Making the most of your sleep

For the best regeneration, you must go to bed before 11pm!

Every hour that you are awake after 11pm feels like 2 hours of extra time awake to your body.

I’ve mentioned this a couple of times on Twitter and had quite a bit of interest and feedback to this subject, so I thought I’d write a post that’s a little more in depth.

This subject touches on a couple key concepts behind Oriental Medicine so we will touch briefly on these as we go :)

Yin & Yang: Many people are familiar with the yin yang symbol [ but do you know what it means? Yin relates to things that are dark, cold, passive, restful, and it’s time is night when it’s dark. Yang has to do with activity, heat and brightness, energetic types of activities, and the daytime. Throughout our day, we are constantly using our yang Qi to do our daily work and life related activities. At night, our body regenerates yang Qi as we sleep.

The white teardrop is yang and the black is yin. The small dots in the teardrops remind us that within yang there is always a bit of yin and within yin there is always some yang. This is important because you can’t have one without the other. To me the most important part of this symbol is the sinuous line between the two teardrops! This is where balance lies. When our yin and yang are in balance, our bodies are balanced and our Qi (influences and energy in the body) can flow properly, thus giving us our most optimum health.

The second point of interest is the Organ Clock. There is a 2 hour block of time each day when your Qi is more strongly in each of the 12 main meridian and organ systems. Each of these Meridians has various correspondences such as seasonal markers, animals, even hexagrams from the Yi Jing. A colleague of mine, G.Michael Reynolds, who has much more experience with the Yi Jing than myself has explained this here:

Tips for Insomnia

I also want to touch on a couple of pointers if you have insomnia that I have learned over the years. Acupuncture is amazing for insomnia and I’ve had great results in this area, but not everyone lives near a practitioner, so here’s a couple of tips that anyone can do at home.

I have found that many people with insomnia also have cold feet. Often something as simple as putting on cozy socks or leg warmers can have a huge impact on a persons ability to fall asleep quickly and sleep well. If you have chronically cold feet, try soaking your feet in hot water every day and then bundling them up in your socks. This has to do with the reseting of your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. I will get into this another day as it’s rather in-depth.

Many people also have a brain that just won’t stop turning when they get into bed. If you tend to over-think, take a look at what you’re doing right before bedtime. If you’re a student, make sure you stop studying at least an hour before bedtime. If you spend a lot of time on the internet, try to shut things off 30-60 minutes before bed too. Do something relaxing, have a cup of chamomile tea and pet your cat, or have a bath, you get the idea. Just try to avoid stimulation right before bed. Sometimes it’s also helpful to have a pen and pad of paper beside your bed incase something strikes you that don’t want to forget for tomorrow. Write it down and let it go.

Once you’re in bed, if you can’t fall asleep right away, get comfortable and start focusing on your breathing. Don’t try to do anything, just think about your breath, how it feels as it flows in and out of your body, etc. If your mind starts to wander to daily stresses, don’t give yourself a hard time about it, just gently nudge your thoughts back to your breath. If you practice this every night, you will learn to shut down your brain and fall asleep very quickly.

Making the most of your sleep

Saturday, September 4, 2010

“Of particular interest here is the hexagrams. The ones used in this situation are referred to as the tidal hexagrams, so named because they demonstrate the growth or decline of Yin and Yang through the course of time, like the tide going in and out.

So, at 11 pm we have the beginning of the two hour slot of time assigned to the Gall Bladder network, which is represented by hexagram 24 Fu "Returning". This hexagram is made up of a single Yang line in the first position and the rest yin lines, which represents the first step in the production of Yang. The two trigrams that make it up are Zhen "Thunder" (the image of expansive, exciting, active movement) below rising up into Kun "Earth" or "Night" which is pure Yin and therefore dark, yielding, adaptive. In hexagram 24 we have a picture of the corner being turned from Yin into Yang and Yang being reborn, the first lit ember in the heart of Winter that will eventually become the full blazing Fire of Summer. ...

What does this have to do with us and sleep? Basically, Gall Bladder time starts our Yang absorption phase, provided we are asleep and the Shen is at rest. Sleep is the only thing that restores our Yang Qi and if you miss any of that recharge period you pay large for it. This is why I tell all my patients they NEED to be asleep by 11 if they want to recharge”

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