Because learning about your brain and sleep can be fun . . .
People are always struggling to quit something, start something, or stop something. They even struggle to stop struggling, to relax. The circadian rhythm is part of the struggle. Also known as the wake/rest cycle, men and women struggle to wake up and struggle to go to sleep. You can’t fight—or struggle well—if you don’t recharge. At…
In illustrations of “A Visit From St. Nicholas” by Clement Clark Moore they always show the narrator getting up out of bed with an old-fashioned sleeping hat. The classic poem, more commonly known as “The Night Before Christmas,” frames the idea in the collective mind as to what a sleeping hat, also known as a sleeping cap, looks…
When going to bed, people brush their teeth. They put on some loose, comfortable clothing. They tighten their bedsheets. It’s all part of a routine in getting ready to go to bed. Rituals like these routines help one get in the mindset for sleep success. According to a multinational 2013 survey, 50 percent of the people…
In the Bible, God communicated with people in dreams. The angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would bear the Savior. Another angel came to St. Joseph and told him of Herod’s plans to kill off the oldest son of every Jewish family. There are many other instances in both the Old and…
It’s important to come to terms with hearing voices. While there is a stigma in our society associated with them, it’s a common experience for many people.
Reason and emotion, represented by the head and heart, fight at night. The two of them keep us awake and ruin our sleep. Be careful about taking sides in the fight. Both the heart and the head are important. You won’t go far by favoring either one. How can we get them to sign a…
Bonzo, the monkey, knew what to have before bed. For people, it’s not so simple. This, in a nutshell, is the hungry person’s bedtime dilemma: if he or she eats something too heavy before bedtime, it’s going to sit in the stomach all night like a rock. Yet if the hungry person doesn’t eat anything…
Practice makes perfect. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is practice. Those are the things people say about getting good at all kinds of activities. Individually these sayings have been applied to all kinds of sports, art, and games. Sleeping, on the other hand, is viewed as a…
Asking 5 big questions can raise the value of personal experience Sometimes they call learning by experience “The School of Hard Knocks.” Going at something blind without the benefit of someone else’s experience can be painful. They also call it experiential learning. “Hard Knocks” sounds like a painful way to learn something. It can be.…
“And, speaking more generally, it is plain foolishness to believe in ready-made systematic guides to dream interpretation, as if one could simply buy a reference book and look up a particular symbol. No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream.”—…
Sometimes you’ve got to wonder what your dreams are telling you, especially concerning your health. Health warnings in dreams can be confusing—though taking them seriously can save your life. It’s easy to go on the Internet and type in a query, and people do every day. When it comes to getting definitive answers about what…
When the day is trying you, try soaking in a tub with a lavender bath bomb while using lavender soap. Set your mind right, dry off, and head to bed. Some scents are more soothing than others. Lavender is one of those scents, along with roses, Roman chamomile, and jasmine, that have been demonstrated in…
Congratulations on both deciding to and being able to see the big, beautiful world on an intercity bus. This planet is full of adventure, both the good kind and the not-so-good. The key in life is to have more of the good kind of adventure and less of the bad. Yet even what seems to…