Q & A: How To Get Deeper Sleep, Overcome Fatigue and Have More Energy

Okay, so welcome back. Hope you enjoyed our webinar on sleep. And now I'll be answering your questions on your specific circumstances. Some of you may be suffering from ME, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Others may just be generally interested on how you can deepen your sleep. So I'll be answering only those questions that specifically about sleep, sleep rhythms and any stresses during the day that you may experience that you notice are interfering with sleep. So just to have a look at some of your questions and of course, let's start off with some shout outs. So I'd like to see who is joining us on the Q and A. So if you'd like to let me know your name and where you're tuning in from, once again, please do share this on your feeds. Give us a like thumbs up so we know you're out there. Okay? So just once again, please do put your questions into the Q and A box and then we'll be able to answer some of those questions for you. And whilst we're waiting for some of those questions to come in, you know, I've helped so many people get their sleep deeper and the first thing that they notice when they're getting that better, deeper quality of sleep is that their mood and emotions suddenly improve dramatically. You know, our sense of well being, our sense of happiness is very much determined by that depth of sleep. It's something that's really missing in terms of importance in our culture. And for those of you with me, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, you know, all of the brain retraining that we're doing in the Gupta program ultimately is aimed at helping us get that deeper level of sleep. That's the final thing that corrects itself to then put us on a virtual positive, a virtuous, positive spiral of health. Now, many of us may use drugs, benzos, other types of sleep medications, and we have to be very careful here because these sleep medications are designed for short term remedies for sleep. And yet often people are taking them for months and years because there is an addictive quality. And once you stop taking them, what happens is that actually you feel much worse and therefore you feel you have to keep taking them so they become habit forming. So of course, please do check that with your doctor. If you're already on some sleep medications, I'm not saying stop it, please consult your doctor. But what I am saying is if you do the research, you'll know that these sleep medications are only designed for short term benefits, not to be on them long Term. Okay, someone's saying, I'm not finding the Q and A on Facebook. Well, I think this is the Q and A, is it not? Okay, so let's just go to your questions now. So once in, Jerryanne from New York. Hello again to you, Joe from Israel. A big shout out for you. I think it's Maya or Marja from Stockholm. Joy asking, is the app available for those of us who don't use apps? Yes. So at our website, which is www.themeaningoflife tv, there you can access all the meditations and all the videos for free on that website by logging in there. Desiree saying, I have problems falling asleep. Sometimes I lay awake for one or two hours before I fall asleep and I wake in the middle of the night and then have to go to the bathroom. How to get uninterrupted sleep. I'm from the Netherlands. Hi there, Desiree. Well, once again, it's about diagnosing and understanding why is it that I'm finding it difficult to fall asleep. And one of the ways of noticing this is simply to close your eyes. So let's just imagine this. Now imagine it's those last couple of hours before we're going to sleep and closing our eyes and noticing our bodies, just becoming aware of our bodies and noticing, is there any tension or tightness in our body? Where do we notice that agitation? Is it in our muscles, in our legs? In our minds? Are we feeling smooth and relaxed? Or are we feeling agitated in our body? And that becomes a clue as to why we're not getting to sleep. Because the agitation is an example of that fight or flight response still continuing. And in those situations, something that can really help us that we didn't mention in the webinar is the slow motion technique. So in those final two hours before you're going to sleep, doing everything slower, talking slower, moving slower, speaking to our friends and family, or playing with our kids, all slower and in a more relaxed way, 30 to 40% slower. And when we do that, what happens is that the nervous system gets a signal. Oh, it's time to wind down towards sleep now. Okay. And all the tips and tricks that we went through, the mental, emotional and behavioral changes that we talked about in the first part of our webinar, by putting those into practice, that should support us getting to sleep and staying asleep. And to get back to sleep, meditation can help. And also the soften and flow. All of these things are designed to help us sleep. Something we didn't mention is actually a nighttime walk. So I Don't know what your levels of ability are, but actually going for a walk in the evenings after dinner once again has been shown to calm and relax the body. Ready for sleep. Okay, good. And I hope you get a chance to put all the other things into practice. Kathy asking what to do when I get an adrenaline jolt, it's keeping me from getting to sleep or I wake after sleeping. What's the best thing to do? Now that is once again an example of where the body is not feeling fully relaxed or the mind is not feeling fully relaxed. So just like the example of the pressure cooker here, when we that