Even though I coach people on how to really get their life and health back on track there are still parts of my health that I have to continuously keep an eye on for imbalances.
It is unfortunate that being a Holistic Lifestyle Coach does not make me immune to this problem because that would just be great, but let’s get back to the real world. Here we all have problems we diet, movement, sleeping, etcetera, but recognizing this and coming up with a plan to get them better is the key.
Since taking my recent Holistic Lifestyle Coaching Level 2 Class I have really been focusing on two specific things. One on diet that I will address in a future post and the one we are about to dive in on which is sleep. I like many people was trying to get by on less and less sleep. For the most part I was fooling myself into thinking that I was doing well with this and in actuality I was doing quite well because I know how to mitigate all of the ill effects of lack of sleep. This really came down to optimizing the sleep that I was getting so that it was leaving me well rested enough to function nicely.
However, I was just doing that…getting enough sleep to function. This does not mean that it is the optimal amount of sleep to really thrive and live the long and happy life that I want to live. It was very short sighted of me. This is something that I see in others as well. We all try to get by on a little less to get a little more done, but don’t really get any big, life changing things done in that half to full hour of sleep that we miss out on. It also will cut us short in the end of life because if we are not getting the sleep we need now it will just manifest itself down the road.
For part of this time I was trying to look at my sleep cycles, how long each was and then end on the 4th or 5th one so that I didn’t wake up too groggy. Now this can certainly work in the short term, but long term I have realized through self-experimentation and working with clients as well as talking with other Holistic Lifestyle Coaches that the best way is to go to bed when you are tired and wake up when you are ready to. This roughly will be from about 10pm to 6am. Sure there will be some seasonal changes and it will also be affected by your total amount of stress in your life, but for the most part holds pretty true to this.
This sleep thing is something that we cannot escape. No matter how many studies that come out that say we need 5 sleep cycles or that 7 hours and 37 minutes is the optimal there is no better way to come up with the answer to your sleep time than just letting your body do what it needs to do. This means get to bed around 10 and wake up when your body is ready to. If for certain reasons you cannot sleep at these times, then check out these articles to try and get a little more out of your sleep.
Now one of the biggest parts of this struggle was being able to get things done. I have actually noticed that sleeping more has simply made me become more focused with what I do. This priority really has helped hone in my work and get done what really needs to get done and stop doing other stuff just for the sake of being busy. It has been rather freeing as well as restful!
Have a Great Day!
Nick Horowski