadian timer can be activated and switched on. You won’t need to rely so heavily on the stress hormones to keep you going. when you start eating breakfast, your metabolism will kick in and you’ll wake up hungry.’
“If I haven’t eaten breakfast for years, why should I start now?” - if you always do what you’ve always done then you’re likely to get the same results again and again. Isn’t it time to try something different?
”How can I find time for breakfast if I’m too busy in the day?” - if life gets busy, try eating while doing another task. Multi-task if you have to. It’s important not to get caught up in the potent tide of adrenaline energy, which will get you through your morning but will leave you feeling flat and exhausted later in the day and then unable to sleep at night.
”Is eating breakfast when I get to work good enough?” - eating before your journey will stabilize your blood sugar, give you energy and prepare you biohemically to produce melatonin later in the evening. You may even find that your experience of your journey is somehow less stressful.
”If I start eating breakfast,, will I put on weight?” - this is called the ‘thermogenic effect’ where eating breakfast is a very healthy weight-control strategy.
NN # 2: Drink at Least 2L of Water per Day (Preferably Alkalized)
“We are a reflection of nature and a part of nature, and this is something I return to time and again when helping people to sleep. This return to nature is the key to our return to our innate ability to sleep.”
Dehydration alert can send us into stress and fear more — the opposite of being able to sleep. So you see that if you’re in a job that you hate or choosing to remain in a relationship that’s making you unhappy this will affect your body cellular systems and, ultimately, your sleep. The solution? Drink more water.
To ring the changes, go for dilute fruit squashes or juices, herbal non-caffeinated teas, or add flavor to your water with mint leaves, slices of fresh ginger, lime or cucumber.
NN # 3: Cut Out or Reduce Caffeine
“Medical recommendations would stipulate that you can get away with about 400 mg of caffeine per day; however, it’s important to understand what that means in terms of cups and types of drinks. Most coffee shops were serving people drinks that contained at least 10 times the amount that they might have in their home brews.”
The link between caffeine and its relationship with sleep is highlighted below:
1. The half-life (time taken to drop to half the concentration in your blood) of caffeine is 5 hours, which means if you have a caffeinated drink at 5p.m. you will still have half the amount in your blood supply at 10 p.m. This might not make you feel energized but it may be enough to stop you getting to sleep or going into those vital deep sleep levels.
2. Caffeine blocks the action of melatonin.
3. Caffine stops the breakdown of adrenaline in the liver, and higher adrenaline levels stop you sleeping.
4. Caffeine increases the number of times you wake during the night and the amount of REM sleep.
5. Caffeine steers your nervous system down the SURVIVAL route and switches off the PNS.
“So ask yourself, what is it that you really need?”
NN # 4: Electronic Sundown 1 Hour before Bed
“The effect of the dopamine will keep you alert and switched and it supresses the action of melatonin. This is about switching off and withdrawing from technology in that hour before bedtime. I recommend you start in small ways thinking very consciously about how you are connecting to technology and try using one screen only.”
“When you surf the net or check your emails the chemical dopamine is produced, which makes you alert and switched on. It’s actually called the ‘reward or wake up’ chemical. The combination of these biochemical reactions deactivates the circadian timer — so you lie there in bed and simply can’t get to sleep.”
“Dr. Pascual-Leone showed that the level of brain activivty that is stimulated when smeone picks up their phone in the mornings is similar to what you’d see if you’d had a cup of coffee. This isn’t just about falling asleep and sleeping but also about waking up with amazing energy, the right type or energy.”
NN # 5: Four Pre-midnight Sleeps per Week
“My final Non-negotiable is about getting to bed before midnight. Ever heard the old-fashioned saying that an hour before midnight is worth two after? There’s a lot of sense in this as your best quality of sleep is obtained when your circadian rhythm is at its lowest point (usually between 10 pm to 5 am).”
“According to TCM, the phase before midnight is when levels of stress hormones start to drop off and we get a substantial hit of deep sleep and our shortest phase of REM sleep.”
“To remain balanced, open and healthy, we each need to be able to dance with the rhythms of nature ... Sleeping is a tie to high energy to cleanse at a deeper level.” - Barbara Wren
“You don’t have to be in bed and fast asleep by 10pm, but by resting, avoiding technology and blue light, withdrawing your senses, letting go of the day and preparing your mind, body and spirit to sleep. A different kind of mindfulness and awareness of what is happening in their body that previously went unnoticed.”
“Head up to bed earlier start, start to power down and get ready to rest. Over time you will begin to really notice that you’re feeling relaxed, drwosy and atually looking forward to getting into bed.”
Here are a few ways to make you feel relaxed before bed:
1. Read a book — nothing too over-stimulating or exciting.
2. Write a gratitude journal just simply listing all the things that have happened in your day that you are grateful for.
3. Meditation in the earlier part of the evening. Avoid meditating just before going to bed as this can actually energize you, making it difficult to actually sleep afterwards.
