okay where's everybody? There's everybody. Hey everybody. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. So he is not with us tonight. Or very as far as I know, Alisa he's off somewhere doing something of interest
so I only had a couple of questions come in. So there are a couple things I wanted to talk about. But yeah, happy to hear the dragon. Anyone on who wants to ask questions. We should have some plenty of time to talk about whatever you are interested in tonight. Okay. But I will jump in quickly here.
Where's my share screen
there we go. I think I'll leave it small. Well make a big word to Hey. Okay. So a couple of questions. Ah, gosh. I mean, it was I'll fix that later. So it's the questions for tonight. The first of this new year. And in the immortal words of John Lennon, let's hope it's a good one. And anyone I've said that to so far this year has said yeah, we're do definitely do. All right. So jumping right in here's a question someone that came in about foods and their impact and sort of some of the other presentations have some of this in there and maybe to a slightly different set of foods, but these are generally the ones you'll hear about and kind of why so you know, we hear a lot about tryptophan. So tryptophan, really it's like a precursor to both serotonin and melatonin. So, by that fact alone, it's an important food any food that contains that campaign can be supportive of sleep and dreaming. So any dairy products that have tryptophan, and then there are some ways that we don't always aren't always aware of bananas, for instance, they have the trifecta here they have tryptophan and magnesium and potassium which helps relax the body and allow it to sleep. tart cherries and their juice contain copious amounts of melatonin, anything that has melatonin is going to support sleep and dreaming. Many of these good foods have vitamin B six as well as other good stuff for for the brain. Fatty fish contain lots of omegas that help with sleep.
You know, they clear out the junk all the the let's just say all the stuff that omega threes and sixes do to help the body be a little more healthy and to be able to sleep better they reduce overall arousal level and that kind of thing. Most nuts almonds, in fact, contain melatonin. Most nuts have a lot of vitamins including vitamin B six. Vitamin B six is really important because it converts tryptophan to serotonin. So it's definitely one of those cofactors that really help the brain get into that state plus it's also a little bit of learning, which again, supports lucidity during the dream state. And then of course there are herbs that most of these herbs, deepen sleep or help the body relax, help the mind relax so we can get into sleep, and then have normal cycles and get into dream sleep. Now some of them go a little further. So the question has a couple of parts to it. And so let's say we want to focus what what about dreaming and lucid dreaming. And so there are some specific herbs. Barry if you're out there, I know you've really explored this so if you have any more than I'm not listing here, certainly come on or type in the chat Barry's the encyclopedia for dreaming lucid dreaming and all that good stuff. So herbal teas like Blue Lotus mug war mug water. Great one. Lemon balm, catnip, Yarrow, these lemon balm catnip they're more again for the relaxation abilities of getting the brain into a state that's comfortable with then having normal dream states, normal REM periods. Yarrow mugwort, they do a little bit more they actually have the arrow has, I believe an anti Colin esterase. It's an inhibitor so it keeps choline around longer, which is what Galantamine does, which is what any kind of cholinergic agonist you know cholinergic is what the cells that produce choline in the brain, generally, are the ones that are dying off in Alzheimer's. So that's why most of the research on Alzheimer's to date or supporting cognition that's being lost in Alzheimer's. Focused on the cholinergic agonists or anti cholinergic blockers, right, both of those are ways to increase choline in the brain, which supports cognition thinking all that good stuff. And so during sleep these would support lucidity. Right arousal during during the dream state. And then there are certain herbs that actually support the choline system as well like rosemary sage. Turmeric is a spice that does something similar green tea for some people, if you're a little sensitive to caffeine, not a good one for the evening hours. But they also have green tea also has anticholinergic substances and of course gingko biloba, which is why it's been touted in Alzheimer's concerns. Okay, so, so most of these either work by relaxing the body and brain and or supporting the choline system in the brain. The acetylcholine system in the brain so that when you do sleep, when you do get into the dream state, you're going to be more likely alert and aware, and hopefully then have lucidity which will get you to where you want to be if you want to lucid dream. Berries added Lion's Mane Okay. Yep, got the blue lotus Galantamine? Yep, we got that in there. Yeah, well is Huperzine the other one of the other ethnic Hohner Kona stories. Substance berry you might Yes. Okay. So we've got them all here on this page. And again, everybody gets you get a copy of the of the presentation, but also a PDF of it. So you'll have all this information there. Great. Thanks, Barry. Okay. All right. And same person third part of the question, want to know, what shouldn't we have Okay, besides caffeine, and you know, they're the usual culprits, right. Alcohol we all know no alcohol before bed, right. Any histamines, maybe one you're not aware of day. They can cause sleepiness by keeping basically histamine around, but they're such long acting and they're so deadening to the brain, that any hope of lucidity is completely wiped out. So you may get to sleep but you probably won't. You won't lucid dream and you may not even remember dreams because they really kind of just knocked that part of the brain out. Chocolate Of course, we all love chocolate. I love chocolate but not before bed. Okay, it's too much caffeine, the better the chocolate the higher the the the cat cacao content, the higher the caffeine content. So have you a good chocolate with lunch? Well, that late afternoon snack, and then of course anything acidic, spicy ethnic foods fried foods. They're all going to just make it hard to be to digest. And if your digestive system is not happy, you won't sleep well. Okay. high sodium products which may elevate blood pressure right before bed you don't want to be doing that because that will also increase arousal. And you know, there are these there are two ways of thinking about arousal. Right there's, there's the arousal that stimulates wakefulness prior to sleep. And that's what we want to avoid with caffeine, chocolate, high sodium foods, because they're gonna really get the system going, and you're not you're gonna have a harder time getting into sleep. And then again, there's the arousal we want to have during sleep so we can become lucid during our dream states. But those are more those herbs that support keeping acetylcholine around. So that internal, kind of like an internal arousal, which are really helpful for lucid dreaming. Yeah. And certainly willing to entertain questions around that I'd see.
