Feel free to say "Duh!", but the best way to eliminate unwanted chatter in the mind, improve focus and concentration, banish anxiety and nervousness of an origin you can't work out, reduce the disabling effects of feeling overly self-conscious and over-analysis of everything which leads to you limiting yourself, improve the clarity and quality of your thoughts, increase your conviction and confidence in any decisions that you make, reduce the rattling bodily tensions and tightness in the chest which has no obvious psychological reason to be there, improve the quality of spontaneous ideas which just come to you without having to try, increase your willingness to accept and respond in the moment to the chaotic randomness of daily life...etc etc etc...
The best way to achieve all this in one fell swoop, for FREE TOO! - is by getting 8 hours of blissful deep sleep. I know. Duh!!!
Whenever I'm fortunate enough to have such a rejuvenating gift bestowed upon me I praise and give thanks to Hypnos as soon as I arise - The God of Sleep. Mate! You da real MVP!!!
But in addition to my belief that a fictitious Greek deity is responsible for my peaceful slumber, there must be a science, or at least, concrete measures I can take to maximise the chances of sleeping well. 3 things that were different about last night's sleep which I'll be trying again tonight to see if it wasn't just a fluke were:
1. Using a sleeping mask to block out all light. I don't want the sun to wake me "naturally" thanks. I'd rather have some more quality Zzzzzzzzz... instead. The actual truth which led to this revelation that everyone apart from me already knows was that I fell asleep with my virtual reality headset on again. This is something I unintentionally do often, and friends who have photographed me in this dystopian state have been compelled to create albums with these images because it looks so weird.
2. Bed is set at a slight decline to utilise gravity. Two notches of wood of around 1/2 inch were placed underneath the legs connected to the headboard. Not noticeable enough to feel like I was kipping on a slope, but enough to encourage bodily fluids to continue on their natural paths and not to remain stagnant as they normally would do on a perfectly horizontal mattress.
3. Pillow height and shape was fashioned to fit the space in between my shoulder and head perfectly, so that both head, but more importantly, my neck, felt wonderfully cradled when sleeping on my side.
Again, these mundane insights are probably what many people do anyway, but I think there are also a lot of people who just jump into bed and hope for the best, who see sleep as a game of Russian Roulette for their mind and body. Sleep is where your day starts before it starts so it's crucial this period is as high a quality as you can make it. I feel the same way about the importance of comfortable footwear and the use of insoles to correct one's gait, but can't be arsed going into that right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment