It is a common belief that as we aged we sleep less.I have seen my deceased parent sleeping at 10pm the previous night and waking up at 3am in the morning on the next day.similarly, I have observed the same experience with my sister and my deceased FIL. Oftenly, i heard them complaining that they could not sleep longer. These few weeks I have been sleeping early at 10pm or 11pm at night and waking up 4am or 5am the next morning. It is about roughly 6 hours of sleep. In the past, I used to sleep at 12 mid night and waking up 7am to 8am the next morining. That would be about 7 hours of sleep.
There is a change in my sleep pattern especially after a hectic yoga session ie sleep early and wake up early. Even if you try to sleep longer, thoughts will start to float into your head and the struggle between sleep and thoughts will intensify, making one feel uncomfortable or not at ease, According to the general beleif, 7 hours of good and uninterrupted sleep is good enough, Too little too much could be harmful to health, It is not a matter of one or a few times but persistently, lack of sleep or excessive could be harmful to health.
Once, my late mother told me that she could not sleep and I took her to see a Doctor and the Doctor asked her about her sleeping pattern and she told him that she catch up with her sleep in the afternoon because she could not sleep the night before. Consistently, she is sleeping in this pattern and it became her routine. So, the Doctor told her to change her sleep pattern and take only short naps in the afternoon and leave the sleeping at night. This advise was useful for a while until her passing. Usually, we are caught in this trap if we are unaware. We change our sleeping pattern to catch up with the lack of sleep the night before and it could become our sleeping habit which through some time, it became our mental habit. If we are aware, we should resist the change and keep to our usual routine. The change in our habit could have silent impact on our body and mind and in the long run, we will feel disillusion. Other people are sleeping and we are wide awake and we are sleeping when other people are awake. We should this change in our sleep pattern.
Of course, if we have a choice, we should keep our normal sleep pattern but for those working on shifts, their irregular sleep pattern will affect their health in the long run unless they regulate their sleeping time and keep to their sleep pattern. Regular sleep at a specific and fix time. The body will be conditioned to accept this consistency. If these people were to change irregularly or sleep in no specific time or lenght of the sleep, it could caused depression and disillusion. Lack of sleep in the long term is damaging to the health as our body and mind needs sufficent good quality sleep. This is the logical requirement ot healthy living,
I have a friend,SW who was working as an audit clerk in his early years. He studied very hard and passed his professional exams and he became a partner. During this process of climbing up the leader of success. He learned to sleep latter ie 3 or 4 hours only. In his later years, he told me that he could not sleep. He tried all the means to sleep longer. He learned to drink herbal tea to promote sleep and meditation to rest. He is still struggling today to sleep a litte longer as he knows that the body needs sleep to repair itself. It is very ironical that he sacrifice his health for wealth and now he hsa to spend his wealth to cure his health. It is all for nothing. Why do we need to go a big circle and end up in a zero sum game.
Folks, be aware of the trap that we could land us in this situation as we enter the rat race. Lead a balance life and sleep adequately or regularly. Buddha's middle path in every thing we do will keep us from harm's way. If we follow the middle path, we are balancing the extremes. The extremes will hurt us if we are not careful.
Namaste.
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