Okay, there's a question I'm going to hold on to prevent it from Tim and Barry. Staying conscious. Do you have any tricks or methods for staying conscious until we fall asleep? I can never even come close to that moment. Suggestions. Welcome. Yeah. Okay, let me just finish this real quick. And that's a great question. I want to get to soy beans viously there are reasons we don't want to have a lot of beans before bed. Or in that last meal, right because anything that's going to get that digestive system working over time, it's going to prevent sleep or make it lighter, and so we don't get into that deeper level or we don't get into REM as much. And finally, any of the things that can spike sugar, okay, blood sugar spikes will lighten and disrupt sleep. So we don't want to have a lot of sweets right before bed. So if you're going to have that late night snack, you want to make it when you want to have some complex carbs, maybe some dairy products like cheese, or even milk or anything that you can tolerate well you know that warm milk that is one of those old wives tales? That's true. Okay, so warm milk releases. The tryptophan which then get goes on to be converted it both it also soothes you by being a nice, warm product before then. Okay. So, that question about how Barry's asking, Do we have any tricks to stay conscious until we fall asleep? Well, there's a more global one that can answer that and that is, Do not be sleep deprived. Okay, meet your asleep need as much as you can. Because the sleepier you are at bedtime, the more likely you're just going to knock out grades, you're just going to drop out of consciousness. And so no, no amount of struggle is going to allow you to drift into sleep with some type of awareness. So you need to be having a regular sleep, need a regular sleep, meeting your sleep need on a regular basis. Okay. And so when you've allowed yourself to sleep in like maybe on the weekends, you know you've gotten some extra sleep than weekend night would be a good opportunity to try that. But if you haven't been sleeping well or you know if you can build in a nap or two here and there. Again, when you have less going on like on the weekends, you might be able to reduce sleep pressure, so that when you fall asleep, you're going to drift into sleep more lightly and not drop right down into the deeper levels of non REM sleep. Okay, so that that's when you say right before bed How long before bed. Myra? Is that to what I was talking about before? Welcome bury the foods and the drinks and all that I can't see a picture Let me see. Are you shaking your head? Yeah, yeah. So you know.
These are all very unique and specific to individuals. If you are the type that has to get up and pee four times a night, well don't have your cup of lucid dream inducing Blue Lotus tea right before bed. That's just not going to work. For you. Okay, so what you might want to do is eat your sleep promoting and lucid dream promoting foods with your dinner and then just go lighter on anything else afterwards. If people are doing like intermittent fasting and like the last meal of the day is at five or six o'clock and you've got three or four hours before bedtime. Then you probably want to build in a snack and you want to then build in a snack that's going to have some of the melatonin like tart cherry juice and all that or you can then have more complex carbs that are going to support dream.
In that snack, you don't want to go to bed hungry if you're someone who is really trying to support your dreams and then again if you know and I'll let in Virgina little secret here that I do drink my tea pretty close to bedtime. I do allow myself to get up and pee a couple of times a night and that's because then I use that as my wake up time. Right my wake Induced Lucid Dream practice. Because I don't have any trouble sleeping for the most part. Yeah, you stress me out. Yeah, well, you know, life can do that to all of us. Certain people get elected. That can do it too. Right but for the most part I sleep well. So I like to be awakened during the night for physiologic reasons. And then I use my practices to go back to sleep and attempt to drift into sleep lucidly as well as have my lucid dreams. Yeah. Okay. If there are no other questions about any of the foods or the toys, let's move on. So another question that came in is which is better? Whoop. Or Re? Well, let's see. I am no longer wearing my woop device. I have a Fitbit on. I am wearing my ring. And I have an Apple watch but I no longer have what I see my wrist got hers on Yep.