4. Do a few minutes of pre-sleep yoga or progressive muslce relaxation.
5. Sketch or doodle.
“Whatever you choose to do, make sure that it is relaxing, helps you to feel safe and secure and helps you to come back into your body and out of the mental chatter. Most importantly, remember WHY you’re doing it — pure, deep sleep and an abundance of vibrant energy.”
Part 3 - Fast Asleep: The Pure Sleep Programme
Chapter 7 - Introducing thee Tools in the Pure Sleep Programme
“Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.” - Thomas Dekker
There are 2 tools that will be essential for the Pure Sleep Program. The tools have been organized specifically to work from outside in. In other words, the first set of techniques, the Essentials, works on your external behaviors and influences — such as the choices you make during the day, before going to bed and in relation to your sleep environment.
The Deeper Tools I and II, is more internal and will help you to become aware of the inner choices that you are making — thought patterns, mind-sets and inner dialogues — that are affecting your sleep without you even knowing. Another tool, Ultimate Deeper Tool is a simple but effective tool which is ultimately working towards the more subtle disturbance in your energy which may give rise to sleeping problems.
Chapter 8 - The Essentials - Preparing to Let Go
“By letting go it all gets done.” - Lao Tzu
Some helpful Sleep Hygiene Techniques below will help aid you in sleeping more soundly at night:
Empty the Mental Filing Cabinet - to let go of the day before bed, simply get a pen and paper, and write a list of what needs to be done tomorrow. Just by doing this you are preparing to enter the next compartment of your life — home.
This brings you back into your heart, reminding you what’s important and what isn’t as some people may have physically left but mentally they’re still at work. Ideally write your lists in a different room to the one you sleep in and well before retiring to bed. Your bedroom, after all, should be your sanctuary.
“Bringing your worries into your conscious mind — giving them the space and time they need — is a way of acknowledging that you know they are there. You’re allowing them to take their rightful place in your conscious mind, not in your deepest dreams.”
Creating a Sleep Sanctuary — Sights, Sounds and Smells - your bedroom should be a place of rest and relaxation so the first step is to declutter and tidy it up. Watching TV, surfing the net or catching up with your social media feeds in bed isn’t conducive to getting peaceful, deep sleep so I would strongly advise against it.
Remember to adjust the temperature, level of darkness in the room, and the smell of your room to what makes you comfortable. What scents do you associate with feeling at home and safe? Experiment with different oils or diffusers until you find one that evokes a sense of relaxation and peace.
Feng Shui examines how the placement of things and objects within it affects the energy flow in your living environment, and how these objects interact with and influence your chi, your personal energy flow. Your chi flow affects how well you perform and succeed in your personal and professional life.
White Noise is a bland, continuous noise that can block external sounds or changes in your environment, such as traffic or a dog barking, which might otherwise wake you up.
Sharing Your Sleep Space - if you are a sensitive sleeper then sharing your bed with someone else might not be a straightforward consideration as it can bring up all kinds of issues around feeling safe. The root causes of sleep issues are nearly always life issues, and the key here is conscious communication and negotation. Don’t ignore the problem and hope that it will go away — talk about it. Become aware of and talk about the differencces in your relationship with sleep.
Stop Measuring as many of us are so used to being in control during our waking hours that we forget that in order to sleep we need to be in a state of trust and letting go. Checking the time during the night and worrying about how many hours sleep you have left is linked to someothing more profound — our need to keep up and manage life, when in reality there is so much in life that we really aren’t in control of. It is normal to wake during the night and we may have evolved with this pattern of waking for our very survival.
Read Yourself to Sleep and remember that your relationship with sleep and life is unique to you. If reading relaxes you and helps you let go of the day; if it helps you go to sleep thinknig the world is a good place, then by all means go ahead.
But, if reading for an all-nighter and on an electronic reader, then think twice as blue light suppresses melatonin production and it may spark other chemicals in your brain that makes you want to stay awake longer.
The choice of bedtime story is relevant for children too — they especially need to go to bed feeling safe, so help them choose stories or poetry that have a calming effect and help them put aside any worries about the day.
The feelings a book evokes can leave you tense and unsettled or they can lull you to a safety and sleep. The vibration of the woods can take you to far-flung places in your imagination but also take you into your own deeper stories, bringing insight and realisations but also reactivating old wounds and sadness, which can then wreak chaos in your dreams.
Wash the Day Off by taking a bath or a shower. Just as you let go as you write your to-do list, so you continue the cleansing and letting-go process as you wash the day off. Showering before bed, even if you’ve already showered for the day is an easy way to encourage calmness and stillness within. Bicarbonate baths are very detoxifying, and ideally don’t have more than one in a week.
