The Tilted Halo
The Tilted Halo podcast has a refreshing and honest perspective on the challenges pastors face in their ministry and those involved in ministry as a whole. Hosted by Pastor Kathleen Panning, who has seen it all, this edgy show explores the idea that we all have a "tilted halo" - a recognition that we are not perfect and all make mistakes.
Through personal experiences, interviews with fellow pastors, leaders, and insights from scripture, this show offers advice and encouragement for those struggling with the weight of their imperfections. From burnout and rude awakenings to personal failures and shortcomings, The Tilted Halo provides a safe space for pastors to share their struggles and find support from a community of like-minded souls around the globe.
With a focus on authenticity, vulnerability, and humanity at large, this podcast challenges the notion that pastors must have it all together and invites listeners to embrace their humanity and lean into the grace of God. Whether you are a pastor or someone looking for a fresh perspective on life's challenges, The Tilted Halo is a must-listen in the search for hope, healing, and a renewed sense of purpose.
The Tilted Halo
EP 56: Beyond Sleeping Pills: Rediscovering Our Natural Sleep Rhythms
Ever found yourself staring at the ceiling at 3 AM, frustrated that you're not sleeping "like you should"? You're not alone—and surprisingly, you might not even have a problem.
Dr. Lucinda Sykes, a retired physician and mindfulness expert who directed the Meditation for Health Clinic in Toronto, joins us again to reveal fascinating truths about our natural sleep patterns. Contrary to popular belief, sleep naturally evolves as we age. After 30, we lose about 10 minutes of sleep per decade, experience more nighttime awakenings, and often shift to earlier bedtimes and wake times. These aren't disorders—they're normal biological changes.
Perhaps most fascinating is the historical context: before electric lighting, people typically experienced "segmented sleep"—sleeping for about four hours, waking for an hour or two (often for prayer or contemplation), then returning for a "second sleep." This pattern wasn't considered problematic; it was simply how humans slept for centuries. Dr. Sykes shares research showing indigenous Maori elders view nighttime awakenings as opportunities for spiritual practice rather than sleep failures—a perspective that brings peace instead of frustration.
Modern interventions like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI) now recommend approaches that align with these historical patterns—getting out of bed when sleep won't come, engaging in calm activities with dim lighting, and returning when sleepiness returns. Dr. Sykes offers practical suggestions like listening to scripture readings or "sleep stories" that engage the mind gently without creating the counterproductive "sleep efforting" that actually increases stress.
The key lesson? Our attitude toward sleep may cause more problems than our actual sleep patterns. By approaching sleep with cultivation rather than achievement in mind, we can reduce unnecessary suffering and find more peace with our natural rhythms.
Go to lucindagift.com for Dr. Sykes' free "Happy Sleep Secrets" guide and discover how to nurture your sleep naturally, without medication.
Welcome to the Tilted Halo. This is a new podcast and it's for anybody who's a woman in ministry. You might be a pastor like myself, a bishop, a priest, a rabbi, music minister, elder children's minister whatever your title is. You're absolutely in the right place, especially if you're someone who loves your ministry and you're doing it well and you're feeling pressure to sometimes be perfect and deep down inside, you know you're not. And how in the world to deal with that? And men, you're absolutely welcome here too, because this is about ministry and the same thing can happen to you. So you're all in the right place. Let's get started with the show. Welcome to the Tilted Halo, and I am your host, pastor Kathleen Panning. I am here today with a wonderful guest and we're doing either part one or part two, depending upon which one you listen to.