So here's the thing. The ring was started out as a sleep measurement tool. It was not a Fitbit tool. It was not let's measure steps and activity levels and how good is my workout going and all that it specifically was designed to measure and take apart sleep. And so it could give you all kinds of information about what good sleep looks like. It's also very easy to use because you don't have to strap anything on wearing a ring is probably the easiest thing we can wear when we go to sleep at night. People don't like to wear things on their wrist their watch the bed you know those kinds of things. So that you know there's there's there's that physical logistical way of looking at which is better. So in that respect, we're definitely wins. If you're young and healthy and you want the best workout you could possibly get you know you've got that six pack of ABS coming along just fine. If you're a marathon runner and you need to know what your metabolic rate is doing, then the whoop is absolutely fine for sleep. If you want to focus on your daily activity, and how well you're recovering and all of that. You get that information from the ring as well. But it's just more the work is more focused on you know, looking at your metabolic rate and all the various factors that go into how well is your body functioning. Athletes love it because it just gives them a ton of information about their recovery, their recovery rates, when they should take breaks and when they shouldn't. So you know if you're more the athlete type, go with the whoop it does an adequate job on sleep. It's a little cheap. I know or bar we've had that conversation about the ring. Sometimes being a little cheap too. In terms of giving you sleep but the whip is really like you know when I was wearing that along with the Fitbit and the watch and all these together the what generally was the stingiest for giving you sleep at night would always say I had less if the ring was saying seven what was saying six, six and a half big difference. So so that's my comment on the rings examples. You probably should do a three MFT you have to be alright, so Karen still on this. Giving my secrets out here. Example of a lucid practice. I stay up for a little bit. I might do a couple of malas you know, mantras. I might do a little bit of reading. I have this really great red light by my bed that I used to read by. But I'll get back to that in a minute the nice but you know it's a very safe light to have on in the middle of the night. So one thing you don't want to do is when you get up to go and come back and I keep my I have a an eye mask on if I'm going to do but I usually don't have much light on. I've got the path pretty well worn from the bed to the bathroom. So I don't need to have much in the way of light because we don't want to turn on the lights and then be that alert. I don't look at my device to read I will use a book by by the red light and read that way. And then I'll use the practice you know I'll just when I'm ready to go back to sleep. I will maintain awareness for as long as I can. I tried to go back into the dream I had before I woke up. I tried to you know basically put myself in the same position I was in physically which is really hard because for right now I actually have a sore left shoulder. So I just go back to bed I gotta be on my right side. And that's the lion posture for the Buddha anyway, best way to sleep for becoming aware anyway. So like I go back to the right side. So knowing my position is easy for me. So I go back to that position. Try to recall the dream and allow myself to drift off. That's my practice.
I see you shaking your head good. How often do you get lucid when I'm focusing on it once a week when I'm not focusing on it, you know a couple times a month depending
and I actually have done the drifting right into or holding awareness as I drift into sleep I've done that a couple of times now. That's the hardest one to do but that's really when I'm well slept there's just no question about it. If I if I and I you know when I say well slept even though I know I'm pretty good at eight hours a night for the most part, sometimes eight and a half. But I'll go through a period where I'll push. I'll leave I'll give myself nine and a half hours to sleep. So my clock will go you know from 10 until 1030 let's say right so I have nine and a half hours to sleep and if I wake up early I go back to sleep, put on the eye mask. I use earplugs. And so I really when I get into a period of allowing myself that much sleep I'll sleep eight and a half, eight and three quarter hours sometimes nine and those are the times when I wake up in the morning. It's easy to drift back in with awareness before I go into a dream and then no I'm going into a dream when that happens.