jolt is a little pressure coming out of the pressure cooker, waking up the whole system with those pent up fears and emotions that we collect during the day. So once again I'd reflect on what is it that's stressing me out during the day and keeping a thought diary and any negative thoughts that you have during the day, getting them out of your mind and putting them on paper so they're out of your system so that you don't need to think about them during the night. I do think those adrenaline jolts are an example of our brain trying to process unresolved emotions and worries during the night. So can we write them down and getting them out of our system? Marie from Maas, Nina from Stockholm. We've got quite a few people from Sweden here. Sorel saying, can you say something for people who wake up at 3 o' clock in the morning and can't get back to sleep? Yes. So what's happening there is we have our deepest sleep rhythms earlier on during the night. So between 10:30 and about 4:00 clock in the morning we have our deeper sleep rhythms and then they become lighter and lighter as morning arrives, which makes sense evolutionary. Therefore, if we've got, you know, we naturally find we're not getting deep sleep or those worries are waking us up, it will be around 3, 4, 5 o' clock that we wake up and we find it difficult to get back to sleep. Now when that happens, the most important thing, don't panic, stay calm and get back to sleep. And the way that we do that is by understanding what helps us get back to sleep. Some people notice that they feel a bit hungry, especially if they're hypoglycemic, and they find that having some slow releasing carbs, such as some whole grain rice cakes or some oats or a banana, that can help them drift back off to sleep. A banana can also help ground as well, also an apple. So an Apple has been shown to have sleep inducing chemicals if we eat an apple at night. So I'd recommend all of us to sleep at sleep to eat an apple at night. So then it's about finding out what works for us. So do I need some slow releasing carbohydrates to help drift me back to sleep? Have I got lots of worries in my mind, in which case let me write them down and get them out of my system? Is it that I need to relax my muscles so I listen to a softening flow technique to help calm the muscles? Is it that my mind's just a bit busy and actually listening to the get back to sleep meditation in the app will help me get back to sleep. So I'd like you to experiment with those different things and see what works for you. Annie says, is there any difference between actively using a tablet for things like games and social media and just reading on a properly light adjusted tablet? Of course there's a difference. So if you're reading on a Kindle or something similar, that's better than actually using a tablet for what I call a lean forward experience, which is actively trying to get an outcome. However, there has been research that shows that reading a book is even less stimulating than reading a Kindle or a tablet. The reason being there's something more natural for our nervous system to physically see the book, the pages. There is something that they notice is more relaxing for the nervous system than reading on a tablet. Having said that, reading on a tablet is absolutely fine. Helen's saying, because I have me, I need to spend over two hours a day in bed resting. I find it difficult to sleep for more than five to six hours because of this. How can I get more sleep at night? Helen, I'd like for you to try reducing your daytime nap slowly and then increasing the amount of time that you spend in bed at night. And even if you're not asleep by spending longer than six hours. So let's say you're spending eight hours in bed, at least that is signaling to your nervous system that that's the normal and right thing to do. We want to, all of us, we want to aim for at least seven to eight hours of sleep at a minimum to keep up our overall general health. And if we've got me and fibromyalgia, we want to be having at least eight to nine hours in bed in one go, lengthening our sleep as long as possible because we're not getting that deep sleep. So we want to lengthen it in the best way possible. So I'd like you to experiment with that. Okay, so lots of great questions here. So we've only got 15 minutes left, so I'm just going to pick out some questions I haven't answered already or are slightly different. Maya, saying I have fibro and pain is often stopping me from getting a good night's sleep. How can I get good sleep even if I'm in pain? That's a very good question. Now, of course, the overall Gupta program, where we're brain retraining that can support us in reducing that daytime overstimulation and inflammation, which then can reduce pain and inflammation at night. So often the things that we do in the morning and our daytime rituals around brain retraining can reduce that inflammation and pain so that we can have better sleep at night. If you're finding that during the night it's hard to sleep because of the pain, the most important thing is to say it's actually okay, I have pain, but that doesn't mean that I can't sleep. Because sometimes we get it into our minds that because we have pain, we're not going to be able to sleep. And we justify that to ourselves and it becomes a belief in our own minds. Now, that may not be the case. I'm just giving that as an example. Secondly, by using the soften and flow process, we train our mind to be more centered in the presence of these symptoms in our body. So I'd like you to practice with the soften and flow. Whenever you're