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You are here: Home / Archives for Misc Musings

Not Sleeping Soundly?  Here’s Help

July 14, 2016 by Julie Lusk

Have you ever felt like you were ‘half-awake or only half asleep’ all night?  Me too.  It’s so frustrating, especially knowing that you have a big day ahead and want to be feel sharp and well rested. Perhaps you don’t want to miss a moment of your vacation or there’s an important conference you’re excited about.

half asleepAs it turns out, half of your brain can sleep while the other half stays awake, according to sleep scientist Masako Tamaki and her colleagues at Brown University and reported in Current Biology*.  They found that this usually happens when sleeping the first night in a new place, like a hotel, friend’s house, or while camping.  The second night is much better.

It’s our brain’s attempt to protect us by going into survival mode.  What happens is that the right half your brain sleeps while the left half stays alert, standing guard.  How strange is that?

Scientists measured the slow-wave activity of the brain, something that occurs during deep sleep.  They measured brain activity during light sleep by first playing a tone and then a different tone was played.  Surprisingly, the brain reacted to the variation in sound only on the left side of the brain – the right side stayed asleep.

Next, they played a sound loud enough to awaken someone. They found that when it was transmitted into the right ear, the subjects in the experiment woke up faster than if it was sent to the left ear.  The right ear is associated with the left side of the brain.

It stands to reason that it would be the left side of the brain that stays on duty since it is known to be objective, analytical, and rational and would be more prone to be protective whereas the right side is best at intuition and abstract thinking.  Could this phenomenon be at play when sleeping in an unsafe neighborhood or household?  What about when having to keep an ear out for a child or sick person.  More studies are needed.

Sleeping ‘half-way’ is involuntary and the brain’s way to keep you alert enough to save yourself if something bad happened and most likely associated with the flight-fight-freeze response to stress.  Because of this, scientists think there’s not much you can do about it other than to accept it rather than letting it bother you.  Some suggest going two nights ahead of your big day since it’s so hard to sleep that first night.

Here are my suggestions:

  • Make the room feel familiar and safer to you, tricking the brain into sleeping better. Try using a familiar scent – lavender is calming and aids sleeping.  If you’re used to sleeping with a fan whirling away, bring one with you.  Using your own pillow makes sense too.
  • Try yoga nidra. It’s a comprehensive practice done lying down to go far beyond deep relaxation and mindfulness to a place of natural peace and quiet that is tremendously restful.  Along with being a special type of meditation to increase uplifting levels of awareness, it can also be practiced at bedtime as a sleep aid.  Layers of stress are cleared out so they don’t follow you to bed and disturb sleeping.  In fact, while not a substitute for actual sleep, one hour of yoga nidra practice is equivalent to 4 hours of sleep. This is due to the types of brain waves experienced along the way. Proven relaxation skills, specialized breathing techniques, guided imagery, and mindfulness are systematically used. Learn more about yoga nidra here
    Use a yoga nidra recording. See below for recommendations. Download it to your listening device, put it on airplane mode, and listen by putting the ear buds or the device itself under your pillow.  It will transmit right through your pillow and not disturb your sleep partner.
  • Use a mudra. They are yoga positions for the hands.  Curl your fingers into a fist.  On the same hand, touch the tips of the thumbs to the tips of the first finger to form a circle.  Rest your hands with your palms pointing down.  It helps bring on sleep and reduces stress by promoting a sense of safety and security.  Learn more about mudras here.
  • Breathe slowly and smoothly. To calm your nervous system, breathe in to the count of four or five and then breathe out for five to ten.  When you get distracted, gently go back to focusing on your breathing.
  • Use the Moon Breath to calm your bodymind and brain by combining a mudra with breathing. Bend your index and middle finger of your right hand to your palm, leaving your ring and little finger softly extended.  Softly press your right thumb to your right nostril and inhale through your left nostril. Next, release your right thumb and press your ring finger to your left nostril while exhaling.  In other words, in left / out right / in left / out right and so on.  Learn more about this and other practices in Yoga Meditations: Timeless Mind-Body Practices for Awakening (WPA, 2005)
  • Follow the guidelines for good sleep hygiene.  Here’s the Mayo Clinic’s 7 tips for doing so.  Read How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep – The Ultimate Guide.  It’s excellent.

