Posts Tagged ‘sleep’
If Wishes Were…
I’ve said it before. Be careful what you wish for. All sorts of spontaneity came my way yesterday at work. Why doesn’t it ever work this well when I decide I am going to visualize being on an all expense paid luxury vacation? The hardest thing about practicing being unattached to outcomes, when it comes to work, is that outcomes are the principle objective. 
The day-job is consuming a bulk of my available resources lately. I’m always impressed by the simple and pretty much by-the-book obvious presentation of stress when it plays out in the way my mind slows down under the extra load. That response is quickly joined by a wave of fatigue that longs to be treated with sleep. If I’m payin’ just a bit of attention to the obvious, and aware enough to cut myself some slack, the stress is manageable. The fatigue is no big deal. My liver needed the sleep, anyway. I went to bed at a decent hour last night. So, bring on the day, I say!
I’m going to spend it secretly visualizing a tropical island while I’m working.
Speaking of Sleep
The very best moment of each day, especially when practicing being in the moment, has got to be when you lie down, stretch out, and relax to go to sleep. Since it is ever so hard for my mind to remain focused on the present moment, I lie down and enjoy the thought that I am on the front end of the whole rest of the night’s sleep. I’m thinking ahead, already.
Often times, when I know I have shorted myself sleep, I consider the nap as one of my remedies. But somewhere, I recently read about amounts of sleep and how it related to healing the liver. The guideline was 11:00 p.m. for the time to get to sleep to allow proper time for healing the liver. I did some crude internet searching to see a variety of descriptions of how many tasks the liver works to accomplish and how much time it takes to achieve, and it makes sense to me why someone came up with the 11:00 guideline. Cyndie and I have allowed that time to become a reference point and usually use it in a wisecrack that curiously combines both our doubt over the simplicity of the claim and reverence for the likely wisdom contained in the principle.
The thinking that led to the 11 p.m. milestone is that many different body functions accomplish their growth, healing and rejuvenating recovery when we sleep and not all of it happens simultaneously; there is a sequence. There needs to be enough time in our sleep cycle to allow a few things to shut down and processes to occur before the liver can begin the serious work it is tasked with and then a chunk of what appears to be agreed as around 3 hours allowed for that to get finished. If we give ourselves enough time for sleep, as in the oft said 8 hours, our physical body has time to do what it is designed to do. Imagine this: optimal health results.
As for that nap as a remedy to shorting myself sleep, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t allow time for my liver to heal.
Relative Something 