Chapter 9 - The Deeper Tools I and II — Sattvic Sleep
“One conscious breath — in and out — is a meditation.” - Eckhart Tolle
The Ultimate Deeper Tool is increasing your awareness into breathing and make you consciously better at it. The first breathing technique Noticing Three Exhalations is the foundation for all other techniques:
1. Wherever you are right now, and without changing your posture, simply pay attention to your breathing and notice three exhalations. Don’t try to change your breathing pattern or do anyting fancy to it. ust allow your body to follow its own intelligence and breathe.
2. Each time you breath out, silently and softly say to yourself, ‘OOOOUUUT’ for the whole duration of the out-breath.
3. Notice that each out-breath is different and not necessarily rhythmic or uniform.
4. Aim to do this a minimum of 5 times a day for the next 21 days.
If you’re tired and need a quick lift in your energy, use the Notice Three Exhalations tool with your eyes wide open, as closing your eyes will just make you more tired. If, on the other hand, you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed, do it with your eyes closed and notice the difference when you open your eyes.
Since breathing is unconsciously controlled, if you go through your day sighing or yawning this may indicate that you are holding your breath or breathing inneficiantly. Poor breathing switches off that all-important healing vagus nerve: it activates the SNS, acidifies the body, increases adrenaline levels and creates tension in the upper body. But most importantly, inefficient breathing drains your energy and stops you sleeping.
Poor or shallow breathing is associated with insufficient melatonin levels. If we move our focus on to our breath, rather than whatever is going on in our external environment, we pause and remember that we have a choice. Notice three exhalations and you create a big gap between stimulus and response, and so make better choices.
Deeper Tools I
Rest and Reset Throughout the Day and ideally stop every 90 minutes or so for a few minutes and do something restful. Think of hitting the RESET button. Use it to change channels mentally, physically and spiritually. Get away from screens and technology. Eat something nourishing. Think of someone you love. Look at a picture or photograph that inspires you. Read a poem or quote that touches your heart.
If you’ve been sitting for a long time then the most beautiful thing might be to move. Get up and stretch. Pressing the reset button regularly throughout the day changes the way you feel, as it works on several levels by emptying your working memory and clearing up mental files. It also rebalances your nervous system to set you into SAFE mode.
Practice Napping as it will recharge your mental batteries so you can come back to your tasked with increased focus. It helps to de-excite the nervous system, thus allowing for deeper, less noisy sleep. It helps you to rest and let go without worrying about whether you will actually sleep or not.
Resting in this way retrains the mind that sleep is no longer the enemy — it’s just resting. When you first start napping you might fall asleep, so you might want to set an alam. You might also feel that nothing is really happening, but you will notice the benefits.
Give Spacce to Your Creativity and for the next 7 days or so try writing in a journal or sketching — even if for just 15 minutes or so — and notice thee effect on your sleep.
Practice Letting Go During the Day particularly after stressful meetings or difficult discussions. Say to yourself “I’m letting go.” Check in with your body and notice whether you’re holding on to any tension. Check your shoulders or your jaws and relax them. Notice your breathing. If you were holding your breath, allow yourself to breathe in whatever way feels natural and exhale with a long sigh. Check yourself now. Has anything changed in your body since reading these last ew lines?
Letting go needs only take a few seconds — you just have to remember to do it — so practice it as many times as you can throughout the day, and especially when you are tensing up in response to something. We unconsciously accumulate so much tension during the day. We hold on in our mind and the body tenses up. We hold on in the body and the mind tenses up. We store this tension — and we take it into our sleep and then can’t work out why we’re so wired, and at the same time exhausted.
The Best Mind-set for Sleep and Energy is knowing that what you believe about your sleep can in itself create sleep problems. ‘Reframing’ the way you view your sleep or the way you talk to yourself about sleep is as simple as changing the words you use. To find a more positive mind-set start by examining the way you talk to yourself about your sleep and then ask if they are helping you sleep or not.
Don’t use the word ‘sleep’, use the word ‘rest’. If you are lying in bed unable to sleep tell yourself, ‘I am enjoying resting.’
Deeper Tools II
Drawing in the Shen as it needs to be in your heart and solar plexus — not scattered.
Step 1: Awareness and Noticing the Scattered Beams: Close your eyes and simply notice what you become aware of when you’re quiet. Do this for 1-2 minutes, then open your eyes. What did you become aware of when you closed you eyes? Were you aware of external sounds? Sensations in the body, such as tightness or your brathing or your heartbeat? Were you aware of your thoughts?
Step 2: Drawing In and Focusing on the Beam: Close your eyes again and do Step 1 again but this time notice your breath and not change the pattern. Just follow it using the words ‘IN’ and ‘OUT’. Did you notice you were more aware of your braething and inner sensations? Even if you are still aware of external noises, your focus will have turned inwards towards your body.
Step 3: Lengthening and Deepening to Sharpen the Beam: Close your eyes and focus on your breathing again, but this time gently lengthen each exhalation — ‘OOOUUUTTT’. Imagine you are sending thee exhalation out through your lower body, through your hips and thighs, knees, lower legs and feet. As a result of breathing out for longer you will breathe in more fully. As you deepen your breathes, imagine drawing your energy right into your body.