So all right now a little more information. Okay, here's that red light I was talking about. So I was having a conversation with Denise about this red light device that they're you know, marketing and all that and you know clearly had some really great evidence for it. So if you're having trouble sleeping, it's not a bad thing to try out. But someone one of the editors they had sent a device to was reporting about how much it's really improved her sleep. And and she was trying to show you know one night you know back in October is what her normal sleep was like and then after a month of us when she first started the device right after that, and a month later her sleep was so much better and if you look at these averages of her sleep score and that she's talking about here, she was in the low 80s Here she's in the 90s Okay, and you see the ring gives you an optimal gives royal crown, you know, like your royalty now you're asleep royalty. But what I was what I what to me really powerful about this is it's not just the one night of the sleep values that's important here. If you look at this blue line down here that's deep sleep and just have the you kind of have to know that's what the ring data is. If you had the ring data in your head your data to look at, you'd see oh that color is deep sleep. This light call is lighter blue is light sleep and the really light blue here is REM sleep and white is wake. Okay. And so the first thing I noticed when you look at what this and she just missed the night here, that's why there's no data there. But if you look at the several nights here what's deep sleep doing it really jumps and it stays pretty constant. For all for this period of time, really several nights, not just one night, but several nights. All of her values seem to be really steady after she's been using this life for a map you know, this is this is her data for a month and obviously all the values you know her total sleep time is up our sleep efficiency. That's what these numbers reflect for the most part is up high sleep efficiency is how much time that you're in bed. That you're actually sleeping. Okay? And so you want that to be a highly efficient number. So higher numbers of better restful, restful restfulness was good. REM sleep actually was about the same and deep sleep is clearly here. It was about an hour just under an hour. In here. It's an hour and a half. Huge difference. Huge difference. Latency to fall asleep. That's the time it takes you to fall asleep. Here it was 24 minutes and she cut that in half. That's huge. For people in insomnia research. That's a huge difference. It may not seem like much Oh, I'm gonna I'm falling asleep 12 minutes earlier. But on average, you're falling asleep within the normal range of it's 12 minutes. 24 minutes, you're in the insomnia range. So that was a huge difference. So it's pretty powerful data. Yeah, so you got it. Denise, we were talking about that. I said I you know, and I'm going to use that tonight because this is the kind of data you get about your asleep from using the ring. So good stuff. And I should see your order. If there are any questions about that, pop them in the chat. I don't see anybody asking anything right off. And this is what I wanted to really get to. This is a land mark study. Okay. Take it from someone who has been in the sleep field for more than 30 years. This is a big deal. This is like when the first studies that came out and showed an association between reduced total amount of sleep and increased Alzheimer's. Okay, this is this is big. And actually let me go to the next. This is the this is the paper in graphical form. And it may just gonna tell you what to focus on. You don't have to worry about all the data. And I'll tell you how I did it, but actually I'll tell you how they did it first. Oh, no, I won't.
I'm into that slide.
So basically they looked at
what happened let me go back here and somehow lost. That slide. Oh, it's not in there. Know where it went? Okay.
So, essentially, they looked at 60,000 people in a in a UK Biobank they called it I have a bank of all this data, and they looked at them they had Oh, here it is, yeah, 60,009 audit and 71 people, they had 10 million hours of actigraphy. actigraphy is basically what all these these trackers have, among other things, but actigraphy is movement monitoring Okay, so they can look at the rate of movement. And obviously when you're doing this, you're probably not asleep, or you know, the GPS associated and you're moving through space, you're probably not asleep, and then when it gets really quiet you are they have good algorithms to differentiate sleep and wake it's a great way to look at sleep over multiple times. And that's what all these trackers now do. You know, in addition to other variables, they they add together to get a better sense, but it's a good you know, sort of gross measure of are you awake or asleep. So they looked at 10 million hours of actigraphy so this is not small. This is objective data. Okay, you don't you can't make this up although you but you could put the actigraph on the dog you know, and I guess that does happen from time to time but for the most part people want to know You know, what is my sleep look like? And what they found was that and they looked at all cause mortality, death from anything in particular, and then they sort of parsed it out. They looked at cancer and cardiovascular death, you know, no matter what they looked at less people died less people had less issues when their sleep was regular. And so here's some actigraph data, which basically is just showing, you know, let me make it bigger, just a tad bigger anyway, it's just showing this person's going to bed and actually the black lines mean they're asleep. So it means this is day on the Y axis. And this is time of day on the on the x axis. So basically they go into bed around 10 o'clock every night. And they getting up roughly at seven every morning. Okay, but what they're talking about and sleep regularity as you can see how regular This is. Okay, they're not really very much. And now here's a real irregular sleep. These two here are irregular sleep values. That they're showing here. So these are same kind of data actigraph data over a week. These are each a week. And what they're showing is, this is really irregular sleep. Okay, so this person sleeps. One One night, maybe from nine to seven. Next night doesn't fall asleep till around midnight, is up in the middle of the night for an hour. Next night. You can see you can see these blocks of sleep or all over the place across the week. Here's someone intermediately okay. And so what they did was they plotted these they looked at people eight, so it's still around 7.8 years later, 7.8 year follow up. And they looked at how many people were still alive and how many people were doing well had whatever they had, and clearly the people with the most regular sleep were the people who were still had the highest level of survival at that point when they looked at him and every increment of worsening regularity showed greater mortality. And so here it is. When they just parse out those two graphs. And you can see, you can see the difference that when sleep irregularity was really poor people died a lot sooner and at a lot higher rate than people who there was sleeping a fair amount of hours they were getting a pretty regular amount of sleep. Most people this range from about 40 to 100% getting sleep somewhere between seven and this was more there are certainly outliers, but these guys were sleeping seven to eight hours, all of them and yeah, they had you know, they were okay in terms of mortality, but nowhere as good as people who are regularly sleeping.
