UNDERSTANDING SLEEP

Whatis sleep? The answer is complex and fascinating, as you will see in this chapter.

Some of the sections in this chapter get pretty technical, and you may be tempted to skip the more scientific explanations of your sleep patterns. This is fine—go ahead and move on to the rest of the book, which offers practical, natural solutions to sleep problems. But I hope you will take the time to circle back to this chapter. Why? Because the deeper your understanding of what is really going on inside you when you sleep, the better you will be able to implement the changes I am suggesting to help you improve your rest, and to determine which ones are most likely to work for you.

Also, you’ll be able to amaze your friends with your newfound knowledge!

THE PURPOSES OF SLEEP

Have you ever thought about how much time you invest in sleep? Well, if you average eight hours a night of sleep, the math is easy. That’s one third of your life. That’s right, one third of your life! I’d also like you to consider that after two-thirds of a day’s activities, the body’s natural reaction is not just rest and repose, but a departure from a conscious awareness of our surroundings. We literally shift into a different mental state from our normal waking state.

For a long time medical doctors and scientists believed that sleep was simply a profound state of rest, the result of a hard day’s work. It was thought of as a“passive” activity. You turn out the lights at night and then turn them on in the morning, with rest being followed by wakefulness. Nothing was supposed to be going on during sleep. Not true! In actuality a lot is going on while we are sleeping. We now know that sleep is used to regenerate our physiological functions; to repair the wear and tear of the day; to consolidate learning and memory; and to facilitate growth and healing—among other activities essential to a healthy life.

Do you know you are sleeping while you are sleeping? The answer is no; usually we don’t know we are sleeping. Sometimes if we are sort of sleeping, we might get the sense that we are at least trying to fall asleep. Once we do fall asleep, however, we are not conscious of the fact that we are sleeping. This is part of the reason it is so difficult to identify the problems we may be having with sleep.

The actual time it takes to fall asleep can vary. When we do fall asleep, however, we move from the outer world to the inner world in a millisecond. That’s right, it happens quickly, and our bodies go into a sort of light coma. The muscles relax, the mind shifts, and the b