My Personal Experience of Dealing with Insomnia

Every day, we’re learning more and more about how poor sleep impacts our daily lives and our physical and mental health. This is especially true for anyone active or trying to play sport at a high level. we need sleep to allow our bodies and minds to recover from the stress we put them through every day. It’s proven to help performance and we really need to get rid of this culture of bragging about functioning on 32 minutes of sleep a night. It’s not good for us!! It makes us sick.

Sleep deprivation can alter brain activity and weaken our immune system. It can make us more susceptible to mental health disorders too. If sleeplessness is a regular thing for you, talk to your GP about it. They’ll be able to help you. If it’s just that you’re not allowing yourself the time, make the time. Schedule your sleep and tell yourself you’re doing it to ensure you stay alive. If it’s stress keeping you awake, find healthy ways to deal with it.

Sleep – we spend a 1/3 of our life doing it, so would you think about sleep is critical to your health? Ayurveda says it’s one of the three pillars to sustain our health and life yet it’s probably fair to mention that we do not provide it the eye it deserves. Some of us aren’t getting enough, a number of us overindulge and most folks are probably not getting the standard of sleep that we’d like. Sleep is an important part of our circadian cycle. It is the time of day where our body’s soldiers exerting to filter out the toxins and at an equivalent time nourish, repair, and replenish all our body’s cells and tissues. It is rest and repair time and honest night sleep is usually what we need.

As a light sleeper, disturbed sleep is something that I struggle with from time to time and I immediately notice the impact on the day cycle and on my wellbeing, and as a result, it’s something I’m very aware of. This usually happens during seasonal changes, when I have a lot on my mind, or if I’ve had a night or the occasional heavy food item or glass of wine. However, when I listen to my body’s natural signals of tiredness and maintain practices I will usually sleep well.

Our 24-hour clock is often sliced into 6 sections and every section is influenced by one among the three doshas and once we adhere to the activities that suit that time of day we stay in balance and flow more naturally. Sleep between 10 pm and 2 am is critical to our wellness – so don’t miss this window for deep sleep. Our sleep cycles will alter with the rhythms of nature, the sun, moon, seasons, our age and it also depends on our constitution. If you’ve got a vata or pitta dominant constitution you’ll be susceptible to sleep issues.