Grounding and Rooting works with the base or root chakra and will calm and ground your nervous system while bringing you right back into your body and out of the mental realm. This tool is useful for those times when you’re finding it hard to switch off because you’re overthinking issues or can’t let go of specific problems. You may recognize the signs as feeling physically spaced out and not in your body.
Stand with bare feet about hip-width apart. Spread yourr toes and feel the gound beneath your feet. Draw in your breath and meditate. Sway gently from side to side, feeling the four corners of your feet. Visualize a green ball of light and drop it to the center of the Earth and, as you do so, imagine it forming into a green grounding cord connecting you to the center of the Earth. Then visualize this light go right back into your body.
Cutting the Cords is a particularly helpful exercise if you’re worrying about someone, or something, close to your heart, perhaps elederly parents or children. This type of worry can leave us feeling sad, emotional and even grief stricken.
Light a candle or imagine a fire right in front of you. Sit or stand with your feet panted firmly. Now imagine that threads connect th person you are worrying about straight into your heart and with both hands gather these cords together and pull them away from you while still holding on to them. Make a downward chopping motion and cut the cords right out of you and throw them into the fire. Play with your intuition and ask yourself if you’ve really disconnected from whomever or whatever you are worrying about. If there are remnants of worry remaining then repeat the exercise as many times as you need to. This technique is really helpful for children who are worrying about school or perhaps finding it difficult to let go of an argument with friends.
Gratitude is about helping you to feel safe so that you can sleep. The Shen ccan become displaced when you’re feeling sad because it’s simply too painful to feel what needs to be felt. So you might find yourself engaging in distractions — particularly those provided by technology — and then when you go to bed you feel the worst combination of being wired and also feeling a background sadness in the heart.
Lie in bed on your back with eyes closed. Place your left hand over your heart, calming the heart and your right hand over the solar plexus ust above your belly button. Breathe deeply into your hands while silentlY repeating the words, ‘Thank You.’ Breathe into the wwords. Feel the words as deepy as you can. You might want to think of specific peoplee or events from your day or life that you are grateful for. As you say thanks, imagine that a beautiful soft rose-pink light begins to emerge from the ccenter of your heart. See this light becoming bigger and brighter until it fills your whole body. Imagine every cell of your body being bathed by and filled with this light.
Who you are thanking depends on your beliefs. These two words, ‘Thank You’ — are the most powerful and healing in the dictionary, and they bring about an immediate letting go, softening and feelings of safety. This isn’t about pretending that your life is perfect but simply acknowledging that there is good in your life, if you are prepared to see it, and for now you’re just going to put your problems aside and remember those blessings and sleep.
Speaking Your Truth is for when you’re finding it hard to show your emotions or speak your truth — which may manifest as teeth grinding or jaw clenching — or if you find yourself seething inwardly while putting a smile on your face. Do a Lion Pose; open your mouth; stretch your tongue; open your eyes wide focusing on the tip of your nose; contract the muscles on your throat; activate your hands by splaying your fingers further out. Hold this position and exhale. Don’t forget to give your best lion oar. In fact, roar two or three times, then retract your tongue. Relax your face, mouth, eyes, throat and hands.
Part 4 - Wide Awake
“Who look outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” - Carl Jung
Chapter 10 - Doing the Real Work and Tapping into Extraordinary Energy
“Life does not happen to you, it happens for you.” - Jim Carrey
“Maybe The Real Work should come with a warning on the packet because it does take courage. Deep, reliable support is also absolutely essential in doing this work. In a moment I had a realization that life could be different for me and that it wasn’t happening to me but for me. That I was at the center of my life and therefore responsible for what happened and no longer needed to be defined by a label.”
“So I realized I needed some tools, some ways to help me deal with these challenges now that I’d effectively said, ‘Bring it on!’ I attended workshops, delved into ancient texts, spoke to like-minded people, meditated, journaled, and explored, and so began to discover ways of doing The Real Work and coming out the other side with glowing vibrant energy!”
The Energy for Life Program will allow you to do the following:
1. Find a constant source of inner strength and calm, even in chaos.
2. Identify and create an internal guidance system that will keep you on track while on The Real Work journey.
3. Find self-acceptance and self-love.
4. Build strong supports so you’re not doing this on your own.
5. Manage difficult feelings as they rise.
6. Learn how to accept that which is beyond your control.
7. Maintain your body in a resourceful and healing state so that you can continue to do The Real Work with vibrant energy.
8. Establish good routines and rhythms so that you’re not tempted to give up.
9. Find the gem or meaning so that you don’t stay stuck.
The Glow is our energy and power centers getting unblocked. You will literally start to exude energy, and you can see it in your eyes. Finding a way forward and challenging herself to make courageous choices. You will discover a place within you, a refuge, a safe place from which you can start to live your life. Once you’ve made your shift from survival to sustainable energy you’ll discover something within yourself, which completely changes the way you make choices. You will be deeply and wisely guided by something that lies deep within. It’s not God. But a connection to something bigger than all of the stuff you were fixating on and worrying about before. And it’s within you.
