If you are fortunate enough to live to be
eighty you will have spent between 24 to 30 years of your
lifetime asleep. For an activity that takes so much
of our time, to be so little understood is a mystery to me.
We sleep because we are tired. Tired mentally or physically,
but most likely a little bit of both.
I have spent a great deal of my life
sitting. Sitting behind keyboards. Sitting behind audio
consoles. Sitting on my sofa. Sitting in my car. We
humans have created a sedentary world. This is a phenomena
of the Age of Industry... with a huge kicker from the
Information Age. If our relatives from the mid-1800's
could see us now! I cannot imagine insomnia being that big
of issue in 1850. We worked with our hands. Getting from
here to there required energy. Life was more physical. Sleep
came more naturally. But that was then and this is now.
We sleep because the little ball ball we inhabit spins away
from our star every so many hours and creates darkness. In
the millions of years of life on this planet, it was the
darkness that was the great equalizer. The darkness shielded
us. We, like most all animals, overused our energy caches during
the day to survive. We recharged at night. It's simple math.
The biggest single reason for the explosion of insomnia in our
modern world is that we are not in balance with our genetic
predisposition to sleep cycles. By that I mean we are not
getting physically tired. I would advise any insomniac to do
some sort of physical exercise every single day. Walking is the easiest way to get right with the nature of
sleep. If you have limited use of your legs then work your
arms. Get your blood flowing and your heart pumping. Do it
religiously.
Of course, you don't need to take my word
for it. Just try it. Keep a sleep journal and track your
progress. I think you might be surprised on the improvement
to the quality and duration of your sleep.
