A common definition for healthy habits involves eating
right, getting enough sleep, not succumbing to the temptation of fun and
exciting exogenous chemicals, exercising regularly. Common definitions tend towards the dry, the unimaginative, the
vague, and the controlling.
How much nightly sleep constitutes ‘enough’? 8 hours? 7 hours? What about outliers
who subsist on 3-5, or less? A
recent study performed by University of Alabama scientists indicates that less
than 6 hours a night increases the risk of stroke in adults. The study had a large population size:
5,666 and lasted 3 years which gives the results a seemingly large amount of
statistical power, these were adults who had no sign of sleep apnea which is a
common cause of sleep related stroke. The study is as yet unpublished and was just recently presented in June. Do you believe it?
For the insomniac this can be a harrowing thought. The
circadian rhythm, that magickal circuit that governs our wakefulness and our
rest and, therefore tied very tightly to our ability to dream, can be altered
and changed. For the yogi the
importance of keeping this rhythm healthy is exemplified in the common adage
that one should wake and meditate at the same time every day and one should
meditate and take rest at the same time every day. Ideally the morning’s meditation takes place shortly before
sunrise so the first rays of the day can fall upon the face of the
practitioner. Melatonin, believed the master of this rhythm, releases from the
pineal gland in response to changing sunlight conditions.
Regulating the rhythm, willfully and with reasonable
gentleness is normally very effective.
Sleep does not come easy at first and as with any change in deeply
engrained habit: hard, almost metabolic resistance is the rule. However, a skillful and judicious use
of meditation during this period almost certainly has a balming effect on tired neurons, making up for some of
the initial lack of sleep. Turn
off the lamp and go to sleep.
How useful this habit of sleep for the exercise of your own
will against the force of nature.
How long can you go without sleep before your work begins to
suffer? How many hours of sleep
aids in the optimal performance of your work? Experiment on yourself. For a period in 2003 the practice of the writer involved
seeing both sunrise and sunset every day, going to sleep just after sunrise and
waking just before sunset. Sleep
came easily, restfully and surely in those days.
Eating right means nothing. Nutrition as a science is mutable, involving rigidly
adhered to, some would say outdated, notions of what constitutes poison and
what constitutes nourishment.
Other camps use cutting edge biochemical technique and theory to develop
complex diets that essentially amount to dividing food into nourishment or poison
as well. Ayurveda asks you to take
a short quiz, and based on your answers tells you what foods are specifically
poison and nourishment just for you (isn’t that nice?). Should you eat meat? Should you drink milk? Become more sensitive. You won’t know what nourishes you until
you can feel the effects of what you put in your body.
As practice progresses and you lose more and more of what
you previously considered ‘self’ the influences of studies you read, people you
know, etc. have less of an opportunity to circumvent and occupy the space of
mental importance that belongs to your own experience. Become more sensitive and
experiment. As desire shortens the
foods that you eat for comfort or for the thrill are less and less
palatable. Once you develop what
you consider good eating habits: a diet of foods that sustain you, contribute
to your sense of well being and solidity and don’t distract from your work, add
in something terrifying. Fish head
soup, organ meats, gristle, and bone marrow. Challenge your digestion and your palate. Remove your limits.
Exercise is a tricky one, but along with eating, may be the
route to altering cellular and molecular habit. Your DNA contains many sequences that are harmful and even
includes a sequence for programmed cell death (apoptosis). What is required for
these traits, illnesses, defects, etc to emerge is that you have a sequence for
them in the DNA and that there are environmental factors that are just right
for those sequences to be expressed. Environmental here refers to not only the state outside the body,
but also inside the body. Once expressed they seldom turn back or turn off. Practicing raja yoga and qi-gong have
been instrumental in resetting the current writer’s body to health out of the
mire of illness that plagued him for the first two thirds of life. By stilling the body in uncomfortable
postures the body learns to slow down, calm down and more importantly to halt
non-vital processes. The reaction
to external stresses is thus altered.
This happens without conscious thought.
By stilling the mind, stress vanishes, the mind and the body
can focus everything on a single thing.
Theoretically this leaves less of a chance for abberant cell behavior
and for those damned holes in the matrix that allow 'foriegn pathogens' to enter and engage a disease state program. Qi-gong, quite simply, engrains the
habit of doing just this while moving.
These last remarks are purely the view of the current writer. Experiment and find out what stills
your body and mind, then keep doing it persistently until it becomes a
habit. In this way you can fight
back the body’s habits and tendencies toward illness, pain, discomfort by
replacing them with a habit you consciously develop toward a specific end.
In fact, as a supplementary practice, for one day, pen
everything you do and examine these for signs and symptom of habits that may
cause your work to suffer. Then
either remove these habits or replace them with something mindful. Something that you conceive and
program. In order to develop the
habit of changing habits on a whim, change your habits on a whim. Start small.
Fluidity=Freedom+Power
As a side note: during the past month I have drawn a tarot card during my ritual practice, occassionally drawing more than 1. In the past 15 days, the moon has come up 5 times. This seems remarkable.
As a side note: during the past month I have drawn a tarot card during my ritual practice, occassionally drawing more than 1. In the past 15 days, the moon has come up 5 times. This seems remarkable.
Through high school and again in graduate school I would average 2 hours of sleep a night.
ReplyDeleteI have rare bouts of clear dreams, but I almost always audio record them when I can remember. I have maybe 6 recordings in the last four months.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Delete