Self-help for improved sleep + dream journaling = a better life.
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, and approaching bedtime with a sense of relaxation. That’s what the best sleepers do. Unfortunately, sometimes life interferes with the usual way of…
People always struggle against one thing or another. They’re 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…
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 complete with a tassel. 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…
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…
The scent of lavender always brings me back to a rolling hillside in the Bay Area 10 years ago. It was a cool morning. I got out of the subcompact car I had rented and looked around, stretching. The air was full of the scent from thousands of purple flowers everywhere. The flowers crowded the…
My wife recently returned from a trip to Mexico. “There it is. My water pillow! I missed it!” she said, excited. There was a level of fondness there for the pillow I hadn’t heard before. “You missed it?” I said. “What?” At the time she said this, she had just returned home and had come into our bedroom…
White noise is in the ears of the beholder. Some people put a fan on in order to sleep, or they go out and buy a white noise machine. Unfortunately, according to some people, some white noise isn’t so “white.” It doesn’t stay in the background. Take white noise coming from wind turbines. Many people…
Maybe you have very bad vision and are worried about it getting worse. Maybe you’re involved in optics for some reason If not, a concern about the effects of blue light on the eyes and skin may seem offbeat. Even overblown. You can’t see blue light, after all. The effects are only visible over time. …
Sometimes emergency departments will get patients who are hypothermic. A child will have fallen through ice into a pond during winter. A man will have been found passed out laying on a cold garage floor for hours. A woman will have been sitting in thin clothes better suited for a summer on a frigid night…
Here’s a truism for you: people love simple solutions. If ‘x’ is a problem, take ‘y.’ There. Done. Problem fixed. (Make a wiping motion with your hands.) Hopefully. Simple solutions don’t take much work, don’t call for much change and don’t always cost much — that’s what makes them simple! Unfortunately, simple solutions often create…