The Balance Blueprint: SLEEP

The sleep episode is here! In this episode we dive into the physical and spiritual aspects of sleep including why you are waking at 2 pm and some tactics to manage that.  Hint: its all about being centered!

Transcript

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Hey everybody. Welcome to Centered the Podcast. I'm your host, Leslie Braverman, and I'm sharing holistic content that reconnects you to your most centered self. From my background as a scientist and a yogi, that centered self is that place within you that is uplifted, energized, and knowing despite the chaos and demands of life. It's that place within you where you can become the portal of possibility. Today we're getting into a key component of the balance blueprint, which is good sleep. And it's an interesting timing because I'm working with my youngest on some sleep stuff right now, too. So it was just really ideal timing to step into this. And the thing that I notice the most about people with sleep right now is they often think of sleep as something that just happens at night. When the truth around sleep is it's about all of the habits that you do during the day as well as at night. And there's a lot of information on sleep hygiene. I'm just going to bring to you my understanding of it, what works for me and what works for my kids. And the key part is really understanding that being able to sleep well is about the balance between melatonin and cortisol. So if you're having a really stressful day or a really stressful time period of your life, a surge of activities, it's going to take that cortisol high and it's going to deplete melatonin, which is what you need for sleep. So rebalancing it is actually what so many of the tactics and suggestions on this podcast are about, is what you do during the day to bring your cortisol level into balance is going to greatly impact how well you sleep. So finding that balance is key. You can do it through breath work and exercise. You can do it through fresh air and nature. You can do it through positive self-talk. You can do it through just taking one-minute breaks during your workday to really come back to your centered self. There are a lot of different ways to manage your cortisol level. The next piece is that experience of when you go to sleep. So coming up with a sleep time that's consistent. This kind of goes back to our last podcast on creating habits. So when you create a habit where you are in bed and calm by 10 p.m., you're going to maximize the rest and repair cycle. And this is ancient wisdom. This is actually Ayurvedic wisdom that comes, it was written down millennia ago. I mean, it was like a long, long lifespan of knowledge, knowing that 10 p.m. switches from the activity of the day into the rest and repair cycle at night. So as soon as you step into a habit of being in bed and starting whatever calming activities you need to do to get yourself into that feeling of readiness for sleep is that's your time. Like just know that is the time that's going to benefit you the most long term. But the power and strength of sunlight to regulate the circadian rhythms, to regulate and help stimulate that melatonin melatonin cortisol balance can be done through clouds. So as long as I would go outside just for a couple minutes and look at the sun, working on getting that light ray of whatever form it's in at that time, maximally filtered through clouds, is fine, into the eyes, that's gonna really help and set you up for a really good sleep cycle. So little habits like this. So let's just review these before we go into the next one. So the moment you wake up, going out into fresh sunlight, creating a series of balanced habits for managing the cortisol melatonin balance, and then really prioritizing being in bed, ready to sleep by 10 p.m. to maximize your repair and your rest cycle. Those are great. Now that's the physical. Oh, I have one more thing. We can do one more thing. Some people do need to eat before bed. And like my youngest son, I was just saying, he's one of those people. So there are great foods that you can eat that will help you into this state. So anything with tryptophan, of course, can help. So some ideas are just like poultry. I'm a big fan of seeds before bed, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, chia hemp, that sort of thing. And then you could mix that with maybe like a little oats or quinoa. Those are also tryptophan-based foods. And if you need a little sweet, like my son does, a little bit of dates. So kind of thinking ahead, do you need to have a couple of bites of food because you have that, you're in that phase of your life where your metabolism is just so strong that you'll wake up hungry if you don't. And usually this is just for kids. Most adults, I think I could probably say all adults, benefit from having a very empty stomach while they sleep so that the cells are not working energetically to digest and they're working energetically on repair. And this is where we help our bodies flush out inflammation, where we're able to do stuff like I was just talking about in our last podcast, how I had where I'm healing a concussion. I really was very careful about when I ate, when I'm healing something maximum like that, because any energy used to digest food means it's not being sent in full capacity to the places that really need the repair. So, for example, when I was healing, intensely healing that first six months, I wouldn't eat after like 3 or 4 p.m. And this works very well. This is also very ancient wisdom. And again, I'm not I'm not giving you um prescriptions or medical advice, but I can tell you what was written in the Ayurvedic texts, I can tell you what worked for me, and I can tell you that was a unique situation where I was healing something really maximum. And it worked. It worked very well. It kept me on a very positive trajectory for healing. So now into kind of this other thing that's going on right now. This is the metaphysical side. So a lot of people, especially women, will wake up between 2 a.m. and 4 p.m. 4 a.m. And this is like a call from the higher self. This is a call to meditation. So if you're doing all the things, your cortisol level is balanced, you're doing all the sleep hygiene routines, and you're still waking up between these hours, this is a phone call from your higher self to get into meditation. And it's because the energies are so strong and you're becoming more energetically aware, you are being asked to start doing some meditation work. So if you are feeling this, you can do it laying down. You don't have to sit up. All you need to do, if you choose, is connect into the heart space with your breath and start seeing what happens. You can make an intentional phone call, so to speak, to your higher self by saying, I call on my higher self and start to see, sense, feel, imagine into that connection. And again, you can refer back to our first or second podcast on conscious connection with your soul and your higher self. That is the ask right now. And this is because the frequency on the planet, the energies on the planet are rising so much that the veil is thinning and we're able to get into connections with higher frequencies, aspects of ourselves, other beings that we couldn't before. And this is something that you can explore very much more easily in those hours of 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. And really, you can go 2 a.m. all the way to 6 a.m. These are the easiest hours to where the veil is thinnest to connect to higher frequencies of self and other energies as well. So give that a try because it can be very, very frustrating to be tossing and turning during those hours. I know I experienced that myself before I started getting really connected intentionally, like being at the spiritual gym, so to speak, during those hours of really understanding how to use and maximize that time for my best, really my best self, my best like centeredness. And then making sure that I had a plan to get myself back to sleep. And again, like I can't tell you what you can do medically, but one of the things that I did, especially during concussion, those early months, I took rescue remedy, which is flower essences. And I just took like half the dose because I didn't want to overdo anything. And I just wanted to kind of start playing with it. So I still have that on my bedside for the nights where I really need it. And it does help me fall back to sleep. I've also, my kids have tried it and it, they don't like it. They don't like taking anything. They just really want to be. But it does work very well for my family. So something else, if you'd like to, you can check with your doctor or check with your inner self and see if it's right for you. So continue with this kind of idea of creating your own sleep hygiene and maximizing your rest and repair cycle, and perhaps introducing your meditation cycle, either in those very early morning hours when you're first awakening, or if you are feeling like your sleep is disrupted, and continue being that portal of possibility.