Part 4 –
SLEEP!
OK for you guys that already have good sleeping habits and wake up feeling fresh and ready to go every morning I guess you can skip this part =)
For those of you who don’t, please read on because one of the biggest factors for me getting clear was finally achieving a healthy pattern of sleep.
During my cystic acne hell, a night of not enough sleep guaranteed at least 1 new pimple somewhere on my face. At the time I didn’t know why lack of sleep caused acne but it fostered a fear of not sleeping within me. Every night I would go to bed extremely anxious and worried about not being able to sleep because I knew I would get more acne.
Cruelly, this pressure and the feeling of HAVING TO GET SOME SLEEP OR ELSE made it even harder for me to sleep as I was going to bed in a very tense and anxious state of mind. So, my sleeping habits ended up becoming worse and eventually I ended up developing a severe case of chronic insomnia. Now I’ve heard stories about some unfortunate people who couldn’t sleep for years, thankfully mine wasn’t THAT bad, the longest I didn’t sleep for was for 5 days straight but when you have dozens of cysts on your face and you haven’t had any sleep for 5 days, it can be quite depressing. I would say the darkest moments of my acne hell where I felt the most helpless were those early mornings where I could hear the birds singing and the train rattling by telling me that another night had passed and I hadn’t slept a wink.
Later I was to learn from several sources such as Clear for Life why lack of sleep was affecting my skin. There are 2 reasons why lack of sleep contribute to acne:
1. It doesn’t allow your body to go into its nightly ‘clean up’ mode
When you sleep your body goes into a ‘clean up’ mode where all of the daily maintenance procedures are performed. Both the mind and body use this time to relax and recover from daily stress and the body is scoured for toxins and dead cells which are expelled.
It’s a bit like the rest and maintenance a city gets every night after a long and busy day. A time when it’s quiet and there are no people around to leave their trash or cars to expel their fumes into the air. Maintenance like roadworks can be done, bins are collected, the little mobile street sweeper comes and scours the all the gunk out of the gutters, all so that the city can function efficiently and healthily the next day.
But imagine if the city was never cleaned or no maintenance could take place! After a while you would see bins overflowing, drains flooding, broken traffic lights don’t get fixed, people would be un-happy and unable to do their jobs properly, basically it would be a very un-hygeinic, un-happy place. This is exactly what is happening to your body when you don’t sleep.
2. It causes stress
When you are stressed the body releases stress hormones into the body, as I mentioned previously excess hormones in the body are treated by the excretory system as waste. So again, when there is an overload of hormones in your body, the body calls on the skin to help out the liver and kidneys to expel the surplus of hormones and hello acne.
Stress also promotes a negative mindset, basically it’s hard to be happy when you’re stressed out and it’s hard to get clear when you are unhappy.
So it’s a double punch, the stress adds more toxins to your system and because you aren’t sleeping the body isn’t given the chance to do it’s clean up to get rid of those toxins. The longer you don’t sleep properly, the more junk piles up in your system and the more the skin has to work to remove it from your body and…. you know the rest.
So I hope you now understand why a regular, healthy sleeping pattern is so important to clear skin and overall good health. If you get a healthy amount of sleep every day you are allowing your mind and body to reset, remove toxins and dead cells from your system, dissolve all of the worries of the day and the next day you are cleansed, refreshed, rested and happy.
How much sleep you need a day? Well, it is really different for everyone. Some people I know are fresh and ready to go with 5 hours, some (like me) require around 7-8 hours to wake up feeling good. So just listen to your body. If you are still tired after only 8 hours maybe you need more? Try it out and see if there is a difference in the way you feel after 9 hours, 10 hours, you may even be oversleeping so try it with fewer hours as well.
But generally if you are getting a decent amount of sleep every night (meaning you don’t have insomnia which causes a large amount of angst and stress), then your sleeping habits shouldn’t be negatively impacting your acne too severely.
OK so if you DO suffer from insomnia how do you overcome it?
Well it took me quite awhile, I had suffered different levels of insomnia for several years, and people who also suffer know that overcoming it is easier said than done.
But, if you make the EFFORT, and develop the DISCIPLINE to do the things that will condition your body to sleep you CAN overcome insomnia.
How did I do it? Well, combined with the knowledge of the Laws of Sacrifice and Obedience I started doing 2 things:
1. Yoga
2. Meditation
I can tell you that these 2 practices (which have now become daily positive habits) will not only change your sleep and your skin problems, they will change your entire LIFE. And when I say change I mean DRASTICALLY IMPROVE.
Basically Yoga and meditation helps you sleep by clearing trapped energy from your body and mind.
The main reason people can’t sleep is because their mind and body aren’t clear and relaxed. If there are thoughts, worries and emotions lingering in the mind before you sleep they can repeat inside your head like a broken record and keep you up all night. Actually even positive thoughts and energy can keep you up all night, remember the night before Christmas as a kid when you were so excited to open up your presents the next day you couldn’t sleep?