The Place Within is some sort of circuitry that is actually specialized for religious experiences. Is there a ‘God Module’ in our heads? And if such a circuit exists, where did it come from?
“Whatever ‘it’ is — call it a God Spot or even God, the Divine source, or Higher Self, or inner strength — does it really matter how we label it? I can say with conviction that once you’ve found this place your life will become more peaceful and less of a struggle.”
Coming Home will show you how to begin to find this place within yourself and how you can strenghten the connection in it.
Chapter 11 - The Energy for Life Programme
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” - Bertrand Russell
“The Energy for Life Program contains what I have come to see as the spiritual tools that we can use for living life with amazing energy, sleeping deeply, and evolving and growing as human beings. I would describe them as coming from an ancient timeless wisdom that we’ve always had access to but have perhaps forgotten in this noisy, busy worlds we live in today.”
Come Home Regularly
“It is vital to you being able to self-diagnose and listen to your body more deeply. This is coming home to a familiar place that we return to in order to renew ourselves, gather our energy before we move forward to action. Home is also coming back into the body, away from thought and constant mental chatter.”
“Young people will usually have panic attacks is because they’ve lost the ability to do this. So they only meet themselves when that inner voice starts yelling at them — and by then it feels panicky and scary. If we allow ourselves to encounter our noisy minds regularly during the day, then it becomes less scary and overwhelming at night when the lights are out.”
First Thing is the way you start your day has a powerful knock-on effect on the rest of your day — as does the way you end your day. Start your day by meeting yourself using the ‘noticing three exhalations’ exercise even while lying in bed.
Look deeply at yourself by washing off whatever you have just dealth with so that you can move on to the next part of your life. Look deeply in your eyes, breathe deeply and come back to yourself.
Ground yourself and do this especially when your day is chaotic and demanding. Punctuate your day with several moments like this.
Find silence and sit in silence for a minute. Turn off the TV and put down your phone. Stop talking. Be quiet and close your eyes. Allow yourself to do nothing and you’ll come to realize that doing nothing is actually doing something.
Allow yourself to be with silence and you’ll notice that silence is a sound you’ve been craving for quite some time. Research shows that spending time in quiet contemplation or meditation offers a hosts of benefits to our well-being, including boosting health, happiness, brain and productivity.
You really don’t need props or any special location. This is simply about learning how to tune out distraction. You will notice that you feel less busy and stressed and more able to respond to life’s challenges rather than reacting to them. Your relationship with yourself, your self-awarenss, becomes more honed and you may begin to question the choices you’ve been making and whether they really are the most helpful ones for you. Patterns in your relationships will take on a new light as you start to see how you have been influencing them.
As we find our rituals and rhythms for turning inwards, we begin to develop a stronger connection to ourselves and a bigger connection to life itself, that many refer to as the Divine or consciousness. Commit to using at least one of these practices every day for the next three weeks and just notice how your energy feels.
Find Your ‘Why?’
When you find your ‘why?’ it focuses your energy — you have a purpose for your energy and it is less likely to feel splintered — so this tool is about finding that reason, your ‘why?’ We all need a reason to get out of bed in the morning. We’ve all done the jobs where we’ve had to tread water for a time, just to pay the bills, but the time comes when meaning is important.
Superficial motivations never drive lasting behavior change. Which is the reason why most diets don’t work and people waste money on gym memberships. In order to make truly lasting changes, we need to find our deeper motivations and drives so that doing what we set out to do becomes so imperative that it overrides the pain of the unfamiliar. When we go deeper and work out what we truly care about and value in life, then we are more likely to do what is necessary. We become laser focused about what we need to do.
We are constantly changing, but if we don’t pay attention we can end up running on the same old script and thinking the same old things are important to us without even realizing that we are heading in the wrong direction. If we’re rushing around at top speed we don’t notice our bodies. We get aches and pains anything to make us slow down and pay attention.
Your values are your sat nav coordinates guiding the choices you make in life. When we know what is important to us in life, it guides our behaiors and choices. Knowing what we care about and value is our inner sat nav, but if you’ve never taken the time to thinK about such things you end up throwing your energy around in a dissipated and scattered fashion and risk missing out on the things that matter the most.
Identifying Your Values
Write a Story about Your ‘Ideal Day’ by writing just how you would like your daily life to be. Use as much details as you can by including how you feel, what’s important and why, who would be with you and what makes thee day ideal. Really daydream and use your imagiination. Look for themes throughout your ideal day.
Make a Collage and get some magazines, glue and some paper. Cut out images, words and phrases that stand out for you. Pitures that make you smile, which touch your heart or connect with you — words, colors, people, animals and so on. What do you notice about your collage? What does it tell you about what is important to you?