All right, so I'm gonna leave that up. for just a minute. It's going to be in the, you know, in the recording, and you're going to have the PDF of this too. Here's the reference if you want to look at that data and look at it more closely.
This is a powerful study. Because you know, all the time we're saying to you yeah, you really need to be going to bed at same time and getting up at the same time. And any of you have heard me on here before, you will hear me always say what's most important is when you get up in the morning, because that helps your brain be ready for sleep at the same time every night because it gets turned on in the morning. And your melatonin rhythm is set to come back on. And you know ideally if you're getting if you an eight hour and I need sleep person, then when you get up in the morning, your melatonin rhythm is set to turn back on 16 hours later. Okay, and that's what this looks like here. Okay, they're getting up roughly the same time every day. Their brains are turning off roughly the same time every night.
When they start you can see here this irregularity This one's getting up at this time and then they're getting up later earlier later. earlier. Halfway. Later. Okay. And that includes, you know, unfortunately those of us who sleep in on the weekends, and then because of work or whatever may be forced to get up earlier during the week and not meet your asleep need during the week. So you're trying to make it up on the weekends and clearly you can see there's there's no rhythm here really for for this person here. So it's important to get up at the same time every day. Start there. Always start there. Okay, get up at roughly the same time. Every day. Now that can be a little difficult as we move through the seasons, because we get exposed to light and we're hope you know now we're getting a little bit more light. Yay. We're getting a little more light as we have crossed the sort of the the solstice the winter solstice. Those of us in the northern hemisphere. I don't know how many of you in the southern hemisphere, but you know, we honor you you guys are you guys like losing your light now but that's just the way it goes. But as we move through the seasons, our melatonin rhythm is designed to be able to change with the seasons. But in Western society and in modern societies, right, we have electric lights everywhere so we can adjust that. And unfortunately we can mess with it too much. So for the most part, if light comes in too early in the morning like it does in the summer, or it's too dark in the winter. If you're having a hard time setting a regular rhythm, you get a light box, light alarm clock for the winter, and you have shades and blackout shades on your windows and you wear an eye mask. In the summer to regulate your wakeup time. So
that's all I'm going to say about that question.
Anita need to know I'm trying that goal.
I had a meeting with you. I think two years can be two years ago. And Andrew was there and I was complaining and you both says oh I need to you have no problem. With your sleep. And I do have it because what happened is yes.
My best moment for dream and everything is between 10 in the morning to 11 something but I just can't live in a city waking up at 11 or 12. So but but it's difficult.
Yes. I mean, I don't want that. I I want to participate.
I want to be able to go to museums as well. Okay, so there but there are separate issues here. Anita one is what is physiological possible possible for you. Okay, and your sleep is fine as far as that goes. As long as you are given those particular hours to sleep, you will sleep just fine. But socially, you would rather do something different and I get that I'm not there's no judgment here. But you have to be up and get up day when everybody else is and and be participate in social activities. I get that.
So social activities these activities are charities and must have time to meditate the container. It has to do all many things in very little time, pay bills, go and buy things. Go to the team at no Deaf churches. I just can't talk to a lawyer. Now. You see and I need to talk to a lawyer. So it's It's okay even this. My profession is only draining. I understand that. But it is it's not only that sometimes I believe in by leaving trying to sleep early which is midnight. And it is also very difficult because my body's it's used not to sleep at that time. But little by little I was getting there and it was beginning to get a little a little I went organized so because when I was living in the tropics, at seven, five I was in the gene scene back here it's a mess. And then when I got into lucid dream is dad ghosted was. I mean it it took my times and did it upside down, I noticed but the thing is that I want to rest. So sometimes I say okay, and I want to sleep because I know that not sleeping is worse. than not having lucid dreams. And I have to sleep and then I have dreams.
Okay.
So I I say okay, I didn't sleep well because at one o'clock I was already awake. Because my body I drank. And then I spent 234 hours a week, and then I meditate and then finally like at eight or nine, I fall asleep again. And I say okay, my, my day is going to be rolling in this. I won't have time to do all the things, but I have to sleep so okay, it's 11 something sometimes 12 and I wake up and so I have that time I can have very nice dreams. Normally not lucid because I'm an added language. So I wonder if it is possible to do.
I did it in another life. I did it before I was living in this country to be in the gym at seven, five.
That's normal for me. What's the difference between the other country and here? I was in the tropics, more light I mean, I don't light more light. Absolutely.
So you have to artificially re create that situation here.
That was long ago because I had insert easily understood understood but that's it responding
to light.
That's what it's designed to do. Not here I cover my eyes.
Because if I go to sleep at seven in the morning, I am going to be awake immediately afterwards because they go to sleep at seven in the morning.
