Focus:
Releasing.
Repetition:
I am enough just as I am.
I do not need to be useful, I am a being that is worthy of all love and all good things in this moment.
I am human, I have limitations for my own good and I am not in control.
I release all things.
Sleep
This week we will learn about sleep. We tend to believe sleep is not very important in modern America. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is a common phrase we hear because we want to work hard and play hard, burn the candle at both ends and we live by the motto “FOMO” (the fear of missing out). The truth is that the body is designed to sleep AND rest. The healthiest people in the world cannot afford to skip rest or sleep but the truth is, they would not want to.
As we get healthy, we want to give our body what it is asking for. When we are unhealthy, we are disconnected from our bodies and let disorder drive us. We are restoring our microbiome to balance so that our overgrown opportunistic microbes can stop telling us to eat starch and sugar. Now we can truly begin tuning into our bodies, its simple desires and see where we have gotten off course.
When we sleep, our body paralyzes and begins to go into “cleanup mode,” it is not an inactive process by any means. We should be sleeping when it is dark and waking before or with the light in the morning. Anything else can cause our hormones to be imbalanced.
The Body’s Master Clock
The SCN or Suprachiasmatic Nucleus is nestled inside the hypothalamus in the brain and is commonly referred to as the body’s master clock. The SCN receives light and darkness signals and uses that information to regulate the production of hormones. If the light and darkness signals are off, your SCN cannot properly regulate your waking and sleeping.
Melatonin is the darkness hormone but the morning light is the information needed to make melatonin. Cortisol is the waking hormone but without proper melatonin, our cortisol will not produce at the right time. In fact, if one hormone is not functioning properly, this can affect many others. For example, if we are eating sugar and refined carbs and swinging our blood sugar, we will have insulin issues which in turn can knock our circadian, reproductive, feel-good, etc. hormones and suppress our immune system.
We want to really attend to our sleep hormones and develop excellent sleep habits. Our reproductive hormones may be the ones we notice the most when they are out of whack but the body is not prioritising those; reproduction is never prioritised by the body when other issues are more prominent. The goal should be to get our microbiome and our autonomic nervous system in balance so we can make our happy hormones, have insulin sensitivity, regulate our hunger hormones, sleep as we should, etc. and our reproductive hormones will go back to working properly.
Sleep Habits
We want to sleep 8 hours or more, we want to go to bed by 8, 9 at the latest and we want to sleep deeply without waking or remembering our dreams. When we are perfectly healthy in the future, we can have some nights where we stay up later (but always wake at the same time) but for now, your body could need a lot more sleep than it will in the future. We want to be very disciplined about our light usage and how we view natural light for our circadian hormones.
We need to sleep so that we can restore, regenerate and repair which begins at 9 pm. If we are not getting deep sleep in stages 3 and 4 of sleep, our bodies do not have the chance to repair as they need to. We repair, release growth hormones which are crucial for tissue repair and muscle growth, regenerate skin cells, engage in protein synthesis, the detoxification system detoxes the body, enzymes break down food, the lungs clean themselves, the large intestines use water and vitamins, the brain cleans itself via the glymphatic system and the microbes in your body are very busy.
If you eat 2 hours before bedtime, you will not make your human growth hormone. This is such a tiny piece of what is actually happening but hopefully you can begin to see how hard the body is working and understand the need to support this process!
Waking in the Night
If we are waking in the night, we can get a good idea of where our body needs extra support by comparing the time to the Chinese body clock. For example, “lung time” is 3 am to 5 am so if you were waking often at that time, you may be experiencing trapped grief or your lungs may benefit from more attention to breathing, crying and mullein tea.
We want complete darkness when we sleep even if that requires a silk eye mask. Women especially need zero LUX when sleeping. Some people will benefit from sounds such as water sounds or white noise while sleeping if they are waking easily. Also, please do not use bird sounds or other daytime noises, any music should be soft and instrumental only, no books or podcasts, etc.
Amanita Muscaria
Some may benefit from using Amanita Muscaria, a powdered mushroom as it is very supportive for hormones, including the circadian hormones. You can order from MN Nice Ethnobotanicals as it is just the pure mushroom powder.
MN Nice Ethnobotanicals — Amanita Muscaria powder
Make 1/4 teaspoon into a tea and you use a squirt of lemon. Try having in the evening or morning or both, you will find what works for you. Have for 3 weeks and take a 10 day break, you will know if you need to have it again for another three weeks. Please refer back to Week 8 if you are still not sleeping well.
Mimicking the Ancestral Rhythm
We are here to get back to our basic needs so our body can do what it was created to do. Try to imagine a time before electricity and modern distractions. We would have woken naturally with or before the sun and we would have been sleepy and cozy after the sun went down. We would have slept deeply in darkness and not woken in the night. This is what we want to mimic in our modern lives so that we can experience health and joy!
Make friends with JOMO (joy of missing out), end your busyness in the afternoon, have a cup of tea and chat with the family or cuddle up outside with a good book, get all your sleepy things ready and climb into your comfortable nest to begin practising your sleep habits. Wake at the same time every day, without fail, do your cold therapy right away and get the light in your eyes and pay attention to your light intake throughout the day.
Hyperinsomnia and NSDR
If you are experiencing hyperinsomnia, you will know because you do not sleep at night but fall into REM during a daytime nap. I know it is difficult, but make sure to wake at the same time everyday even if you go to the couch or a pallet on the floor next to the bed and do a body scan. You may go into non sleep deep rest and that is OK. NSDR is very restorative and not a nap. If you do fall asleep, give yourself grace and do not worry about it, this will change over time.
Remember that the only way your SCN knows what time it is, is to receive information from light. Love your body and give it the good food, light, movement, sound, posture/breathing, community, nature and SLEEP!
Goodnight all and sleep tight!