Why we need to sleep well

All of us have trouble sleeping now and then, and notice how much it can reduce our ability to focus, function and feel well the next day. For the majority of us for whom this is only an occasional inconvenience – or a finite period, like the parents of new babies – we usually take it in our stride and catch up with sleep the next night, or week, or month.

If, though, you are someone who currently suffers from poor sleep, or regular insomnia, the effects may be seriously affecting your life and your sense of wellbeing. And more people suffer from this condition than many of us imagine. Recent figures show that:

• On average, 50% of people slept badly last night
• Over 30% of the population suffers from insomnia or another sleep disorder
• 27% of people have sleep problems at any one time
• 10% of people have chronic insomnia.

And far from being a minor irritation, sleep disorders put sufferers at significantly greater risk of physical and mental health problems, ranging from depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder to immune deficiency and heart disease.

“Whilst great emphasis is rightly placed on the importance of diet and exercise, sleep has for too long been neglected as a major influence on the physical and mental health of the nation.”

Dr Andrew McCulloch, Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foundation

The UK charity, the Mental Health Foundation’s report, “Sleep Matters” shows the impact of sleep on health and wellbeing and details how, far from being a minor irritation, sleep disorders put sufferers at significantly greater risk of health problems.

Its data also reveals the extent to which sleep disorders like insomnia affect everyday issues such as relationships and work. Taken from the “Great British Sleep Survey”, the largest ever survey of the nation’s sleep (conducted by sleep organisation Sleepio), the data shows that compared to people who sleep well, people with insomnia are:

• Four times as likely to have relationship problems (reported amongst 55% of survey respondents with mild, moderate or severe insomnia, compared to 13% of respondents who slept well)
• Three times as likely to experience low mood (83% compared to 27%)
• Three times as likely to lack concentration during the day (78% compared to 26%)
• Three times as likely to struggle to ‘get things done’ at work or elsewhere in their lives (68% compared to 23%)
• Over twice as likely to suffer from energy deficiency (94% compared to 42%)

Sleep Writing

One way of helping improve your sleep is to keep a sleep journal. Each morning, note down how easy or hard it was to get to sleep and the quality of the sleep you experienced. On good days, analyse what your evening routine was, what you ate and drank and describe your state of mind on going to bed. On days when sleep was elusive, do the same, noting what might have stopped you sleeping in terms of your own activity, attitude and consumption, or what outside factors kept you awake (noise, light, temperature). At the end of each week, look at the positive and negative influences on your sleep and try to incorporate the first into a regular routine, and minimise the second.

By the end of a month you should have a very clear idea of what helps and hinders you getting to sleep; the things which cause you to wake up in the night; and how to use this information to improve your sleeping habits.

“There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.”

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, scientist, doctor, educator, mother

(1926-2004)

Golden Glow

Another tip is to actively relax before sleeping. Download and listen to the free "Golden Glow" relaxation audio on The Real Secret website while lying in bed at night and get into the habit of clearing your mind of anxious and repetitive thoughts while relaxing each and every muscle in your body.

More info on insomnia in this blog post, and on reducing stress and taking control of your life in The Real Secret, available in print and Kindle formats on www.amazon.com and www.amazon.co.uk.

Rage - How To Stay In Control

 

We all know what anger is, and we’ve all felt it: either as mild irritation or at times as extreme displeasure. Anger is a natural, adaptive response to threats; it inspires powerful, often aggressive feelings and behaviours, which allow us to fight and to defend ourselves when we are attacked. A certain amount of anger, is, therefore, necessary to our survival and a completely normal, healthy, human emotion.

But when it turns to rage, it is anger that is out of control and destructive. Although rage stems from anger, rage is never heathy. Rage denotes a complete loss of control and is characterised by shouting, threats of violence as well as acts of violence, and involves a degree of aggressiveness that is out of proportion to any provocation. Unlike anger, rage is not a normal, healthy emotion. Rage is destructive and harmful to all involved.

If you find yourself acting in ways that seem out of control and frightening – both to yourself as well as to the victim of your rage – you will need to seek help to find better ways to express your anger and deal with your emotion. There are psychological tests which can test your ability to express anger apropriately, but most of us know if we have a probem with rage. We understand, almost instinctively, that our anger is not healthy anger.

