Learning How to Sleep...

I was sick in bed for a better half of the last week. I didn't feel particularly sick, but I was. And in my line of work, when you are sick, you don't work. So I decided, if I wasn't going to work, that meant no work whatsoever. While it's easy to call and cancel all my sessions with my clients, it's not so easy to turn it all off -- no more email, no more answering phones, no more catching up on bookkeeping, updating session notes, filing, etc. I decided to make myself go to bed and rest. Real rest. But that ain't so easy! I've had to resort to tricking myself into resting -- luring myself with that novel that I haven't yet gotten into, or a long, slow film; both are guarantees that I will soon drift off. Does it always require this much effort to rest? Is it this hard to go on vacation, too?

For a lot of us, it is this difficult. A few weeks ago on NPR, I heard an interview with a sleep expert, Dr. Helene Emsellem, who specializes in teen sleep (snooze or lose). Following every sleep expert that I've ever heard, she underscored that each adult needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep per day in order to function optimally; and if we don't get that, we will underperform, weaken our immune systems and be pretty darn grumpy, and our bodies will try to steal sleep whenever possible. She tells an example of former President Bill Clinton who famously claimed he needed only four hours of sleep a night. She said there is tons of footage of him nodding off at meeting after meeting. He may not be getting the sleep at night, so his body was trying to sneak in a few minutes here and there to make up the obvious sleep deficit.

She also made clear that many of us don't know "how to sleep." When I heard this I simultaneously thought "What craziness is that??" and had a memory of being 5 or 6 years old and laying awake in bed insisting to my dad, "But I don't know how to fall asleep!" as he tried to put me to bed. I'm sure he just smiled and nodded, and I fell asleep within a few minutes.

But apparently, many of us, kids and teens included, need to learn how to sleep or fall back asleep. We are getting less and less sleep; a WSJ article sites a poll that finds that while 38% of adult Americans got at least 8 hours of sleep in 2001, today that number has fallen to 26%. According to the National Sleep Foundation at least 25% of Americans take some sort of medication to fall asleep every year.

What's going on then? Shouldn't sleep just happen naturally? Ahhh...well, perhaps. But if we consider that we spend most of our days pushing ourselves to extremes and playing with our "natural" balance; we are stressed out, distracted, caffeinated and generally over-stimulated. Tips from most sleep experts follow these lines -- toward the end of the day, eliminate caffeine and start minimizing distractions. They all tend to recommend "setting the stage" for sleep to happen: No TV and other distractions in the bedroom. Heading to bed and rising in the morning at the same time everyday. No caffeine after mid-afternoon. Keeping your sleeping environment cool, dark and comfortable. We need to learn how to develop a routine that works for us. We need to learn how to be better in touch with our own internal rhythms.

I see this post turning into a Yoga Journal article, so I will stop soon. I've been reading YJ on and off for the better part of a decade, and have been complaining for most of that decade about the writing because after awhile you realize that the articles all sound the same. They all begin with comments such as "In these hectic times..." or need to paint a picture of our cultural landscape that is workcrazed, increasingly fast-paced, overly materialistic, and thoroughly shut off from body and spirit. I appreciate that such a magazine is appealing to a much wider audience than little ol' me and an important function they play is cultivating mindfulness and awareness of "our hectic times." Letting their readers experience yoga as something that can help wake them up. I really do appreciate that. But I also find it tiresome to read -- there is only so much space in each magazine, in each article -- and I fear that the writing gets washed out as it all needs to conform to this "setting of the stage." It all seems the same. But I guess I don't read YJ for anything other than my favorite column of all times...the Yogi Anatomist! I flip everytime directly to the Yogi Anatomist! Usually authored by the likes of Julie Gudmestad (my fave!), Judith Lasater or Roger Cole. Smart. Nerdy. Oftentimes attempts to ellicit a chuckle from its readers, but it never, ever seems to try too hard.

If I was writing for YJ I would be working hard to bring this article back full circle so that I would connect the lesson of "trying too hard" with trying to be sick in bed. I trust you as my reader though to suspect that I might have intended that (or not) and make your own connections, draw your own conclusions.