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Dear Sleep Diary

For those of you who can not get to sleep at night, or who have an incredibly hard time doing it, a sleep diary might not be such a bad idea. You see, the pros of a sleep diary include getting to know when and how you are falling asleep each night, what you might be doing during the day that is keeping you from sleeping, and it can help you figure out what you could do in order to attain a good nights sleep.

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1. Buy a journal. You can pick one up anywhere – Walgreens, Target, anywhere…

2. Get your hands on a pen or a pencil. Again, you can get these items anywhere.

3. First, figure out what time you woke up, and jot it down in your journal. You might find that if you’re sleeping in too late then you might have a harder time getting to bed early.

4. Now think about what time you went to bed last night. If you have to wake up early, you might want to consider getting to bed earlier if you aren’t already.

5. What did you do before you went to bed. Do you have any specific routines? Perhaps reading a book or taking a bath will be able to put you to sleep for the night, and help to turn off your mind.

6. How long before your bedtime did you eat and what was it. Sometimes a glass of milk and a PB&J sandwich will help settle your stomach, sometimes a shot of Vodka can upset it. Remember, coffee before bed might not be the best idea.

7. How active is your lifestyle? Do you exercise often? If you do, how long before bed do you exercise? Remember that our bodies need exercise to keep us healthy, just try and make sure you aren’t doing it right before bed because it will get all your blood pumping and your heart racing and you’ll find yourself feeling as if you have just downed a cup of coffee.

8. Did you wake up during the night at all? If so, for how long? How many times? Perhaps you suffer from a sleep disorder such as sleep apnea that should be checked out by a doctor.

9. What kind of mattress are you sleeping on? Is it springy and broken down? Maybe its time to purchase a new one, one that will last for over ten years. Remember, you spend a good third of your life on your mattress, so you’re going to want to get a decent one to snuggle up with. Think of choosing your mattress and bedding like you are choosing your spouse, you want it to be reliable, and you want it to be there for you, ready to cuddle up with at the end of a long day.

Besides helping one figure out what they might be doing wrong in terms of falling asleep, a sleep diary is also efficient in helping reproduce one’s dreams. The first thing that you must do upon waking up in the morning is to jot down whatever comes to mind about the dreams that you had last night. As time goes on, you’ll find that it is getting easier and easier to remember your dreams, and as more and more time goes on you might find yourself able to control your dreams better.

So, there are multiple reasons to keep a sleep diary, and now you can go out and try it for yourself. Good luck and goodnight!

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Echoes of a Dream

Many of us have escapes that we use to get away from our day-to-day lives, and many of those escapes can be as simple as reading a book or watching a movie. Music, however, for the most part, seems to be universal in helping many people deal with their emotions. Music, and lyrics, and singing, and all kinds of different tunes can help a person either mentally prepare for a big event (like listening to your favorite jams before a big event) or to help you mellow out at the end of a long day. Music is great for break-ups as well as hook-ups. In fact, you could probably find a song to fit every occasion.

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Studies have proven that when listening to music, the dopamine in peoples brains is activated, making us want to listen to more and more of it (unless, of coarse, the song is Friday.) However, no one has been able to figure out exactly why this is because while dopamine is activated during activities such as eating good food, or during exercise. If you are a gym rat, like myself, then you will understand how music can heighten one’s workout experience. As for myself, I will never understand those who are able to run on the treadmill or dead-lift without some awesome tunes ringing through their ear buds, but that might just be me.

So why is it that music gives us such a sensation that we feel the need to listen to it almost every day, at work, on the way to work on the way home from work, in the bath, in the bedroom, in the club. It’s almost like music was programmed into human DNA, and gives many of us a natural rhythm that can’t be defined by mere statistics of race or ethnicity (because some white boys can dance.) There are many different dynamics to music too, like sad, slow songs that you for some reason can’t get enough of and love to cry along to. There are fast tracks with pumping melodies and soaring chorus’ that make you feel like the universe is your oyster. Of course, there will always be that one boring song on an album that you skip every time that it comes on (OK, not always because sometimes an artist is that good.) I think it’s safe to say that for the most part, music gives us feelings.

These feelings can translate into our night lives too, because if you go to bed in a sour mood your probably not going to sleep very well, while going to bed in a neutral or happy state of mind can make for pleasant dreams. You might find that falling asleep to your favorite rock track can be a difficult feat, and that’s because its probably not designed to create delta waves in your brain which will help one fall into a deep slumber. White noise such as crashing waves and a ceiling fan can help to lull a person into the world of sleep, but classical music can also induce a person into this state. There are many things that you can find on the internet that will aid in helping a person sleep, and many musical compositions that can be found on YouTube and various other sites that can move this process along. Getting the proper support from your mattress and pillow and finding the necessary comfort are also factors that contribute to how fast one might fall asleep – besides the obvious how tired you are.