Because sometimes you don't sleep before I just I try and go to I go to my bed at midnight or one
or two. So what you need to do is start with getting up in the morning and not getting sleep. Forget, forget to sleep that first day and maybe even the second day. That's the way you begin to shift but you have to shift first by being up in the morning in the sunlight. And if you can't get out in the sunlight, you need a light alarm clock to help your brain wake up in the morning. And that extra sleepiness that you're going to have because you're not sleeping in till 10 or 11 or 12 instead that sleepiness will help you fall asleep earlier the following night. And that's what you want to be able to do is fall asleep early enough so that you will wake up early enough. That's the rhythm you want, but you have to start with light exposure in the morning. First. There's no way around that. i Well, there was one way around that but you'd have to sleep.
I live live in France and when I was living in France, I didn't countries change you so much. When I was living in France each night, I was going to sleep in the same amount of hours but each night later. It's time later. So suddenly, I would my friends were saying Okay, keep doing that. Because one day you're going to wake up at seven in the morning.
You can do that. It's just more difficult in while you're trying to do that because there'll be interruptions because of life.
In a way it was coming naturally not here. It's not coming so natural. That for example this weekend. I did use a meeting nightclub that I love, and it's a dream son. It's very important for me. It's really very important. And it's a very interesting community is not an advertising but so I have to wake up earlier. So this Saturday I was up like at nine something by myself, but I knew the trees I mean New York so here your dream Sandra is at elevens is a wonderful time for me next day I have to meet my knees. That is I was visiting New York. And I had to wake up also at nine so it was too late night and a half and I say oh wow this but then that suddenly, I was not sleeping at night.
It's not going to happen overnight.
It's going to take you some adjustment to that. But that's when you need an alarm in the morning to continue getting you up at night. You must do that and that means some nights you're not going to fall asleep. And you're not gonna get a lot of sleep, if any. But that sleepiness that you don't get will help you stay on that schedule. Because you may not fall asleep at midnight the next night or the next night but you will eventually fall asleep after several nights because you will have such a strong sleep debt because you haven't been meaning you're asleep need that you will begin falling asleep at that hour. So we take take my email and we'll talk take this offline. Okay there you just you just need to be really consistent and I can help guide you do that. But we need to take this offline. Okay. All right.
Okay, so where do I get your email?
Alyssa, would you put it in the chat please?
And I can take more questions. Okay. So if I don't sleep for a week is not going to be very harmful for me. No, it's your what do you know if you do that for months? That's a different story. Okay. But while you're making this transition, you will survive just fine. Okay. You will come in with a question you will come on in six months to tell us how you're still cognitive dating and you're just fine. Wonderful. And I sent you an email before that.
I have also I know the question. Can you tell us a little more about because this sounds very interesting about this. Red light.
Yeah, yeah. You know what? Denise will put her email in the chat too, because she will tell you about the red light. The red light is helpful for night at night to help you prepare for sleep, especially when you're shifting your rhythm. Just like the bright light in the morning helps your brain turn off melatonin and reset it. The red light at night helps you melatonin come on at the right time. So she can help you with that. Okay, I am very grateful. Thank you. You'll we'll get you there.
We'll get you there
who's up next isn't Hamish your next door?
Yeah, the next Okay. Okay.
Yes. Good morning. I say good morning because I'm an Indian. So I have this morning. I got out little before five in order to come on to the Zoom call. And quite a few of the Zoom calls when you guys are in the evening. I'm in the very early morning. Now I'm a little concerned after having seen these graphs that my my sleep regularity is not very regular. And since embarking on the lucid dreaming quest. I do have quite regular dreams, none of them particularly lucid, but I get up at three quite regularly I get up at 3am and take time to write my dreams down then I may do as you do meditate or read a bit and then go back to bed. But regardless of my irregularity because I'm not working the whole time team per se. I do have the opportunity to have quite regular afternoon naps. And they stretch from one hour to maybe an hour and a half or even maybe two hours. Now will this mitigate the or will this help with with my irregular nighttime sleeping? Yeah, yeah, I would.
So the thing about that regularity data if you think about it is however you maintain regularity. It will end meet your asleep need you're going to be the best off so if you're getting up every day at five, let's say because you need to do stuff on the east coast here, whatever. And then build in an afternoon hour, hour and a half two hour nap and then go to bed regularly whatever time you need to at night at a fairly regular pace. You'll be just fine. Okay, that's that's key. Is that regular everyday you're doing roughly the same thing. Okay, okay.
Yeah, I am sorry. I also have a little bit of concern for my wife because she's a bit of a workaholic. And in order to keep up with all the activities and the work that she is doing, she quite regularly will stay up until maybe two or three or more in the morning and to get to get her work done. Then she will then she will come come back to bed. But then during the day, the next day, I mean, just yesterday we went to a meeting in the afternoon and she was falling asleep.