Write a Dating Profile and imagine what would you say about yourself. What is important to you? Wwhat can you not live without? What do you stand for? What will you fight for? What makes you happy or sad? Finally distil the description of yourself into three words.
Find What’s Important and think of a place in the world that you love — close your eyes and imagine that place. What can you see, hear, smell, test, touch? Open your eyes and use three words to describe that place. Write the words down using a sentence. ‘I am [insert three words].’ How are these words important to you? What do they show about what is important to you and what makes you who you are?
Identify Your Characteristics as each person identifies an animal they are like. Draw that animal or find a picture of it. Describe how you are like that animal about the characteristics you have described. Write a few of the key words, your personal sat nav coordinates which you’ve discovered from using the above exercise/s, on a sticky note and pace it where you can see it often. Allow those words to start guiding your behavior.
Self-Love
“These people drive themselves hard, finding it impossible to ask for help or to say ‘no’. They are totally unable to put themselves and their needs first and are completetly disconnected from their body and its needs. Their relationship with control is strong and so they are usually successful. They run on fear-driven imperatives — have-to-dos, should-dos, must-dos.”
Perfectionists find it hard to relax and feel guilty about doing so. They find it hard to stay in the present; they live in and for the future. What really lies at the core of this is your relationship with yourself. And what really lies at the core of this is perfectionism is a lack of self-love. If you never bother to nurture yourself then you’ll be less likely to make healthy choices such as eating breakfast, taking a lunch break, accepting thee support of others, or even acccepting the support of your mattress while you sleep.
I Am Enough exercise simply shifts your mind-set from not feeling good enough to being enough. Start by looking at yourself in the mirror and say the words ‘I am enough.’ Look into your eyes and say it with conviction, even if you don’t believe it. Say it first thing in the morning and remind yourself to say it throughout the day. This positive affirmation will start to change your relationship with yourself and the way you speak to yourself.
If you want to take this exercise to the next level look at yourself in the mirror first tihng in the morning and say the words ‘I love you’ too. Amazing changes occur when you try these affirmations — from attracting more loving relationships to stepping out of your comfort zone and overcoming huge fears and blocks.
Quieten Your Inner Critic
The way you talk to yourself, your internal dialogue, has a powerful and measurable effect on how you feel and perform in daily life. From Jeremy Lazarus, ‘We are without exception physically stronger when we think of a positive event and use positive imagery and self-talk.’
Notice Your Voice and become aware of how you speak to yourself. Does it energize you or make you feel deflated? Try saying your name to yourself silently and sweetly, then say it in a hard barking voice silently, as if you’re speaking to a badly behaved child. Now turn up the volume on this voice so it’s really yelling at you. How does this make you feel?
You may not be aware of it but your inner critic may have spent many years creating tension in your mind and body, and it has not only served to exhaust you and stop you sleeping, but might also have stopped you from reaching your goals and taking risks. Meditation and mindfulness make you more aware of how you are talking to yourself. When you become aware, you can decide whether to buy into your inner critic’s voice or tell it where to go.
Become Aware of Your Inner Critic and notice when it is barking at you and whether it is something you want to listen to and act on. Become aware of how you are speaking to yourself and when you are using imperatives and how they are making you feel. Notice that it has a voice. Over time you may notice that you have several voices and that they are related to specific situations. Name your voice. Give the voice a name that feels relevant.
By noticing this aspect of yourself, you become the observer of the voice. In becoming the observer, you begin to separate from it rather than believing its story. You can choose whether to act on the voice or to opt for a different, perhaps kinder, behavior.
Accepting Support
Nocturnal restlessness is often partly due to our inability to lean back and accept support in life. We’re always holding on, unable to let go and trust. It takes courage to acknowledge that we all need help and support.
Ask yourself these questions: How are you supporting yourself at the moment? What are you doing to give yourself the right type of energy? Who’s on your side? Who can you laugh with? Who can you cry with? Who in your life will genuinely listen to you without interruption or trying to diagnose or fix things?
If there is someone in your life who can support you in this way then that relationship is a rare gem to be cherished, and we usually don’t make these types of connections on social media. Support is anything that helps you to let go of negative emotions, fills you up and nourishes you.
Be Open to Receiving Support and tell yourself ‘I am open to receiving support in my life.’ Seek out people who can support you and mirror back to you, so that you can see more clearly where you are in life and what needs to be done next. Seek the support that will stop you reverting back to old, unhelpful patterns. Use your intuition to guide your choices when looking for help.
Allow Your Feelings
Often we live too much in the mental realm and our emotions and feelings get neglected as a result. A lot of the time you might not even know how you are feeling. It takes courage to allow yourself to feel.