It’s worth having an idea of the common ways in which most of us deal with anger. In general people use a variety of both conscious and unconscious processes to deal with their angry feelings. The three main approaches are expressing, suppressing, and calming.

1. Expressing your angry feelings in an assertive, not aggressive, manner is the healthiest way to express anger. To do this, you have to learn how to make clear what your needs are, and how to get them met, without hurting others. It can sometimes be very difficult to tread the line between assertiveness and aggression – especially in the heat of the moment.

2. Anger can be suppressed, and then converted or redirected. This happens when you hold in your anger, stop thinking about it and focus on something positive. The aim is to inhibit or suppress your anger and convert it into more constructive behavior. The danger in this type of response is that if it isn’t allowed outward expression, your anger can turn inward on yourself. Anger turned inward may cause hypertension, high blood pressure, or depression.

Unexpressed anger can create other problems. It can lead to pathological expressions of anger, such as passive-aggressive behavior (getting back at people indirectly, without telling them why, rather than confronting them head-on) or a personality that seems perpetually cynical and hostile. People who are constantly putting others down, criticising everything, and making cynical comments haven’t learned how to constructively express their anger. Not surprisingly, they aren’t likely to have many successful relationships.

3. Finally, you can calm down inside. This means not just controlling your outward behavior, but also controlling your internal responses, taking steps to lower your heart rate, calm yourself down, and let the feelings subside. This response can be especially helpful if things have become over-heated and you need to restore your balance before expressing your anger in an appropriate and uselful way. Many people find that by removing themselves, physically, from the situation is also helpful. However, it’s important that the anger is addressed later when your feelings have calmed down and you are again in control.

Strategies to help you calm down angry feelings include:

Simple relaxation, such as deep breathing and relaxing imagery.

• Breathe deeply and slowly, from your diaphragm; breathing from your chest won’t relax you. Picture your breath coming up from your “gut”.
• Slowly repeat a calm word or phrase such as “relax”, “take it easy.” Repeat it to yourself while breathing deeply.
• Use imagery; visualise a relaxing experience, from either your memory or your imagination.

You can download our free relaxation audio from The Real Secret website

Practise these techniques daily. Learn to use them automatically when you’re in a tense situation.

Think! When you’re angry, your thinking can get very exaggerated and overly dramatic. Try replacing these thoughts with more rational ones. For instance, instead of telling yourself, “oh, it’s awful, it’s terrible, everything’s ruined,” tell yourself, “it’s frustrating, and it’s understandable that I’m upset about it, but it’s not the end of the world and getting angry is not going to fix it anyhow.” Remind yourself that getting angry is not going to fix anything, that it won’t make you feel better and may actually make you feel worse.

Logic defeats anger, because anger, even when it’s justified, can quickly become irrational. So use cold hard logic on yourself. Remind yourself that the world is not out to get you, you’re just experiencing some of the day to day irritations that are a part of everyone’s daily life. Do this each time you feel anger getting the best of you, and it’ll help you get a more balanced perspective.

Angry people tend to jump to and act on conclusions, and some of those conclusions can be very inaccurate. The first thing to do if ywhich ou’re in a heated discussion is slow down and think through your responses. Don’t say the first thing that comes into your head, but slow down, breathe, and think carefully about what you want to say. At the same time, listen carefully to what the other person is saying and take your time before answering. Try to stay as cool as you can, reminding yourself that allowing yourself to get into a rage will not solve anything.

I have only touched the tip of the iceberg that is rage. There is a great more to say but that will have to wait for another day. My main aim today has been to look at the ways in which we typically deal with anger and to offer some simple techniques for dealing with anger that has the potential to become an unhealthy rage.

Victim support: We would like to know more about the experience of being on the receiving end of a rage attack and so it would be very helpful if anyone reading this blog and who has had such an experience could comment on how they coped and what strategies for coping they would recommend.

Posted by Annabel

There are exercises and activities in The Real Secret which can help you gain control of your life, communicate more effectively and process anger, grief and trauma. You can buy it in paperback or Kindle formats on www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.com, as well as other online booksellers; you can order it through any bookshop.