So like a nightly hot shower before bed which cleans your body, relaxes and loosens your muscles which in turn calms and soothes the mind, doing Yoga and meditation also cleanses and relaxes but at a much deeper level.
Every night before bed I will do a set routine of yoga poses for 20 minutes which releases the trapped energy from my muscles, bones and joints. I am basically stretching all of the most used muscles in my body (some of poses reach very specific muscles), re-aligning my spine and also beginning the cleansing process of my mind. While doing this I can feel the improvement of the circulation of blood, air and energy throughout my body. After my Yoga session I am feeling calm, fresh, at ease and ready to start my meditation session which will take my ‘mind clearing’ to the next level.
Next is what I call ’sleep meditation’ (I use meditation for other purposes as well), my aim is really just to clear my mind, to allow the mind to relax and let go of all the thoughts and worries which have been triggered by my work and daily experiences.
Using a computer analogy, think of it as closing all of the programs you have been using before the computer can shut-down. If you have all these programs and files open and you try and shut down your computer it won’t turn off instantly, it will ask you if you want to save this file and that file, then it will close down each program one by one. Once everything is closed, the computer is relaxed and happy and can turn off and have a nice sleep =)
So think of meditation as the act of closing and putting away all of the things you have to think about, so your mind and body can relax and get some rest.
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RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS & RESOURCES
Yoga:
At the time I started doing Yoga I was still pretty down on myself and didn’t have the confidence to go out and get Yoga lessons with a bunch of strangers (Basically I tried not to go out as much as possible). So what I did was buy a couple of Yoga DVDs so I could do in the privacy of my own home.
After buying several Yoga DVDs I now only use 1 DVD on a regular basis. It is called AM/PM Yoga featuring Rodney Yee and Patricia Walden. Basically it contains 2 simple Yoga programs, one for the morning and one for the evening. The morning one is very basic and gentle and it re-aligns all the joints, stretches and warms up the muscles which have inactive during sleep. I do this EVERY single morning, if I dont, I basically don’t feel right for the whole day. It only goes for 15 minutes but afterwards I feel warm, fresh, relaxed and ready to get into my morning meditation session.
The evening one is slightly longer, it goes for around 20 minutes and it contains slightly more difficult poses. The program is designed to counter all the stiffness and knotted energy accumulated from the modern work day (sitting in front of a computer). There are alot of poses which really stretch out the spine, chest and sides of the body. Without fail the PM program puts me in a relaxed, comfortable and serene mood which is great preparation for me to do my nightly meditation and get a good night’s rest.
The first couple of times I used the DVD were a little tricky as I had to keep looking at my computer screen to see how to do the poses properly, but after you memorize the sequence it is very easy and effective. Often because I know the sequence off by heart I will do my Yoga sessions without the DVD so I can do the exercise at my own pace, but I always seem to get the best results working with the DVD, it’s probably the soothing music and the hypnotic voice-overs!
Meditation:
My meditation routines are very unique and personal to me as they have been formulated by a lot of experimentation, study and reading books about meditation so to share them with you would probably take too long and make little sense in the end.
However, one book which I have learnt alot about meditation is called ‘Wheels of Life’ by Anodea Judith. It is a user’s guide to the Chakra system and it has some great material in it which I use often in my meditations. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the Chakra system and meditation.
Also, below are a few links to some guided meditation videos on YouTube which I personally use from time to time, I think they are very well done and are great especially for beginners as they are totally guided and they don’t allow your mind to wander onto un-related topics (which can happen when you first start meditating).
Daisy Pond Meditation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPM2BaBq0n0
Crystal Clear Meditation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iGQOqoZskM
Some other quick tips for getting to sleep:
- Firstly try not to eat anything heavy before going to bed. For the body to get into its ‘clean up’ mode it requires the other functions of the body to be at rest. If you eat food that will take a long time to digest before sleeping (like proteins and fats) the digestive system will keep working throughout the night and the body wont get to clean up properly. Also, because your body has been working all night you wont get a very good rest.
- Don’t do anything that involves too much thinking close to your bed time, especially work! Don’t do or watch anything that’s going to get you too excited either.
- If you can’t sleep, get up, go to the toilet or have a glass of water, do a few Yoga stretches or some meditation. Don’t lie there trying to sleep, trust me it won’t happen.
- If you are a light sleeper and little noises are enough to keep you up at night, try some ear-plugs. I used to panic hearing birds early in the morning because I would let me know it was early in the morning and I only had a few hours left to get some rest.
- Lastly, I find going to bed thinking about things I am grateful for puts me in a very positive and relaxed mood and before I know it I’m asleep.
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And thats it! SLEEP, it’s a vital step to getting clear!
Until next time!
Peace,
The Anonymous Guru
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One Comment
1 Sufy wrote:
Sleep Sleep Sleep! Thanks
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