sleep - that knotty beast

sleep, is a very disciplinary thingie.

the mind is conditioned to sleep only within a narrow range of physical and psychological parameters.... like the time of the day, the place, the pillow used, the things taken before sleep, the thots, the mood, the activities before you sleep.

in short the hormone levels must be right(the mood) must be right, and the surrounding must be right to conduce to a good sleep.

in the office, you can have a good lunch-time nap, but you cannot do it on weekend. why?
you can have some restful shut-eyes when you take a long bus ride, but you cannot do it in a car. why?
you can doze off peacefully during the church sermon, but you eyes are wide-open with the most peaceful you can have from your expansive hifi set. why?

you can slumber into good rest on the couch while watching an interesting program, but you toss around in the business-class seat mile high up. why?

you can have a good sleep in an air-con hotel room, but not with air-con in your own house? why

you can put on a blanket and sleep good in the hotel room, but not at home. why?

but for somebody else, he could just sleep anytime, anywhere, anyhow.....

my fren, it's conditioning of your mind.

in some conditions, your mind throws away all conscious thots, and let melatonin take over, in others, your mind holds on to its consciousness, lest that it would be violated if it forgoes its control for even just one second.....

the mind is a beast that cannot be control by YOU.

who are you, if you are not your mind?

actually, the mind is a creature of habits. conditioning is a matter of making the mind to be able to do something whenever it faces the same set of conditions. it's basically to illicit a predictable reaction of the mind whenever those conditions arise. say, you always feel sleep after 10pm, so the right way to condition the mind is to let go everything that you are doing and hit the sack at 10pm, no matter what you are doing before that.

but can you do that. you would want to finish whatever you are doing, and by then it would be much much later than 10pm... and your sleepiness has subsided.... and your mind is as active as any jumping monkey. the rationale for you to continue doing whatever you are doing after 10pm is you do not want to break the momentum. once you go to sleep, it's another day, and that means you may not have the motivation to continue from where you stopped doing last nite.

but if you are in the office, and when lunch time comes, you could give up whatever you are during then, and doze into a nap. why? because you only nap for an hour or so, just like an intermission of a musical, it's easy to pick up from where you stop after you wake up from your nap.

one thing - do not fight the circadian clock, your internal biological clock.... when you feel sleepy, sleep. if you can make it a habit, sleeping will be a walk in the park!