So I'm a little concerned about her irregularity now even more than mine, yeah. Well, so it sounds more like she's not meeting her asleep need by you know, favoring work over getting asleep at night. Now it's okay to work that late provided she like you either make it up with a nap in the day. Or extend her sleep enough in the morning. To be able to meet the sleep need. And if she can't if she's not doing that, well then yeah, you know, that's a health risk. It's like you know, drinking too much alcohol. It's like doing this or doing that for your health. It's like eating white sugar all night. You know? It's like these are all we know these are important for our health now. And once we know that, we have to figure out how to make lifestyle fit into what our health requires us to have. You know, our brains have asleep they have a sleep monitor. And when you don't when you don't meet that need they let you know by fall asleep during meetings by falling asleep knowing you're going to die if you fall asleep. And people still, you know, that's something that tells you how important it is. So she needs to figure out a way you know, show her some of the data and just say Look, honey, I want you around to celebrate the golden years, right? You know, we're already in our golden years. That's probably because you get new sleep.
Okay.
All right. Thank you so very much. You're welcome.
Good questions. Stephanie has a handout.
All right. Hi. Good to see you again. Good to see you too.
i Oh my god.
This is disturbing the amount of data
on I definitely my sleep at this point is really all over the map and I brought up an issue quite some time ago about and you would say about sleep irregularity. I would get up very early to serve at like four in the morning I'd get up and give or take and and and at that time, you know there was an issue and you had suggested time by phasic. You know, because I would get because I tend to get up that hour. Not always but sometimes even if I go to bed too late, but that was then and I was addressing it I'm also adjusting you know trying to stay healthy and all the other ways that we work to stay healthy. And I'd say this is like my this is my hardest issue at this point to address in terms of health. I'm also in a period right now of quite substantial stress in my family. I have somebody I'm dealing with taking care of their life at the same time as taking care of my own and it's, it's more than I really can do. Sometimes often whatever. If I get a chance and surf is a fickle thing, and it's a place where I get some respite and refuge and it's healthy for me. Isn't I sort of crazy early hours it started and less stressful for other reasons. Okay, so I, I am I don't get up. So I've been getting up at 14 not regularly I shouldn't we're rarely regularly and often and if there's surf I will go and I can I tend to come back and it would be like I ended up taking a nap whatever I could kind of mid morning or something and then the kind of my like real life day would start okay.
The problem now is it's even further exacerbated.
Because it because now also I'm staying up way too late for how early I'm getting up and just trying to keep up with all that's been asked of me right now. By life. And I'm doing my best and and it's just sometimes not possible. And also I so I'll be sometimes going to bed at midnight.
And I won't even plan to get up at four in the morning because maybe there's no surfer I've already know that I'm not going to have the energy and need to just go straight into regular life and and I'll still my brain will wake up around four ish give or take depending how tired I am and it but it will start problems fully problem solving on all the life things I got to deal with and doesn't let me go back to sleep.
And sometimes I'll just lay down and meditate I do I will just meditate that usually my solution at this point is I've been practicing because I haven't been able so far. I don't know if it's willing or able it's a combination I guess to to I haven't been able to solve this for myself. yet. We're now and I kind of had to take off the sort of pushing myself so hard because I'm pushing myself in so many other arenas right now. That it's like not healthy for me to be so hard on myself with regard to sleep and I'm just like okay, sleep when you can when you can't just lie there meditate and I can deeply meditate I get rest but I know it's not the same asleep and I do still record can record write down dreams and things you know I'm having you know my dreams are somewhat regular, not lucid, necessarily, not usually lucid at this point, but I'm registering dreams. But anyway, I just I don't know where to begin under these kinds of circumstances. That's healthy that will kind of get me just to at least begin on track.
You say that the time you wake up is the important thing but I don't like if I could go to sleep at night I keep telling myself oh I should be going to sleep by nine that would be seven hours and then maybe a nap for an hour or some time in that you know whatever but I I don't seem to do that. I say listen, you're you are not in a normal situation. No I'm not right. So that additional stress and additional requirements of your life at this time won't allow regularity. And that's just the way it has to be for now. You know, we put out data like that. It's kind of the ideal situation and this is what we want to strive towards. But life will intrude, right you know, like, you know, we you know man plans and God laughs right. So, that's that's kind of like a goal pie in the sky. Yes, we'd like to get there. You need your serve. Eventually. So you get that part of your life satisfied. But right now it's just not possible. The world is asking you to do way more than you can even do. So you're when you wake up, because you're you know you've got some regularity to that wake up at 4am Your goal is not to try to decide whether you can get up and go surfing, but rather it's okay, how can I maintain my sleep and do all my meditation now until some of this stuff blows over and I can maybe get charged in my schedule again. You don't have charge of that right now. Yeah, to make the best of it. You know that that's what you can do now. And so that's what you need to do. And that's okay, because you won't be doing this like this forever. It will change but right now, it's just the way it is. So you're going to create more agile by trying to fight against it in trying to get in everything you want to get in and it's just not going to happen.
