Because learning about your brain and sleep can be fun . . .
Perfect is the enemy of “done.” Learn to say está bien and mean it! On June 13th, Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Zack Greinke didn’t allow a single Washington National player to reach base—until the seventh inning. If he had kept every opposing player off the bases until the end of the ninth inning, it would have…
Sitting back with earphones while a tape or CD plays seems like an effortless way to learn. You might imagine your brain to be like a sponge or paper towel as if it would soak up information the way a kitchen sponge soaks up spills. The trouble is, that learning doesn’t work that way, especially…
Also sold as “diphenhydramine,” this allergy medicine is used by many to help them fall asleep. Life happens. The usual way of ensuring you get a good night’s rest should be to be active during the day, get some exposure to the sun, avoid drinking too much coffee too close to bedtime, and be relaxed.…
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.”—…