waking up, you're noticing pain. Practicing the soften and flow is saying, hey, I can be the eye of the storm. I can be calm and centered. Whilst this storm of emotions and pain is going on around me, there are no quick and simple solutions to that pain and how it might be waking you up. But I'd like you to try to say, I can still have better sleep, if not perfect sleep, but I can have better sleep by using some of these tools. Okay? So once again, I've answered quite a few of these questions. Why do I feel my rika asking why do I feel my heart vibrates strangely at the moment that I almost fall asleep and consequently wake up again? When we are going to sleep, we actually naturally go through a stage of sleep, which is a hypnotic state. So the hypnotic state is that state between awake and asleep. And during that hypnotic phase, we can get little jerks and we can get little heart flutters. Obviously, if you're concerned about it, you can ask your doctor, but it's just that kind of Transition to sleep and we can have little sudden jerks in the body in terms of blocking sleep. Someone's asking, Dana's asking, is it okay to be on a screen at night if you're using the blue light blocking glasses or blue light blocking screen setting? As I said, it's okay to be watching TV if the TV's far away from you, but an actual screen near you and you actively using it, although you might have filtered out blue light, you are still engaging your nervous system. So I try to reduce that as much as possible and once again read an ebook or a a normal book instead. Irene also asking a similar question. So what to do if I fall asleep instantly but don't get that deep sleep until 4:00'? Clock? So I have very shallow sleep. I'm assuming you're someone who's probably suffering from me or fibro. So if that's the case, by using all of the tools together, just trust and have that faith that gradually the sleep will improve over time. It's not necessarily the first thing that improves because of all that daytime stimulation, but over time it will get better. What about Dana saying, what about essential oils for sleep? Yes. So we know that there is clinical evidence that the one oil that can help us get to sleep is lavender oil. So one thing you can do is if you have a diffuser, the acoustic diffusers are better than the burning diffusers. You can diffuse the lavender all around you, or you can put a few drops of lavender oil on your pillow. And that has been shown to help people sleep as well. So that's a good tip. Good thought there from Dana. Julia says, shall we expose ourselves to sunlight as early as possible or just when we get up anyway? Normal cortisol rises very early, but I would have to get up at that time unless I had to. No, let's be very clear. I'd like you to. For those of you who have a chronic condition, I'd like you to sleep in, in the mornings as long as possible with your eye mask. So you're getting as many deep delta wave cycles as you can manage. And once you're awake and you feel you can no longer sleep, then you take off your eye mask and at that point you expose yourself to a minimum of 20 minutes of bright daylight. And that ideally is going outside on or sitting in a window with bright sunlight coming in. Chia Le saying, does marijuana affect sleep cycles and does sleeping with phones and devices in the room affect it as well? So yes, marijuana, any kind of recreational drugs, especially cocaine, we know that they massively interfere with our sleep cycles. Our sleep cycles are so delicate, okay? And when we have recreational drugs, they influence and change our brain chemistry. And although we with marijuana may feel more relaxed with it and may feel it's easier to get to sleep, once again, studies show that our sleep definitely isn't as refreshing. So we feel more literally zoned out as people feel the next day as a result of those particular substances that are allow us to feel more awake and alert because we haven't had that depth of sleep. Heather saying, I have me, and if I sleep, have an afternoon nap, I generally sleep well, but if I don't have my nap, I struggle to sleep at night. Now, why would that be so? Very good question. And to be honest, there is no obvious answer to that. Some people find if they sleep too long during the day, then their sleep at night is worse. You're obviously finding if you sleep during the day, your sleep at night is better. It could be this example, once again, of the steam being released. So when you sleep at night, so you sleep during the day, it's almost meditative. It's releasing a lot of the steam during the day and the negativity and the stresses and strains so that at night your mind doesn't have to do that as much as. But once again, what I prefer you to do or try and experiment with this is to have longer, deeper meditations in the morning and in the evening, and then that can support releasing these stresses and strains and therefore, you know, bringing our sleep cycles back to normal. Jane, I sleep really deeply and I sleep from 11pm but I can't wake up in the morning. All right, so, Jane, have a think about what we've covered today in terms of what might be leaking the energy. Could it be the way that you're perhaps processing stress during the day? Because we may fall asleep and feel that we've been asleep all night, but the depth of the sleep may be compromised because we're pouring our energy out through bad diet or stresses and strains or overstimulation during the day. So it's having to think about what might be affecting that. Okay. Louis says, what do you think of prebiotics? I've heard