Hapiness Habits Experiment - Habit 2... And Breathe

We all know that stress is part of contemporary life and that too much is bad for us, physically and mentally. Our early ancestors developed a mind-body alarm system to save them from physical harm and possible death. Evolution being a slow process, the system hasn't yet adapted to Western, twenty-first century living and the alarm is still activated by our feelings of anxiety and fear. Today, worrying situations are unlikely to threaten our survival, yet our brain interprets them as d-a-n-g-e-r-o-u-s and triggers the body into the primitive "Fight or Flight" reaction.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945)

When there is no need for, and no possibility of, actual fight or flight, the physical and psychological symptoms of this are unpleasant and distressing. Though you need this mechanism for your physical survival in times of real danger and, sometimes, just to boost your responses, it's not useful or healthy to be often or excessively stressed and anxious. You cannot begin to relax into happiness if you spend much time feeling like this.

Getting into the simple habit of slow, regular breathing allows you to reduce your stress levels, in general, and also in particularly difficult situations.

To practice, sit in a comfortable chair, back straight and well supported, feet flat on the floor. It can help to close your eyes. Become aware of your breathing: feel the air coming in and out of your lungs, cold through your nose as you inhale; warm as you exhale. Focus on your OUT breaths.

Breathe in a long, slow breath, right down into your diaphragm (you should be able to feel your belly, not your chest, going in and out) until your lungs are expanded fully (but stop before you feel you're going to burst). Breathe out slowly until your lungs are completely empty (but not so you're gasping).

Breathe in and out five times like this, in your head counting up to five as you breathe in and back down from five to one as you breathe out. Keep the in and out breaths regular and flowing; don't hold the breath at any point. After five deep breaths, breathe more gently and normally and find your natural rhythm as you breathe in and out. If you can make the out breath longer, that's good.

"When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still…. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath."

Svatmarama, Hatha Yoga Pradipika (15^th century)

So how do you feel now?

Your body is less tense and more relaxed and your mind quieter and calmer. You have induced this state of calm in yourself. Congratulate yourself. Taking satisfaction in this achievement will activate some of the pleasure centres in your brain and release endorphins which increase your feelings of well-being.

By changing your breathing, you are changing your physical response to a situation. The message your body is giving your brain is: “I am breathing in a calm, relaxed manner therefore I am in control.” As your brain registers this message, it assumes any danger has passed and deactivates the Fight or Flight response.

In our Happiness Habits Experiment this is Habit No. 2. We are asking you to practice this (and any of the five other Habits) at least once a day for three weeks. You can do it anywhere: watching TV, on public transport, at your desk – and as you do so, you will start to raise the threshold at which your Fight or Flight reaction kicks in. Soon you will be able to use it in any situation and induce calm in a couple of minutes. Before long it will become an automatic reaction to any stressful situation as well as something you just do to increase your sense of ease. In the following weeks, notice how much you use this new skill and what positive effects it has for you.

Sign up to become part of our Happiness Habits Experiment here - and get the rest of The Real Secret's "Mind Stretching" exercises here

You can also get our FREE Relaxation Audio here

Posted by Lucy

More Scientific Support for The Real Secret Programme

This article from NPR supports Step 6 of The Real Secret - "Mind Stretching":

"There are plenty of ways to relieve stress — exercise, a long soak in a hot bath, or even a massage. But believe it or not, something you're doing right now, probably without even thinking about it, is a proven stress reliever: breathing.

"As it turns out, deep breathing is not only relaxing, it's been scientifically proven to affect the heart, the brain, digestion, the immune system — and maybe even the expression of genes.

"Mladen Golubic, a physician in the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Integrative Medicine, says that breathing can have a profound impact on our physiology and our health.

"You can influence asthma; you can influence chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; you can influence heart failure," Golubic says. "There are studies that show that people who practice breathing exercises and have those conditions — they benefit."

"He's talking about modern science, but these techniques are not new. In India, breath work called pranayama is a regular part of yoga practice. Yoga practitioners have used pranayama, which literally means control of the life force, as a tool for affecting both the mind and body for thousands of years.

"Take A Breath
"Judi Bar teaches yoga to patients with chronic diseases at the Cleveland Clinic. Bar uses yoga and modifications of traditional yoga breathing exercises as a way to help them manage their pain and disease....

Read the rest of this article on http://www.npr.org/2010/12/06/131734718/just-breathe-body-has-a-built-in-stress-reliever