Sleep longer this winter.

Hi there. I am Ryan and will be writing about things that happen to me, or that I think about or experience ... I live a 'Wellness' type of life so I loosely attach that to the Wellness Warehouse blog and perhaps you can get some useful information from my words and if not there is even a chance you will be entertained. A chance I say ... no promises.

Well I shall leave an introduction about myself for later. For now I just felt I wanted to write about something that I have been doing for about a year now and find worthwhile. I read in a very clever book, that it benefits the body and the way it functions, when a rhythm is set. Now you may well think right away of a strict rhythm that goes up and down or slides side to side or moves in and out in a uniform manner, with the same strength and all very regimented parameters.

That is not necessarily the case though. Think of the natural movement and position you hold your baby in when rocking the little thing to sleep. I even find a rhythm when running up a mountain with rocks strewn all over the trail. There is a pattern in that chaos and if you relax and settle into it, things become smoother.

With this in mind and from what I read in the a fore mentioned book, I decided to try and get a more natural rhythm back to my sleeping pattern. I think from a young age I worked myself into a mindset of when it is I should be sleeping and when I should be getting out of bed. I think Magnum P.I and the likes of McGyver had a lot to do with this when I was a youngster. As soon as the episode was over I knew the treat was up and I had to hit the sack. Then later on in life I knew that if I did not wake up and catch the 07H08 tube from Barnes Bridge via Clapham Junction to Waterloo station in London, I would not make it to JP Morgan in time (I suppose that has its irony, what with old man JP Morgan being a railway tycoon first and starting a bank with all his prophets second) to start my honest days work.

Well both those times are behind me now. In fact I am totally free to choose what time I wish to go to bed and what time I wish to jump up. The fact is I always was free to choose, but put these restraints upon myself by choice. So the experiment this year so far has been to go to sleep generally a lot earlier than 11pm. Hopefully by 10pm I will be in bed, and then to let myself wake up naturally. When I wake up I then get out of bed. It takes a while to adjust to of course and I needed some patience. What was then revealed was that in summer I woke upon the sunrise and in winter the very same thing. That is a rather huge difference in time. About two hours. I would naturally adjust the going to sleep times in the evening.
The result? My body felt stronger and more alert all through the day. I never felt exhausted when going to sleep and fell asleep really quickly. I also felt rested when I awoke and wanted to get up right away. I am certain the sleep was also much more worthwhile. I developed a fantastic trust that I would wake up at the right time even if perhaps I needed to get up earlier than normal for some reason.

I am really enjoying this new found way of sleeping ...and not sleeping as the case my be. Winter is more of a hibernation and summer a lot more active. The rhythm of my sleep is now a lot more in line with the sun. It does make sense in the bigger picture though and that's how I live. Living life IN the bigger picture as opposed to squashed into the contrived narrow alternative. Why wouldn't I be right? Now to bed.