We are so good at protecting ourselves from feeling. We keep busy, medicate with alcohol and drugs, chocolate, exercise, sex, or anything that stops us feeling. But in the process we become deadened, heavy, exhausted, sleepless, and so also stop ourselves from feeling joy and happiness too because, your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
When you allow yourself to feel what needs to be felt, you might be surprised that after the ‘wave’ passes you feel relieved, lighter, less overwhelmed and then maybe even optimistic and happy. Some people lack an ability to feel sadness, or rather an ability to allow themselves to feel sadness.
The Dry-Eyes Syndrome is a fear of feeling sadness which causes emotions to be held in an repressed and then acted out in other ways (tantrums) or in physical imbalances.
Diving In is an exercise that allows you to become aware of anxiety or sadness just before you go to bed so you avoid taking that energy into your sleep. Get quiet and breathe deeply and steadily into the feeling. Can you identify the feeling? Feel the feeling. When you recognize it, say to yourself: ‘I am [feeling].’ Feel the feeling, and become the feeling. Observe that you don’t stay immersed in the feeling forever (this is a common fear and the main reason why we don’t like to feel negative feelings). Notice the lightness that comes afterwards. To avoid holding on to the feelings, you’ll want to change your energy state by doing an activity that brings you back to yourself.
The AAAAHHH Breath is a technique used to release all those pent up energy from your feelings that are hard to talk about. What we need is some sort of physical release.
Dumping the Bricks is using crying or laughing to release your feelings and emotions. A good cry frees and cleanses you. Take a deep breath in and then let rip and let the sound out by short, rapid inhalation sobs as you quieten down. Give yourself permission to cry like a child — this is not weakness. It takes courage to feel the feelings and let go.
Practicing Acceptance
Although we know that hange is inevitable, the world is full of people trying to control and change the things they can’t and not ignoring the things they can. As we resist change and so become hardened and inflexible. It makes sense that we should embrace change. But how do we do that? We have to step into the unknown, and this can be scary.
I Wonder, these two words, changing your language of you think and speak is an effective way of dealing with matters that aren’t in your control. Reframe your thoughts by using wonder instead of hope will have a huge shift in your mind-set which is vital in softening your grip on life. Trust that life is happening for you and not to you.
Flood Your Body with Legal Highs
Oxytocin could also be called the trust hormone because it enables us to build trusting relationships with others. In order to sleep we need to feel safe. So oxytocin is the ultimate safety hormone and therefore the ultimate sleep-inducing aid.
All we have to do is make the choices that will activate these natural highs and flood our bodies with healing and lightness. We can choose to gravitate or radiate in life and it depends on what choices we make.
Count Your Blessings as everyone can find at least two things they are thankful for. Being grateful boosts our immune system and physical health, it helps us to be more present and less worried about the future or depressed about the past, it blocks negative, toxic emotions, boosts your self-esteem and self-worth, makes us stress resistant and, it helps us sleep.
Regularly practicing gratitude isn’t about pretending that life is perfect but acknowledging that we are blessed — if we are prepared to notice it. When noticed and acknowledged gratefully these small gifts can have a powerful effect on your mind and body.
Easy practices for cultivating gratitude is starting to think about what you love or looking in to the situation you’re right now. What is good about where you are right now? Have you been able to find anything positive about the situation you’re in right now? Try to challenge yourself to find as many small positive things about your situation as possible. Having found something, feel how this makes you feel. Breathe deeply into your heart, feeling gratitude for the situation. Notice how you feel in your body. What is your mood right now? Some other exercises above will remind us that we are blessed but we can so easily forget.
You may also want to try keeping a gratitude journal and make it a daily practice to write down a few good things that happened in your day. Write a letter to someone who has positively influenced your life and read it to them. Write a letter to someone who has challenged you in your life. Dig deep and think of all the reasons why you are grateful to them and what they have taught you. You don’t necessarily have to share this letter with them — this challenging exercise is purely for your benefit.
Acts of Kindness is paying it forward. When you repay a good deed to others, it is even more powerful and expansive. If you make the decision to practice acts of kindness, you will find that it soon becomes second nature. Your heart opens and your energy lifts and so you attract more positive energy into your life.
Feeling Good like laughing, playing and dancing boosts levels of immunity-boosting cells. Study also shows that hugging — not just a cursory hug but a real heart-to-heart hugging for at least a few minutes — increases oxytocin levels. Any sense of true connection produces oxytocin.
Enjoy the Commute and see it as an opportunity to bathe in oxytocin by trying to read or listen to something uplifting. Meditate or 5-10 minutes. Smile at fellow commuters or greet them. Count your blessings and remember what you care about. Too many people lose sight of what gives them joy and start looking for it in all the wrong places — they live for their holidays or overindulge in retail therapy and so on. I believe that every day we should remind ourselves what we care about and make sure we get a small injection of spiritual energy by connecting to these things. Don’t wait for your weekends or your holidays or when you retire, by then it might be too late.