The Natural Transformation by Tomorrow's World

Some of these internet tracks are very interesting and might even carry over into dreamland. Listening to a song that remind you of the ocean could put you on a raft in the middle of the Pacific, while listening to some jungle oriented vibes could place you in a safari, among the beasties of the forest. Give it a try, listen to a soothing rhythm tonight that will help you drown out the world around you and escape into the realm of sleep.

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Precognition

Last night I was dead asleep when all of a sudden I’m in the middle of school, just about to enter my math room, when my teacher pulls me aside and begins to scold me. “Why weren’t you here last class?” He reprimands and I reply to him, wide-eyed, “I was here last class…” There is a moment of intense silence that builds between the two of us for a brief moment before my teacher continues, “Really? What did we do?” I ponder this for a moment, trying hard to remember exactly what we did do the class previous. Did we take notes? No. Did we take a quiz? No, but you’re getting warmer. I remember, “We did the ‘thinking’ piece.” I finally respond with a smile on my face. Ha, I think as my teachers expression shifts from anger to remorse. “Of course,” He says and smiles at me as I walk past him into the math room. Just then my alarm clock wakes me up. I look at the time and see that I have been sleeping through my alarm for the past ten minutes and am probably going to be late for school. I quickly get out of bed and dress up in my normal ‘sweatpants Friday’ get-up, which consists primarily of, well, sweatpants and a hoodie. I barely bother putting a comb through my hair before inhaling a bowl of cereal and rushing out of the door, into the car, and driving down the street just in the nick-of-time.

This morning was also a rainy one. Sheets upon sheets of rain poured down onto my windshield as I drove down a thirty-five mile per hour street at a whopping twenty-seven miles per hour in order to avoid the hassle of getting myself stuck in a flooded street. This mess of a road trip continued until I was finally making my way onto the street behind the school, where I found myself blocked by a large flood in which a sad mini-van was hopelessly rendered useless in. I could have been a good-Samaritan and gotten out, trudged through the flood, and asked if there was anything that I could do for the mini-van; however, seeing as I was already about ten minutes late for school, and that it was there problem and not mine, I quickly turned around and found my way into the school parking lot through a series of back roads that weren’t as flooded.

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Upon arriving in the building, around twenty minutes late, I stumble into the front office, soaking wet, and receive a late pass along with a pitiful look from the woman who runs the front desk before heading to class. Life goes on, I sit in class soaking wet and bored to death as my teacher goes on about something or other, and I realize I could complain about how cold and wet I am except that no one is actually listening to me, nor the teacher for that matter – half the class is sleeping, the other half on their phones. The bell rings and I zip out of class as usual. As I arrived at my second block of the day, my math class, my teacher asks me – not at the door but as I’m sitting in my seat – “Eric, were you here last class?” I am taken aback, “Of course I was, we did the ‘thinking’ piece.” I reply with conviction and my teacher nods. “Right,” He says and then goes to mark something into his computer.

Why is this significant? Did I predict the future? Was this all deja-vu? Had I already lived through it? Were my dreams trying to tell me to make sure to get to class no matter the pouring rain and what not? Precognition is the ability to read the future in one’s dreams. Though it has never been either proven nor dis-proven it is nearly impossible to study. While I’m not claiming the be the next That’s So Raven, I do find it very interesting that dreams could possibly have a very real way of making predictions, whether they are exact or close enough to an actual event. In 1865, Abe Lincoln claimed to have had a dream in which he was attending a funeral and asked “who is in the casket?” and received the reply, “The President of the United States.” Two weeks later he gave his bodyguard the night off and was assassinated. Others have claimed to have foreseen the sinking of the Titanic and other historical disasters. I myself believe that dreams hold some kind of fragment, or glimpse, or detail that coordinates with one’s life. While I don’t believe everything that psychologists such as Sigmund Freud and various others might have noted (like the connotations behind seeing a skyscraper in our dream, or a cave…) I do understand that these very well might be hidden signs that can foretell what our lives might entail or can breathe new life into problems that we face daily, and in the end can either help us get through them or not. Dreams might have a way of healing the soul or destroying it. One of the greatest authors, Stephen King, is said to have been plagued by nightmares all his life. one day he was told to begin writing them down, and now he has an entire library of books under his belt. Perhaps his dreams were promoting him to fulfill his destiny, which was to become the King of Horror.

 

As for what my dream of math class means, I think that it was pretty self-explanatory in its message of getting me out of bed this morning; however, the fact that my teacher asked me the same question in real life as he had in my dream might mean that perhaps I am the next to be the next Nostradamus. Who knows, only time will tell. I can tell you one thing, though, and that is that whatever prophecy that comes to me in my sleeping hours will be made even more vivid by the deep sleep I’m in, promoted by the comfort of my natural CozyPure bedding, which is one thing that no prophet needs to tell you is worth investing in.

 

 


eric-SAT-picEric is currently a student and part-time team member for Norfolk, VA based business Organic Comfort Zone, manufacturers of CozyPure organic bedding and mattress. For more information visit organiccomfortzone.com or cozypure.com or call 757.480.8500.