Yeah, no, I hear you I've definitely not prioritize surfing by any means. Like it's, you know, a couple of days a month. I'm happy now to do that but, but it's just the but I noticed but my sleep is so all over the map. And that scared me who's seeing that data because I'm working so hard to be healthy on other fronts. It's like, whoa, like, this is scary.
Look, your goal right now is to just get sleep when you can simmer down, you know, you want to try to regularize it more but right now you just can't do that. You know, it's like, we all want to do the best we possibly can for our health. Yeah, we just can't do it all the time. Yeah, I hear you. Okay. Okay. That's it. Take a couple of deep breaths, you know, base.
Maybe I'll check back with you when things are a little bit less chaotic.
You know, and you know, what I was saying to Anita
when life changes like that, you need to allow for
what has to happen, and then you slowly move it back to what's the most ideal for you that you can when circumstances allow? Yeah, I hear Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Sure.
Oh, yeah, life can really throw some curveballs. Right.
Well, listen, it's that time that top of the hour. Hopefully, there's been some help. Oh, yes. It was some quick stuff. Sorry. Karen, you put a question in the you have your seven o'clock time said all the time. That's good for you. Excellent. Excellent. Someone else had something in the chat. Tim had said something early on what was it? I had her peers or some of my older relatives sleep time gotten before midnight. is somehow more valuable or have a higher quality than sleep gotten after midnight. Is there anything to that or is that just a myth? Yes. That's the answer to that one, Tim. The thing is, it depends on who you are and where you are. What part of the world you're in. You know, Midnight is a clock time. Okay, Midnight is a clock time. So what that does speak to is though, the last, the closer to following sunset. You get you're asleep. The better off the sleep will be because your rhythms begin slowing down at sunset. And the sunset shifts across the seasons. Well, unless you're in Ecuador, right or Costa Rica, you're on the near the equator you're going to not have that much of a shift but anywhere else, you're going to shift with that. Someone else asked. Do we sleep more in the winter than we do in the summer? Yes. If we weren't in a modern, crazy society, like we are, that's what we would do. What is the winter call, you know, call us to do talk to some Native people, right? They go inside they get quiet. They become less active in the winter. Right? And then in the summer, yeah, when the days are longer and everybody's out and we're partying and have a great time but in the winter it's not the season for partying, it's decision for introspection, require time. And so that whole thing about sleeping before midnight and after midnight, really has more to do with how many hours you have to sunset are you allowing your system to quiet down and get it sleep? Okay. Ah I think they've gotten all that in. You know, I'm teaching a this is not for this is not
well, actually, I guess anybody could take this in the seminary in the one spirit learning line, some I'm teaching this won't happen until fall of 24 and spring of 25 where I'm teaching two programs on sacred sleep. And, you know, one is about you know, how do we you know, I like the nice what is that? That's pretty cool. It happened, you know, didn't have anything to do with it just happens. You're special. I wish I had that in my back just going off. I was cool. Anyway, so you know, the first part is about you know what is it about sleep? How do we honor sleep had we make it? You know, I think I've shown a slide somewhere in one of these presentations about a bedroom that looks like a sanctuary. It looks like you're walking into a church or a temple. Okay? That's what that first program is about. It's four nights and two hours a night, four consecutive nights and to help people really honor prioritize, and create a sacred sleep environment and honor their sleep. And then the second one is about this stuff. You know, the lucid sleep, the lucid dreaming, the ability to meditate deeply to carry your awareness into the sleep state and sort of to not now that you're, you've created the local environment for Sacred sleep. How does that move into your life? Because we really do need to be considering it as important as our awakening. Because you know, read the Buddha right read Andrew right, you know, we need to wake up. We need to wake up this world. needs us to wake up. Even though I'm asleep back and I tell you to get your sleep. We need to wake up in that bigger picture.
Nina, I've given you the floor for 30 seconds. What do you want to know? Please? Let us know when is all that sounds very important.
Okay, yeah, yeah, I'll do that. Again. It's not till the fall of this year of 24.
So I'm going to do both of them should be around the the equinoxes. I'm going to do them around equinoxes when we have half a chance to be getting the full night of sleep. And the full night of awake and a full day of weight. All right. Great questions tonight. Great crowd. Yeah, here just gonna be sorry. You missed this one. Alyssa, you're gonna have to tell him. He needs to watch this one. It was fun. All right. Until next time, sweet dreams all take care.