Nourishing what you care about gies you regular injections of spiritual energy. One way to start bringing more of what you care about back into your life is to simply make a pact with yourself to start doing more of what you care about TODAY. Look at nature as you walk home, smell the air, look at the sky, notice the trees and birds, breathe deeply and come back into your body. If you travel a lot, take 2-3 items around with you so that you always have reminders of the things that bring you joy.
An important message here is don’t forget what you care about. Regularly remind every cell of your body what trully matters to you. You may have to give up something in order to make time for what you truly care about and weeding out some of the biggest time-wasters and energy drainers in your life. Obsessively reading, surfing the net, checking your social media, watching endless episodes or doing all of these at the same time are a major waste of time.
Life loses its special taste and flavor when we neglect what we truly care about. Just a small pinch, that’s all you need. Do you know what you’re saying ‘No’ to? And do you really want to?
Start on the Right Foot as the way you start your day has a powerful impact on how the rest of the day unfolds and therefore how you sleep at night. When you begin to change your morning routine, life itself begins to change. This needn’t even take many minutes out of your day — just a brief pause, even a few seconds, to gather yourself before you move to action.
The two most powerful words to start and end your day with are THANK YOU. You give thanks for all of the blessings in your life. Be creative but be grateful. Life is always going to present hurdles but at least if you start on the right foot you can meet them with a balanced and grounded stance.
Try starting your day with a smile, saying ‘I love and approve of myself’ several times. Meditate for 10-20 minutes and ground yourself. Repeat some positive affirmations and prayers.
Look for the Meaning as when we find the true meaning of our suffering — the reason for our tiredness and sleepless nights — everything shifts: our energy, the way we sleep, our health and our perspective on life.
Realizing that you are safe, not alone, being guided and protected, surrounded and filled with a presence or love will help you. When you start listening — truly listening and understanding — you’ll find the true meaning and begin to heal.
“We need to see that, because disease is a manifestation of health, we can work with disease processes, gain understanding from them, and so use their energies to facilitate the healing responses that they invoke de facto.” Where has the journey taken you and did you find the hidden gem?
Pay Attention and Start Noticing Synchronicities as when you start doing The Real Work you may begin to notice that life really starts to happen for you. Something that you might have thought would be a disaster turns out to be a blessing. Pay attention to the seeming coincidences in your life and you will begin to see the patterns more and more often. But you do have to pay attention, as so often we don’t notice them. Slow down and notice and you will find that it’s so much easier to let go.
Chapter 12 - Let the Magic Unfold
“Everybody’s life has these moments, where one thing leads to another. Some are big and obvious and some are small and seemingly insignificant.” - Peter Jackson
Each person is able to bring about significant shifts in their energy levels, sleep quality and life by making small changes. Once we listen to our body’s innate intelligence and follow its guidance, it becomes stronger and more honed over time. Once the initial shifts had taken place — energy balanced and sleep restored — the life force energy then sets us on the right trajectory. Changing habits and behaviors can be tough.
Keep It Simple
Take small steps and keep it simple for your life. Eat breakfast every day within 30 minutes of rising. Make this a sacred ritual to start your day. Drink at least 2 liters of water a day. Reduce or cut out caffeine. Stop over-revving your body and sending it into survival mode. Begin an electronic sundown at least 1 hour before you get into bed. Aim to get at least 4 pre-midnight sleeps per week. Be mindful of the vulnerable childlike state that you enter around 10 p.m. Pull your energy inwards. Withdraw from stimulation. Listen to what your body and soul need in order to feel safe. Be peaceful. Be gentle. Rest and prepare to sleep.
Lastly, use the two most powerful words in the dictionary as you turn your lights out, if you awaken during the night and upon rising to start your day: THANK YOU!
Conclusion - Flying And Flourishing
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” -Maya Angelou
Sleep, when it is sattvic, is a conduit for accessing this universal wisdom. When you start to do the Real Work, you will start to reconnect with a part of yourself that has been underfed and undernourished which may be called psychic anorexia. Have you been starving yourself? And if so, what do you need to do now to nourish your spirit and soul?
As children, we knew what fed our souls and how to tap into vibrant energy. We knew how to be happy, joyful and playful, but somewhere along the line we forgot. And when this goes on for too long the body looks for ways too tell us to wake up.
We each have a responsibility to choose how we want to be in this world and how we co-create our world. Do you want to settle for just surviving and running on fear, busyness and overwhelm? Or you do want more — a life of gratitude, love, compassion and safety? As life and technology continually draw us outwards, close your eyes and draw yourself inwards and find out who you truly are.
What is it that your spirit needs? How does it want to be nourished? Revisit your childhood memories. What made you feel joyful, carefree, silly and light? Who were you at your best? This is what your life force energy is about.
Are you unstoppable, passionate, fiery and commanding? Or are you gentle, sweet, caring and creative? Tune in and remember who you are. When did you last feel like this? And what were you doing? Therein lies the key to wha you need. To be doing in order to be flying and flourishing.