Speaker 1:First, of a conversation with Dr Lucinda Sykes. She is a retired Canadian physician. A longtime teacher of mindfulness. She directed the Meditation for Health Clinic in Toronto, helping more than 6,000 patients who were referred for medical programs of stress reduction. Since retiring from medical practice, dr Lucinda continues public speaking and private coaching of women after 50. Her work is based on the science of deep, natural sleep throughout life, especially helping people reduce their need for sleeping pills, and so the other part of this interview. We talked specifically about some of the new science and not so new science about sleeping pills and the problems that can arise from them. But we want to talk today, dr Lucinda, about sleep and help us understand kind of the journey of natural sleep throughout our lifetime.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, this is a fascinating topic. Sleep changes over our lifespan. That's what the science shows us, and, of course, most of science is based on large populations of people, so an individual can have a unique story, but the tendency is, for example, when we are in mother's womb much of the time we're dreaming. Dream sleep is very active at certain stages of fetal life and then, through the childhood, our sleep also evolves so that by the time we're in our 20s, we're having well, this is what sleep is about. And then, however, sleep continues to evolve, and we know that sleep tends to shorten in duration. We have shorter sleep as we get into more mature years. Some of the statistics are that after the age of 30, you lose maybe 10 minutes off of your average sleep for each decade that you're past 30. So as the decades continue to mount, your sleep gets a little shorter. You may find that you have increased what we call sleep latency. It takes you a little while longer to fall asleep. You could find that your sleep becomes a little, shall we say, fragmented. You awaken more frequently in the middle of the night and you may find it takes you a little longer to fall back to sleep. And many of us in the later decades, we start to realize that, hey, I'm getting sleepy a little earlier than I used to. In the teens, you stayed up until three in the morning, but as an older person, you tend to want to go to sleep earlier and then, by gosh, you wake up early in the morning as well. So there's a change in the timing of your sleep and this is all. It's just nature. It does not mean that you are sick, it does not mean that something should be fixed, but it does mean that your mind can get upset by this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I had one interviewer say well, how can I get myself to sleep like a baby? That's what I want. I want to sleep like a baby. Now, aside from the fact that babies, they have pretty chaotic sleep, if you have a baby at home, you know that they're waking up a lot too. But this idea that I think my sleep should be like this and it's not so, there's something wrong. Often, what we're dealing with is our own attitude rather than a biological problem. In other words, you do not have an illness. You do not have an illness, and a skilled physician would be able to listen to your tale of you know I'm waking up more often or I don't sleep like I used to. A skilled physician could listen to that and maybe offer you some of the same information that I'm offering you right now.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It would be more helpful if more physicians in my experience would offer some of that information about the natural patterns of sleep as we age. I think about my own mother who is in her 90s and she complains frequently that oh, I didn't sleep much, or I didn't sleep at all last night, I you know that kind of thing, or having to get up more frequently to use the restroom and um the the interruptions of sleep. But then I know she naps often during the day and that fragmentation of sleep feels like somebody maybe didn't sleep at all.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and there's much that could be made of what you've just said. For example, it is common that we have increased sleeping in later years, later decades. But also one is encouraged not to increase napping. One is encouraged not to overdo the napping because the more you nap during the day, the less sleep drive you have for the nighttime. So that's just a small point there. In fact, more useful maybe, as you cite your mother's so common experience behind it all is the assumption that, hey, it's nighttime, I should be sleeping, but in other cultures that's not necessarily the viewpoint.
Speaker 2:I found a great study published by researchers in New Zealand. I came out just in 2022, I think the dates are on that and they assembled two groups of people. Both were groups of senior years over 55. One group were of European extraction that was, their ethnicity, european-based or European-origin New Zealanders and the other group were Aboriginal Maori. They were Maori. And then there was those who were more in the European culture and the Maori also were sleeping less as mature adults and having more fragmented sleep.
Speaker 2:But you know, it wasn't an issue. In fact, it was a very interesting study. They were interviewing people about their sleep and the Maori were more likely to say well, this is what happens as you get older, you don't sleep as much. And they were interpreting it in a cultural and a spiritual way and they were using that time when they're not sleeping at night using it for a spiritual, spiritual practice. Okay, they interviewed a man who was ethnic Maori, who was making sacred carvings during the night, and another woman took it as a call to arise and to engage in spiritual practice. And you know, this is in our Christian tradition as well, our European tradition. Uh-huh, in Western Europe, the social scientists tell us that prior to the onset of electric lighting, you know, in the pre-industrial years, people tended to sleep in segments. There would be a first sleep and then a second sleep with an intervening hour or two. And this was how it was. And very interesting how people spent this time Many times it was spent in prayer and other devotional activity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think of some of the spiritual practices where there are the keeping of the hours, as it was called, and there are things for what most of us consider the middle of the night, for what most of us consider the middle of the night, like 3 am or something on that order, as a time for a spiritual prayer time, and that's really interesting to hear that that basically fit in with some natural sleep patterns.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and it opens up a whole new way of viewing nighttime sleeplessness, mm-hmm, an entirely different attitude. And it's about the attitude Right and awaken in the middle of the night and the mind says I should be able to sleep. What's wrong with me, I'm going to be busy tomorrow, and so on, and so on and so on. Or one can awaken and be present for a period and then maybe arise from one's bed and engage in spiritual practice, and at a certain point you will feel tired or sleepy again and you return to your bed. And this is ancient tradition in Christian practice too.
