The wonder of a good night’s sleep

In today’s fast-paced world, sleep deprivation has become a norm. Sleeping for less than six hours a day, and enhancing productivity with the help of stimulants such as caffeine and nicotine are becoming shockingly commonplace. Such a practice is not only unhealthy but downright dangerous. For we all know that when deprived of sleep for long, the body would simply shut down, irrespective of time and place.

Indeed, like food and water, sleep is indispensable to us. We, humans, spend one-third of our lives sleeping. Some of us might think that spending such a huge chunk of our lives ‘doing something as unproductive as sleeping’ is a waste. But the truth is, the hours we spend snoozing are crucial for the healthy functioning of the body, mind, and spirit.

But what is sleep? Why do we sleep? What happens in our bodies when we’re asleep? These questions have always fascinated the scientific community, giving rise to extensive research and findings on the topic. Sleep is a recurring state in which we actively disengage from our surroundings to rest, recuperate, and rejuvenate ourselves. During sleep, a lot of things happen in our body, helping us push the reset button, and wake up fresh the next morning. Here’s how sleep helps in the better functioning of the body, mind, and spirit.

Body

In physiological terms, we sleep for two reasons: restoration and energy conservation. Russel Grant Foster is a British circadian neuroscientist. In his Ted Talk titled Why Do We Sleep? Foster says: “All the stuff we’ve burned out during the day, we restore, we replace, we rebuild during the night.”

As we lay more or less still during our sleeping hours, our muscles are completely relaxed. Our body temperature dips so does our blood pressure. Our heart rate slows down, gradually turning our breathing slow and deep. Growth hormones are secreted to carry out repairs and enable the healing of wounds. There is less adrenaline pumping through our veins, as we’re usually under no threat while asleep. And hunger hormones leptin and ghrelin are regulated.

When an individual is deprived of sleep, many of these processes may not be carried out effectively. They may wake up tired and stressed out, and feel their aches and pains more acutely. The stress alone may compromise their immunity and make them more susceptible to infections. Furthermore, when the brain is tired, it craves stimulants like caffeinated drinks to function. It may also cause them to overeat. Says Foster in the Ted Talk: “People who regularly get five hours or less of sleep are 50 percent more likely to be obese. Sleep loss secretes the hunger hormone ghrelin. It gets to the brain and the brain says ‘I need carbohydrates.’ This may also increase the risk of insulin resistance, and eventually, diabetes.”

Mind

Sleep is often believed to clear the mind. “Sleep on it,” we’re told before taking important decisions. This is because the brain does a lot of organising and decluttering when we are asleep. Brain processing and memory consolidation are highly important processes that take place as we enjoy the sweet heaviness of slumber. According to studies, a good night’s sleep improves our learning and problem-solving skills, increases our attention, improves our decision-making abilities and also enhances our creativity.

When we sleep, the neurons in our brain process the day’s events and interactions, turning them into long-term memory. Unimportant information and thoughts are discarded, while useful ones are filed away. This helps us remember things that matter and focus on important thought processes, in turn improving our ability to make good decisions. On the flip side, when we do not get enough sleep, we suffer from poor memory, poor creativity, increased impulsiveness and poor judgement.

Psychologist and sleep scientist Dan Gartenberg in his Ted Talk titled The Brain Benefits of Deep Sleep says: “Poor sleep makes us take risky, rash decisions and is a drain on our capacity to feel empathy. It makes us more sensitive to our own pain. It makes it hard for us to relate to others and generally be a good, healthy person.”

Spirit

Don’t we all love a good night’s sleep? No matter how tired or stressed or confused we might have been before, we wake up feeling fresh and energetic. We might even feel clear and confident about dealing with our problems. It is almost as if sleep serves as a form of meditation. Of course, this is not to say that sleep and meditation are one and the same, but the after-effects are surely similar. Mystic Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, in one of his blogs, writes: “…on those days, when you wake up, it’s wonderful. There is a completely new sense of freedom and well-being within you because you have been in touch with your original nature. You have been in a place where there is no identification. Something absolute has touched you but it happened in unawareness. If you achieve the same thing in awareness, then it’s meditation.”

However, such deep sleep doesn’t come easily to most of us. More often than not, the state of our energy bodies affects our sleep habits. When we retire to bed at the end of the day, we are filled with thoughts—both positive and negative—about the day. When there is an excess of negativity in our mind, such thoughts extend to our energy body and may cause congestion or depletion in our aura. When such negative thoughts are persistent, they end up blocking the free flow of energy through our chakra (energy junctions). Often, these blockages result in sleep disorders like insomnia.

“Regular meditation and cleansing of the energy body before going to bed will help improve the quality of our sleep. Over time, this will help us manage our negative thoughts and achieve clarity of the mind and spirit,” says Pranic healer Sushma Patil. When we retire for the day with a clean energy body, we can drift off to a sound sleep that refreshes and rejuvenates us, helping us wake up with renewed energy.