So even if you can’t sleep as soundly as you might like due to your brain’s instance on staying half-awake, at least you now understand the reason why. The above suggestions may lull you to sleep, and if they don’t, you will at least make use of the time in a positive, productive way.

Sweet dreams!

Sleep Well ~ Yoga Nidra CD
Sleep Well ~ Yoga Nidra CD
Ease into sleep with yoga nidra with deep relaxation, soothing flute music, and ocean waves. "I slept like a log." "I've never been so relaxed." Digital downloads are also available. From Julie Lusk, author of Yoga Nidra for Complete Relaxation and Stress Relief.
Quantity:  
Price: $11.99Price: $16.99 

Reference:      Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 9, p1190–1194, 9 May 2016

Resources:     Yoga Nidra for Complete Relaxation & Stress Relief by Julie Lusk (NHP 2015)

Yoga Nidra: Guided Meditations for Relaxation & Renewal (Health Journeys 2016)

 

Julie Lusk, MEd, E-RYT 500, has more than 35 years of expertise in stress relief, yoga, relaxation training, guided imagery, and meditation as an international author, recording artist, and Julie Luskworkshop leader. Julie is the author of Yoga Nidra for Complete Relaxation and Stress Relief, Yoga Meditations, two volumes of 30 Scripts for Relaxation, Imagery and Inner Healing, and Desktop Yoga®. Her CDs include Wholesome Relaxation, Power of Presence, Blue Moon Rising, and many others. Learn more at WholesomeResources.com

Filed Under: Mind-Body Mastery Tools and Techniques, Misc Musings, Relaxation Exercises

Yoga Nidra’s Benefits

June 27, 2016 by Julie Lusk

yoga nidra's benefitsYoga nidra’s benefits are remarkable.  Yoga nidra means “yogic sleep.”  It’s a comprehensive meditative practice for going far beyond deep relaxation to a place of natural peace and quiet that is tremendously healing for the body, mind, and spirit.  Unique skills are developed for handling stress and tension in the short term and for the long run.  Yoga nidra feels extremely peaceful and is very refreshing.  It’s based on classical yoga and backed by contemporary science.

Here are some of yoga nidra’s benefits (Yoga Nidra for Complete Relaxation & Stress Relief by Julie Lusk, pgs. 42-43, NHP 2015):

  • Activates the relaxation response and deactivates the stress response. This improves functioning of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems (ANS) and the endocrine system (glands and hormones).
  • Improves your overall health
    • Increases immunity and the ability to fight germs and infections (Kumar 2007)
    • Cellular rejuvenation and repair
    • Improves heart functioning by lowering blood pressure and cholesterol (Pandya and Kumar 2007)
    • Decreases pain
    • Improved control of fluctuating blood glucose and symptoms associated with diabetes (Amita et al. 2009)
    • Significant improvement of anxiety, depression and well-being was reported in patients with menstrual irregularities and having psychological problems (Rani et al. 2011)
    • Manages pre- and post-surgical conditions (Kumar, page 56)
  • Reduces insomnia and improves sleep
  • Increases energy, especially when needed most
  • Reduces worry and enhances clear thinking and problem solving
  • Improves and refreshes your outlook
  • Mood swings and emotional upsets are replaced with greater emotional understanding and stability
  • Intuition is developed and creativity increases
  • Improves meditation and enhances its benefits
  • Integrates, heals, and revitalizes your body, mind and spirit
  • Enhances your Self-awareness and ability to experience witness consciousness
  • Transforms thoughts and feelings of separation into a direct experience of wholeness.

Experience yoga nidra’s benefits for yourself.  Like most worthwhile things, regular practice yields the best results.  This book and audio set is everything you need to get started and will support your practice for years to come.

Yoga Nidra: Guided Meditations for Relaxation & Renewal CD
Yoga Nidra: Guided Meditations for Relaxation & Renewal CD
Yoga nidra is a powerful and unique state of relaxation, mental clarity and insightful awareness, done lying down. Julie's clear, step=by-step guidance for experiencing deep relaxation, specialized breathing, guided imagery, and mindful awareness, creates 6 replenishing levels of relaxation and a deeply meditative state. Restless thinking and emotional upsets tend to fade away. Used together or in segments, the net effect is to discover an inner reservoir of heartfelt peace, intuitive understanding and unconditional joy. Studies show one hour of practice is equivalent of about four hours of deeply restorative sleep. Published by Health Journeys.
Quantity:  
Price: $15.98Price: $17.98 

