Sleep like a KITTEN – Part 3 – Can I RESET and RETRAIN my body clock?steemCreated with Sketch.

in #health7 years ago

Oh, to be able to sleep like a cat – anywhere, any time, on anything. (Sorry Part 3 has been so long coming, so many topics to write about, so little time...)

Read “Part 1 – Three quick tips” here and “Part 2 – Find your sleeping style” here


Our cat Christo

I’m really struggling with switching to Daylight Savings Time this year, and it’s Steemit’s fault. Well, no, not really. It’s my own habit of posting late at night that’s the problem.

You see, I’m in New Zealand, and it seems like the best time for me to post would be about 2 or 3 in the morning. Failing that my choices are just before bed, or first thing in the morning. Last thing at night has been working quite well for the posts, but not so much for me.

If I could click on Post, turn the computer off and go to bed, all would (might) be well. But I’m already a bit of a night owl, and I can’t seem to stop myself from refreshing to see if I’ve got any upvotes, doing a spot of curation, refreshing again, going to the toilet, refreshing again, checking my feed, and oh shit, it’s 1am.

It’s got to stop. So I’m revisiting the sleeping tips of hypnotist Paul McKenna, as a reminder to myself. I’m going to share some of them here, and hopefully they will be useful to you too.


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Let’s work through this with a fictional case study. Let’s say you want to go to bed at 11pm, sleep for 7 hours and get up at 6am. But what happens is you can’t get to sleep till 12pm, then you can’t get up till 7am, and then you’re late and rushing.

Tip 1 – Get up consistently earlier

Going onto Daylight Savings should have forced me to do that. But that’s the thing with working from home – if I get up at 9am or 10am, nobody else really cares. So I need to find a way to make myself get up.

Our fictional person is going to get up at 6am, even if they feel like crap. 6am every day, without fail. No matter how much they want or need to crawl under the covers for a bit longer.

Extra tip: It helps to throw open your curtains and get some sun on your face as soon as you wake up, too.


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This tip seems a bit counterintuitive, until you put it together with the next two tips.

Tip 2 – No napping during the day

No napping, no matter how tired you get. This is a rule you can’t break, if you want to reset your sleep.

Tip 3 – Don’t get into bed till you’re sleepy

I need my 7 hours sleep, so I need to be asleep by 11pm! Yes, but if you’re not sleepy, and can’t get to sleep, is there any point in lying awake?

So don’t go to bed at 11pm. Find a quiet space to unwind – read, have a bath, do some stretching, whatever relaxes you. And don’t get into bed until you’re sleepy, even if it’s 1am.


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You’ve probably figured out where we’re going. Get up early, no napping, don’t go to bed till you’re sleepy. It might take a few days, but eventually you will be tired enough to start falling asleep at 11pm.

Tip 4 – Don’t lie awake

This is also important. In this era of handheld devices, how easy is it to reach out your hand for your phone when you can’t sleep? And what does that tell our subconscious mind? It tells it that it will be rewarded for not sleeping.

So we’re not going to reward our wayward mind, oh no. If we have lain awake for more than 30 minutes, we are going to get up and do some work.

No, not your next Steemit post or some curating. No, not checking to see how much you’ve made on your post overnight. Something boring. Something like cleaning the kitchen floor or doing some filing. Something that you’ve been avoiding, maybe.


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Eventually the message will get through – the choice is between sleep and something punishingly dull. So we may as well sleep.

Tip 5 - Listen to his audio

Just listening to McKenna’s melodious, hypnotic voice will be enough to send many people off to sleep in seconds. For the rest of us, it might be necessary to listen every night for a while, and really absorb his material.


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There are a couple more tips, but I’ll let him tell you those himself. If you think McKenna’s approach might be helpful for you, the first four tips will be enough to get you started while you wait for his book and audio to arrive.

His book “I can make you sleep” is available from Amazon. (Though that was published this year, and my audio is much older, so it might be a slightly different version.)

These tips will help you reset your body clock if the main problem is that you’ve been getting into bad habits. If that’s not your issue, don’t worry, there will be more tips later.

PS. @sift666, who sleeps like the dead, pointed out that those tips are as unlike the way a cat sleeps as it is possible to get. He’s right of course, but this series is for those of us who CAN’T sleep like a cat, or @sift666, and need to employ some different techniques.

Thanks for reading

Follow me for more health, nutrition, food, lifestyle and recipe posts.

Some of my previous posts:

My posts about the GAPS diet: Part 1 – About the gut & psychology syndrome diet. ~ Part 2 – Foods we can’t have ~ Part 3 – Foods we CAN have ~ Part 4 – What if I can’t eat some animal foods

My other nutrition posts: The wide variety of so-called healthy diets out there and what the commonality is with them all ~ The travels of Weston A Price and his discoveries of what was included in a range of healthy diets. ~ Good fats vs bad fats ~ Salicylate intolerances

I am now on Peerhub offering one on one nutritional coaching and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) sessions by Skype.

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I go to bed shattered ready to sleep at half 10 put my head in the pillow then bang I'm awake again. I dont usually fall asleep until 3am.

Given what you have going on, I imagine your sleep story is a bit more complicated. Hopefully as we go along, there will be things that can make a difference for you.

I am trying to sort my sleeping pattern out but hubby and his snoring stops me from staying asleep

Like you, I work from home, so no one cares what time I get up. As I trend naturally toward being a night owl, and have since birth it seems, I don't even get tired till well after midnight, and sometimes not till one or two am.

The thing is, while I don't want or need to get up insanely early (blah....that's why I don't teach public school anymore....you have to get up way too early), I WOULD like to get up before 10 or 11 am. I actually find I get more done if I get up a little earlier.

But, with no other compelling reason to get up earlier, a general enjoyment of sleep and the good places I go in dreamland, and an unwillingness to leave the comfort of my bed unless absolutely necessary, I find myself falling far short of my goal of getting up around 10 am (or even 9 am), no matter how hard I try. And I do try. And, it's really hard. It's really hard to change your sleep habits. I sleep easily and well, but it's the hours I sleep that I'd like to change, and it is so hard to do it.

I hear you. Although I mostly get away with being a late riser, there are days when I have to be up earlier and it's very hard. Today I got up about 6.15 to post this, and then went back to bed. In some ways it would be easier to have to be up at the same time everyday, but nothing would make me go back to working for someone else.

Yeah, I hear you. I don't think I could go back to working for someone else, either. I've thought about it when money has been tight. But, I've been my own boss for so long now, I just don't think I could bring myself to do it. It would not be something I would enjoy, that's for sure.

I find myself doing that as well. My time zone isn't great either but i've actually noticed it doesn't matter as much, for me at least since the times not crazy off. I've had posts take hours before it was suppose to close.

Those are some goo sleep tips i could use.

I think a lot of sleep issues are connected to our lifestyle, and how far we've got away from our natural body clock cycles. But not all. I hope to continue with more helpful hints.
The morning posting didn't go so well, so we're going back to before bed. But with a pact to turn the computers straight off afterwards, and police each other!

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