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Quanta Magazine article Why Sleep Deprivation Kills tells of cutting edge research on sleep deprivation. It turns out that the gut is the first organ to show damage from sleeplessness: The intestinal linings become covered with reactive oxygen species (ROS), which will lead to lethal tissue damage after enough buildup. What came as a surprise then was that feeding test animals with antioxidants helped them to completely overcome the ROS buildup and its damaging effects. Please note that this simple model only accounted for insect physiology and cannot account for other benefits that ordinary sleep may bring to higher animal bodies like possessed by the human spirit. It's not recommendable to substitute good regular sleep with antioxidants, but people who have chronic sleep issues should take a cue from this study and make sure they have healthy diets with enough sources of antioxidants to help mitigate any oxidation damage poor sleep might have caused.

I would like to hear people opinion about sleeping and waking time ... as opposed to a discussion about how much to sleep (but if someone wants to add about how much sleeping time they think is best and why - that is a plus as long as the main talk is about when to sleep and awake) do you need to get up at morning and sleep at night ? how bad it is to sleep during the day and be awake at night ? read not long ago about Brahmamuhurtha - what are your thoughts about that ? is it effective if im awake at night and go to sleep after that time ? is there something about this in daoism as well (maybe even a word for that time) ?

As a Fitness guy and conscious eater for many years now. Sleeping has been my priority but what makes the body rejuvenated not crashing through the day vs Meditation/qigong/taiji? Does qi/prana govern by the Brain Waves which enable the subconscious to recharge/rejuvenate the body? What if you charge aka imblue qi/prana into cells during sleep that cause one to feeling refresh and not drunk ass (lack of sleep)?

So I've been thinking allot recently.. about my life and the stage I'm in regarding spiritual development.. And I figured that there is a huge gap in my life between me AND The Buddha.. or otherwise the awakened one.. who loses attention not.. and does not hinder away from stillness.. I came to the sober truth that I lose my awareness too often.. in dreams at night.. projections and thoughts during the day.. And I am left with two questions..: Why do we lose awareness when we dream..think and project, remember etc.. And my second question which has two parts is why do we die, and why do we lose consciousness in the bardo thodol? The land of death..?

I couldn’t find anything by searching.

I really want to astral project. Has anyone discovered a good way of inducing sleep paralysis so that it will happen when you are conscious?

Good sleep is so important. One that I don't take for granted being a lifelong insomniac. Lately I've been doing better, though like alcoholism one is never totally free from it. I assume what's been helping me lately is getting up early in the morning, while it dark, then getting outside and watching the sunrise. This is good, not just metaphysically, but a little activity and bright light early in the morning might be the ticket to properly setting up the biorhythms. You know what else. Laying immediately on my right side (heart up) to clear the right nostril, then flipping to left side (stomach up, better digestion) to clear the left nostril, then lying flat and or flipping around, has helped. That, and earlier to bed, by 11 pm, less to worry about lately, even a new pillow have all been helping me fall asleep. What do you guys do to help fall asleep? Any particular rituals?

I have been thinking about how to utilize sleep for cultivation. I know of two methods to help make sleep easier/ improve the quality but they don't always work. I would like for this thread to be a place for people to share different methods and share their experiences. The only two methods I have been taught are as follows- Lie on right side, inhale into yintang through nose whilst seeing blue at yintang. Exhale through mouth with HA sound feeling heat leaving mouth. Do this for 9 repetitions in bed before sleep. The second is simply laying in corpse pose in bed, inhaling from pelvic floor up to chest through nose then exhaling through mouth making the Xi sound whilst having the motion move down from chest to pelvis. I have experimented with doing Anapanasati in bed while going to sleep and so far, it does not decrease length nor increase quality. It has simply deepened the amount of emptiness(no dream state) I have during sleep. I will continue to experiment. I look forward to hearing what you all do! edit- Methods that do not focus on lucid dreaming. They seem harder to find.

Does anyone have any experience with being able to reduce the amount of sleep to 4 hours or less and still maintain optimal energy for life? There are so many things I want to accomplish in my life and I just don't feel like there is enough time in each day to get everything done. I would love to be able to only sleep a few hours a night and still function optimally. There are so many articles and varying opinions on the subject of sleep and it is heavily debated in the medical field and on the internet. I am not looking to create a debate on the topic of minimum required amounts of hours of sleep. It won't be very helpful if all you have to share is "study says 8 hours is key to good health", "study finds that people who only sleep 4 hours a night live shorter life span." One thing that I have learned about "studies" and "opinions" from the medical and science field is that things change very frequently, so today a study says XYZ and everyone goes crazy over it and then a year later, "new evidence shows XYZ is actually I,J,K." There are plenty of examples from history and current that illustrate this. THE LESSON THAT I HAVE TAKEN AWAY FROM THIS PATTERN IN THE MEDICAL AND SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY IS THIS: WE CREATE OUR OWN REALITY THROUGH OUR BELIEFS! (If you would like to debate the topic of changing scientific/medical field study findings, I will post another topic and we can do that there). All I am looking for is this: 1. HAVE YOU REDUCED YOUR SLEEP TO 4 HOURS OR LESS AND STILL HAVE GREAT ENERGY FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME LASTING MORE THAN 1 YEAR? OR, IS THERE SOMEONE THAT IS VERY CLOSE TO YOU THAT HAS BEEN ABLE TO ACCOMPLISH THIS? 2. IF ANSWER TO QUESTION 1 IS "YES", HOW DID YOU DO THIS? HOW DID THEY DO THIS? 3. ARE THERE ANY TECHNIQUES, SPECIFIC DIET RITUALS, BELIEFS, PATTERNS YOU CAN SHARE? THANK YOU FOR BEING AWESOME!!!

Lucid dreaming and dream interpretation is a part of many of the spiritual traditions of the past and is mentioned in many of the world religions. A good meditation and statement of realization/affirmation/mantra/whatever you do, to do at night before bed is to silently affirm to yourself, "I remember my dreams and am conscious while dreaming." It is also more healthy to gradually drift into sleep, than to pass out immediately. Another one to do in the daytime is, "My concentration is becoming perfect." And, "My concentration is perfect." Do not phrase an affirmation like "I will remember my dreams tonight", because your mind will then think that it is something that always will happen in the future, but not now in the present time, which is what time it always is. To mentally realize the statement to yourself is also more powerful than repeating a mantra over and over. You should also get in the habit of writing down your dreams when you wake up if you can, anything you can remember, even if it's just fragments or bits, immediately upon waking up. After several weeks or months you can look over the info over time and see if there are any patterns or recurring themes Here is a cool article about dreams and their meaning according to the readings of Edgar Cayce Edgar Cayce on dreams The Edgar Cayce Dream Dictionary. This page explains what the symbolic meaning of something in a dream is- Edgar Cayce Readings Dream Dictionary