People everywhere are turning towards the world of nature to improve their health and quality of life. With science supporting many of the claims made by holistic health practitioners, the interest in this multifaceted school of thought is growing far beyond the expectations of traditional western medicine.
One particular curiosity lies in the study of the circadian rhythm. Sleep is an essential part of healing, as well as maintaining a healthy mind and body. Here are some ways to improve your own sleep/wake cycle, also called your circadian rhythm.
Don’t Sleep More Than Needed
Sometimes you just don’t want to get out of bed, but if you sleep for longer than you really need to, it can do serious damage to your natural rhythm of sleep and awake times. It takes a lot of discipline, but it’s important to get up when it’s time to get up. If you were to continuously get up later and later, you would eventually end up sleeping until the evening, and going to bed in the morning! If you can follow this one principle, it will help you to get tired when it’s appropriate so you can drift off to a more restful sleep.
Eat Early Enough
When you eat can have a massive influence on when you can fall asleep. If you are used to eating late, you probably find that you don’t go to bed until very late. This is because your body is busy digesting food when it should be doing other things like lowering your body temperature so that you can go to sleep. Sleep is intended for giving the body rest so that it can repair itself, so giving it extra tasks to do will result in it performing a lot less efficiently at its job. That basically guarantees that you will wake up feeling more tired than you should.
Stay on Schedule
If you can be strict with yourself and stay on a schedule, your body will have a much easier time knowing what it needs to be doing at any given time. Eating and sleep are both important parts of the day that should be on a schedule so that your body knows what to focus on. Be aware of your limitations because only you know what those are or will be.