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Yoga Nidra for Complete Relaxation & Stress Relief - Printed Book & Audio download
Yoga Nidra for Complete Relaxation & Stress Relief - Printed Book & Audio download
If you feel stressed out, you’re not alone. Stress is a modern-day epidemic that can take a toll on your mind, body, and spirit. That’s why it’s so important to develop relaxation skills to restore your health, happiness, and inner strength. Yoga Nidra—a powerful and unique state of deep relaxation, mental clarity, and insightful awareness—is the answer. In this book, mind-body health professional Julie Lusk presents a powerful Yoga Nidra program to stop stress in its tracks. Yoga Nidra, based on classical yoga and backed by contemporary science, focuses specifically on alleviating both mental and physical manifestations of stress so you can find your calm spot and live a more balanced, confident, and meaningful life. Packed with empowering relaxation exercises, meditations that soothe, and visualizations that renew, the practical exercises in this book will help you unwind, replenish, and feel revitalized with durable peace and unconditional joy. CLICK on the blue title link above to find out more...
Quantity:  
Price: $17.95

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References:

Amita, S. et al. 2009. Effect of Yoga Nidra on Blood glucose Level in Diabetic Patients.  Indian Journal of Physiological and Pharmacol, Vol. 53 (1): 97-101.

Kumar, Kamakhya. 2013. A Handbook of Yoga Nidra. New Delhi, India: D.K. Printworld

_____ 2007. The Healing Sleep; Yoga Magazine (Body Mind Spirit); Published from York Street, London; Issue 50

Lusk. 2015. Yoga Nidra for Complete Relaxation & Stress Relief. Oakland: New Harbinger

Panda, Nursingh Charan. 2003. Yoga-Nidra: Yogic Trance Theory, Practice and Applications. New Delhi, India: D.K. Printworld (P) Ltd.

 

Filed Under: Misc Musings, Relaxation Exercises, Stress Relief / Management, Yoga Nidra Tagged With: yoga nidra benefits

Honoring Mother’s Day with Story, Poems & Quotes

May 3, 2016 by Julie Lusk

The idea for Mother’s Day originated in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe, the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  She IMG_1258believed that peace and equality were two of the most important world causes and challenged women to rise up against war in all its forms.   She wanted women to unite by coming together across national lines to recognize what people have in common over what comes between us in a “Mothers Day for Peace.”  Although this didn’t happen, Julia inspired Anna Jarvisto to start her own crusade to celebrate a memorial day for mother’s in 1907.  The rest is “herstory.”

Here’s to peace and equality for all.  Julia’s declaration follows:

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Misc Musings, Yoga and Meditation Quotes, Sayings, Poems Tagged With: Mother's Day Story poem quotes

Give the Gift of Comfort and Joy

December 21, 2015 by Julie Lusk

Are you feeling the peace and joy of the season?  Hopefully taking time for deeper quiet and reflection, and for setting the stage for renewal in the new year?

Actually, it’s too common for there to be extra stress and busyness for nearly everybody during this amazing season.  It’s a particularly alarming time for folks who already are running on fumes.

Guided relaxation, imagery, yoga nidra, and meditation is the perfect way to truly get recharged with peace, comfort, and joy.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Misc Musings

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas Yoga poem

December 9, 2015 by Julie Lusk

 

 

‘Twas the time before Christmas, and in the yoga place,  
not a muscle was moving, it was filled with grace.
The mats were lined up, on the floor with care,
in hopes that sweet relaxation would soon be there.

The students relaxed, all snug on their mats,
while life hurried on by, like crazy cats.
Everybody began moving, this way and that.

“Now Tadasana! Now Chandrasana! Virabhdrasana & Bridge!
On Cobra! On Bow! On Locust and Fish!
To the top of your head! And the bottom of your heart!
Now breathe away! Breathe away!
And please don’t fart!”

When up in my brain there arose such a clatter,
I fell out of my posture, to worsen the matter,
When what to my wandering mind should appear,
but a big plate of chocolate, and a six-pack of cheer!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Holiday Stress Relief, Misc Musings, Yoga and Meditation Quotes, Sayings, Poems Tagged With: christmas yoga poem, holiday yoga poem, twas the night before christmas yoga poem

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