Speaker 1:So would it be more important to leave the bed to do that and then come back when you're sleepy?
Speaker 2:Very, very perceptive question, kathleen. In part, I'm influenced by a therapeutic program called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, and this is now the gold standard approach to sleep problems. Forget the sleeping pills. Instead, look to CBTI, as the acronym goes Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. And in that system, that psychotherapeutic system, when we awaken at night, we lie there for a few minutes, not able to sleep, so to speak. We're not looking at the clock, so we're never sleeping with a clock staring us in the face. We've got the clock, if anything, looking the other direction, and then, after a period of time, maybe 15 minutes or so, we say well, it looks like I'm not going to be sleeping right now. And then you get out of your bed.
Speaker 2:Here's what classic CBTI advises you arise from your bed, keep the lights dim and then enter into an activity that is restful or relaxing, and hey, you like it. I have a little lady who liked to read children's books, and I've also had ladies who fold their laundry or do puzzles or you know many different calming, restful activities and then you will eventually feel sleepy again. If it is, you know, in the middle of the night you feel sleepy again and you return to your bed, and that's what was going on in Western Europe during those times of segmental sleep. That period usually lasted for about an hour or two and, by the way, again and again in the research we hear that those intervening hour or two is very calming. In fact, some research shows that we have a prolactin hormone which makes us feel very calm during that time.
Speaker 1:So when somebody then gets up for the day, so to speak, do they really feel rested?
Speaker 2:So, again, there's going to be lots of reply to your question. The odds are they're going to feel just fine. That's what they were in Western Europe for hundreds we could guess thousands of years. That was what it was like to be a human being. You would have a first segment of sleep, was about four hours or so, and then there'd be a gap. You're doing what you will often, as I say, engaged in the spiritual practice and then there's another period of sleep that was called the second sleep, and then you awaken and eventually arise into the day.
Speaker 1:So you're talking about a total period of time of maybe 10 hours talking about a total period of time of maybe 10 hours. Well, in the later decades you might be sleeping seven hours, even six and a half hours do you get after, yes, a couple of hours, and again, our modern tendency is to time it all.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, I'm thinking just that. The amount of sleep that most Westerners get, which I mean these days, if somebody gets an eight-hour night, that's pretty good. Yes, and many people it's like six hours of time actually in bed. So the idea of being awake for an hour or two, it's like there goes the rest of the night. That's what's going on in my head with all of it.
Speaker 2:So it depends if you have allowed yourself time to sleep, or if you have just given yourself a somewhat narrow window for sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then your alarm clock is going to sound at 7 o'clock and up you get.
Speaker 1:Yes. So alarm clock is going to sound at seven o'clock and up your get. Yes. So for those of us in this culture which is fast-paced and sleep is not valued perhaps as much, that can be part of the stress of I'm not sleeping right now.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, kathleen, and that's often what I'm speaking to. As I mentioned, it's about attitude. You could even argue that 50% of our sleep problem is the outcome of our attitude.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and there's an option to it. Yeah, your question is really pointing at the heart of contemporary life. We even have research now about something that's called sleep procrastination. Modern people have the habit of putting off their bedtime. I do that. They just put it off, yeah, and the researchers are showing now that this causes them to suffer from sleep deprivation, because, you know, they still have to get up at 7 o'clock and go to work, and so they don't have sufficient time in which to get all the sleep that their body wants and needs yes and needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are driving themselves asleep, yeah yeah, and so part of it is our attitude towards sleep and our cultural expectations around how much work needs to get done in a day.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's a good question. Yeah, yeah, because the Europeans at this time this is, you know, 17th century and earlier. It was true for everybody.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, they would have a segmented sleep.