that they're very helpful. Yes. So there are various prebiotics, probiotics that you can take that have been shown to slightly improve sleep. The studies haven't been definitive on that. And you can get a lot of these, you know, naturally good bacteria from fresh, natural yogurts. So studies have shown that even though there are These, you know, weird and wonderful sources of prebiotics and probiotics, actually, if you get them from natural fresh yogurts, unadulterated yogurts, that can give you what you need in terms of, you know, those, those kinds of good bacteria. What do. Annette's asking, what do we do about noise? Yes. So for some of us, we're quite sensitive, Our nervous systems are quite sensitive, therefore we wake easily to noise. You've mentioned earplugs are kind of waking you up as well. I wonder if you could get used to wearing earplugs. Yeah. I often go on meditation retreats where there are four people in a room and people snoring very, very loudly. And I find that wax earplugs specifically, so not the normal foam ones, which really don't do much, but the wax earplugs, if you put them in and create a seal in your ear, then you really find you can't hear anything at all. And they're generally quite comfortable because they sit snugly in your ear. So please have a go at with wax earplugs. Harriet saying, thanks, Ashok. I tend to sleep better since starting your program, but I tend to get woken up by barking dogs. Right, okay. So please try the, the wax earplugs there. Yep. Some people talking about medical marijuana and THC oil. So this is something that I haven't researched. So once again, I'm very open to new ideas. So if there is some research that you can send to the clinic about THC oil, any studies done on sleep, then we'll certainly have a look into that in the evenings. Gill's mentioned a very important point. It is useful to darken your environment. So in the mornings you want to have bright environments. After dinner you want to have low lit environments. And unfortunately, a lot of the bright lights that we have in our houses, especially the halogen bulbs and the bright spotlights, they're often in the cool phase of the spectrum, the bright white cool phase, cool light. And actually you want the warm light. So in the evenings, please make sure that you don't put on your main lights, but you use warm light lamps. So low level lighting, more yellowish lamps, and that will then not emit the blue, slight. The blue light spectrum. So very good, very good point, Gillespie. Joy said, how do we deal with worries about waking up the next day? Okay, well, that's obviously something that happens to a lot of people where you've got to wake up for an important event and somehow you can't sleep because you're just worried that you're not going to wake up. Now, I'm sure you're doing the obvious things like setting an alarm. How about setting several alarms or having someone in your household that can wake you up so that you, you know, you're not worried about waking up in the mornings because there's no benefit in worrying and telling yourself, I've never missed something in the past, so why would I miss something that's coming up now? Diane saying, yes, I have MCS and environmental sensitivities and I find that I'm awake for days when I have a reaction. Yes. You see, one thing we have to remember about chronic conditions, they are as a result of our nervous system and our immune system being on high alert over defending the body against dangers that aren't there. Why would your brain allow you to have deep, refreshing sleep when it wants you to deal with the source of the danger? So if that's the case, doing the overall Gupta program, where we learn to retrain our brain out of these over defensive responses. We learn about the importance of regular meditation, we learn about all the lifestyle shifts and changes we can make to support brain retraining, and we learn to retrain certain personality traits which may have contributed to overstimulation and getting those chronic conditions in the first place. When we put all of those things together, then we find that the sleep rhythms can begin to return to normal and we don't wake up so much in the middle of the night because our brain has got out of that over defense mode. And in our modern lifestyles, our modern way of living, our brains are far more in that over inflammatory state than they used to be, you know, a few hundred years ago. That's a good question there. All right, brilliant. So lots of further great questions. I think that I've probably answered most of them there. So I just want to say thank you so much for tuning in and watching this Facebook Live. Please do share. Certainly the first video, the live webinar where I went through all the content. Please do share that because that will now appear on the Gupta program feed. You can share that video with your friends and family on your own timeline as well, because we want loads and loads of people to really benefit from this knowledge. And if some of you are joining me for the three month coaching webinar series, we'll be there live on our webinar series on Monday. And we'll also be doing more of these live webinars on Facebook. So on the Meaning of Life Facebook page, the Gupta program page, we'll be doing a lot more of this Fireside Chats, as it were, because I really enjoy doing them. I hope you get a lot out of them and we can spread the love. So thank you so much for watching. I hope you have a good night's sleep tonight and wake up feeling refreshed and rejuvenated. Ready for your day ahead. Thanks and goodbye.