Speaker 1:That was the norm and that was just how people lived yeah, there have been a few occasions where, uh, the power is out in the house and, um, you know, after the sun goes down there's not a whole lot you can do, yes, and so procrastinate. Yeah, it's like, well, might as well go to bed, type of thing, and that seems like what was happening before electric lights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that seems to be our biology. There was even one researcher who did that on purpose. He got volunteers to go without lighting and watch their sleep pattern over a few weeks, and over a few weeks they started to have this pattern of segmented sleep. There would be a first sleep and then a gap and then a second sleep. And he's the one who discovered that, during that gap of an hour or two, that they were experiencing heightened levels of prolactin hormone and prolactin hormone, by the way, is what hens experience when they're sitting on their eggs. Prolactin hormone helps us. We have good feelings and we're kind of calm, and that's often what we hear in the research around this couple of hours. Now, of course, if your mind is busy saying, well, this shouldn't be happening to me, I should be sleeping, what am I going to do tomorrow? And so on and so on, you won't be experiencing the calm.
Speaker 2:But, CBTI modern system now. But maybe they've stumbled onto something they recommend if you're not able to sleep, just get out of your bed and do something calming and relaxing and forget this mind that's going on about. I should get to sleep. I should get to sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's one thing. I have something here for your audience. Cbti, and sleep science more generally, warns us against what they call sleep effort. Efforting trying to get to sleep has nothing to do with sleeping. In fact, sleep efforting disturbs our sleep because it causes stress.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So probably I interrupted you there.
Speaker 1:Well, it fits right in. So probably I interrupted you there well, it fits right in. I was going to ask about, uh, you know, other than the get up and do something relaxing when you can't sleep and you'll wake up in the middle of the night, type of thing, what else, uh, what? What is another easily done thing that listeners, viewers, can do to help themselves, naturally without pills and things like that, have better sleep?
Speaker 2:Well, my favorite suggestion for my Christian clients is I suggest that they get a recording of the scriptures being read by a lovely voice, a person who's reading the scriptures and just giving you the scriptures. They're not talking about the scriptures, they're not analyzing it. Instead, they're just, for example, giving you Genesis and you can lie there in your bed. You don't even need to get out of bed and you can listen there in your bed. You don't even need to get out of bed and you can listen to the scriptures and you do not need to be analyzing them or interpreting them, because, hey, you can always go back tomorrow and do that and instead you can just feel the the flow of our great tradition and then just just revel in the in the scriptures and the lovely voice of the believer who is reading the scriptures to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've also heard about people who use like white noise or now there's green noise and brown noise and different things like that to do to help people sleep or sounds of nature.
Speaker 2:Yes, that can be very helpful to accompany sleep, especially if the environment is noisy. But if you have a time of wakefulness, you want to engage the mind, because often our mind is unsettling us and in part it's saying I should be able to sleep, what's wrong? And instead you give your mind something to experience and you give your mind. Well, in the general psychology they call it a sleep story. We put on a recording of a sleep story. You know, a lovely voice was telling you about this trip to the museum. There are sleep stories, lots of sleep stories. Now you can even go online and you will find sources for sleep stories even on YouTube. The problem with YouTube is you're going to get occasionally interrupted by an ad.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know a voice that just wants to tell you about her trip to Italy, and it's not a kind of engaging chat about Italy, but instead they're saying and so I walked on the cobblestone path down to the church in the distance and I entered through the doorway and this is what I saw, and you just lie there and listen to this and you will probably eventually fall asleep.
Speaker 1:And probably not want to have a lot of visual of that, or would they want to watch it or just listen?
Speaker 2:you, I would not watch it at all. I would listen, I would judge it'll be entirely a story, because you want the lights to be off, even blackness, if that doesn't disturb you or you know dim lighting anyway, and you want to be there in your comfortable bed and, uh, just listen to the, the story and you feel you know the narrator really intends well for you and you just bathe yourself in this and very likely you will fall to sleep. Let it be a lengthy sleep story a couple of hours, so if you should happen to awaken, it's continuing for a while more and you can just enter back into the story and be very useful. I've recommended this to quite a number of clients now. But just find the narrator that you like, the stories that you like and so on. And again, if it's youtube, well, maybe you take that option where you get rid of all the ads how about that, but that's so interesting to to have that I.
Speaker 1:I know that there are other places people can find resources for sleep online and with mindfulness types of things.
Speaker 2:It can be communicated to you without efforting. Yeah, the risk is that someone wants to teach you mindfulness. Yeah, or teach you mindfulness so you get alert and say I'm going to learn mindfulness.
Speaker 1:No, you don't want to do that at night.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. Because see mindfulness. And, for one thing, mindfulness is not a technique, it's not a way to get yourself to sleep, it's not a remedy. And that's true for all of meditation. If it's ascetic meditation, it's not trying to get you someplace else, it's just reminding you that you are here and it's again helping you with your attitude. You have the attitude of meditation rather than the attitude of accomplishing a goal, because once you're trying to accomplish a goal, then the stress comes in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so interesting. I've been in groups where there's a meditation being done and something like that. I end up sometimes falling asleep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there we go, kathleen.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's like I wanted to do the meditation and here I am falling asleep.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that was what the body wanted. So yeah, we can go with the body, we can trust her we, yeah, so it's.
Speaker 1:It's always an interesting, interesting journey with things like that. There's so much more here we could talk about dr lucinda, um and to to learn about. So, uh, are you online somewhere or where people can hear more about you or get resources from you?
Speaker 2:Oh well, a basic offering I have is my PDF Happy Sleep Secrets, and it's a collection of basic science ways to cultivate your sleep, to care for your sleep. I call it like gardening. I love to garden and you know you go into your garden and you're not trying to fix or change things. You're going into the garden and caring for her, making sure that there's enough, you know water, and you cultivate yourself and over time, the months go by and your garden is flourishing and Happy Sleep Secrets gives you what the science shows are the foundational self-care techniques.
Speaker 2:Happy Sleep Secrets is available at I made it easy, lucindagiftcom. So that's all. Lucindagiftcom. So that's all squirted lucindagiftcom. Take you to Happy Sleep Secrets. If you sign up for Happy Sleep Secrets, I put in the email address and then you'll get some of my emails, okay, and that will be offering this information. In fact, I do have, you know, courses and coaching programs and so on, but that's all indicated in Happy Sleep Secrets and my emails are not trying to sell you stuff. My emails are offering you more information, such as that we've been doing in our meeting here today.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much, Lucinda. Gifts plural gifts no no, it's just one.
Speaker 2:Oh, lucinda gift. The secrets are in one gift. This day, listen the gift, singular gift giftcom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's wonderful, wonderful. Thank you so much for this, dr lucinda, and um, I'll see if we can put up a link with the show about, uh, your gift for both episodes here so that people can uh find out more about wonderful, sweet secrets and everything and it's it's so important for our own health, for the health of the people we work with and, yeah, uh, our own health, for the health of the people we work with, and you know our own meditation practices and things like that. So, thank you so much. I know you do speaking and so if somebody is interested in speaking, get the lucendagiftcom.
Speaker 2:And my email address is there and all that material. So, the viewers, please send me an email. I reply to every message and tell me what's on your mind and I'll get back to you. Okay, the pleasure of my life now is to offer this information, indeed.
Speaker 1:So helpful. Thank you so much, and God's peace and blessings to everyone who is watching and to you, dr Lucinda, especially as well. So wonderful to be with you. Thank you. You have been listening to Tilted Halo with me, kathleen Panning. What did you think about this episode? I'd really like to hear from you. Leave me some comments, be sure to like, subscribe and share this episode and catch another upcoming episode. For more conversation on ministry, life mindset and a whole lot more, go to wwwtiltedhalohelpcom, where I've got a resource guide and other resources waiting for you, and be sure to say hi to me, kathleen Panning, on LinkedIn. See you on the next episode.