Happiness Express Read online

  The Circadian Rhythm

  Install software on your gadgets that turn the screens amber after sundown. Night Shift on iOS is brilliant. For Windows machines, use f.lux. Many of the latest Android gadgets have a built-in facility similar to Night Shift. If your Android gadget doesn’t have this feature, the Twilight app is a superb alternative. Make sure you move the slider all the way to warm.

  Replace all the light fixtures in your home with those with yellow illumination. If you’re still exposed to blue-white light from other sources, a cheap, low-tech alternative exists. Wear amber glasses. They cost less than ₹2,000 (around $27) and are worth every penny for the quality of sleep you start experiencing when you regularly wear them in the evening.

  After sunset, ban blue and white light and strengthen your sleep army. You will be drifting off into high-quality slumber night after night.

  Transform Your Bedroom into a Sleep Haven

  Everything in your bedroom should create a state of restfulness and a slowing down within you. Please spend a lot on your bed—you must absolutely be in love with it. Good cotton mattresses that are neither too soft nor too hard are the best. Chuck those things with foam or any other material, or gift them to people you don’t like. Firm pillows whose width is about two inches lesser than your shoulders are ideal. Invest in high-quality bed linen. Those soft, luscious materials with high thread counts (preferably 500-590, definitely at least 400) are so inviting to lie down on.

  Remove all clutter from your bedroom and keep the zone spotlessly clean. This will utterly transform the quality of your sleep.

  Some slightly esoteric pieces of advice: Do not let anyone step on your bed if they are not going to sleep in it beside you. It could create health issues for you. If you are getting too many thoughts, dreams or nightmares, or you feel your sleep quality is being compromised, put a few blades of fresh durva grass under your pillow. Your sleep quality will improve.

  If you close your eyes and there is light, you will notice that you can sense it. For almost everyone, even a little bit of light can disturb sleep. Make sure you black out your bedroom in the night. Those teeny lights from the air conditioner or a charging mobile can be a lot of light in the darkness. I keep my mobile on airplane mode and leave it to charge outside my bedroom. I use masking tape on the air-conditioner lights.

  If required, get black-out material for your curtains.

  Here is a test to figure out if your room is dark enough.

  At night, shut the bedroom door, draw the curtains and switch off all lights.

  Hold your hands out in front of your face.

  Can you see them?

  If yes, the room is not dark enough. Find and eliminate light sources.

  If you cannot see your hands, congratulate yourself. You have got a fantastic sleep haven. Switch the lights on.Ÿ.Ÿ.

  If you put those lights on too easily, there is still too much light!

  Sleeping in a truly dark room is magically relaxing.

  Another sleep aid is to cool down your bed room to anything between 20-22oC. Imagine a nice pleasant room and you snuggling into a soft Egyptian cotton comforter on a perfect bed. Most people sleep much better in cooler rooms than warmer ones. Your body temperature falls as you go into deeper sleep and a hot room could awaken you. This doesn’t apply much to people from Chennai. They consider 25oC Antarctica cold! ☺

  Sleeping Positions

  We have all experienced a few aches and pains when we wake up after sleeping awkwardly.

  I recently learned at a workshop that if we sleep awkwardly or in an incorrect position, certain parts of the body get blood-deprived while others get too much. This could lead to major imbalances over time, wreaking havoc on our system.

  People sleep in a variety of ways, but there are only three optimal positions. You should sleep on a comfortably thin cotton mattress and use a firm cotton pillow with a thickness that is half the size of your shoulder, measured from the neck.

  The first: Lie flat on your back, legs a little apart. Hands can be by your side, palms facing up, or on your stomach or chest. Your shoulders should be on your pillow such that your head is on the pillow and your neck is well supported. Around 1.5 inches of your shoulders on the pillow would ensure this. Most people, including me, would use the pillow only to rest the head and leave the neck without support. Try this one, though. It’s so comfortable that you’d wonder why you didn’t do it all your life!

  The second: Turn to your right side. Your head should be on the pillow, while your shoulder shouldn’t. Your left hand should rest on top of the left side of your body, reaching somewhere near your hip. Your right hand should be bent at the elbow, palm upwards near your face. Your legs should be bent comfortably at the knees so that the heels of both legs are in line with the base of the spine. You may have another pillow between your legs if you wish.

  The third: Mirror image of the second, with you turned to your left side.

  Do not sleep with your head towards the north or south. Instead, face the east or west. Though there isn’t much scientific evidence supporting this, and many claim that it doesn’t really matter, I have found that lying in the east-west or west-east direction helps me sleep better and experience pleasant dreams. Moreover, there are many references in our scriptures that say head in the east is the best position.

  A friend of mine would complain of nightmares after moving to a new home. Her family did all they could—from ventilation to pujas—but nothing helped. I asked her to note the direction her head was in while sleeping. It turned out to be north. I advised her to move her bed and rearrange her room so that she slept east-west. She grumpily agreed after having tried just about everything else. In a few days, her nightmares stopped and she began to enjoy glorious sleep.

  Though it’s easy to sleep with our heads in the east, how can one manage to sleep through the night in only those three positions described above?

  The answer is simple: by deciding to do it. There was a time I would sleep with three pillows. One under my head, another over it and a third one between my legs. After the workshop, I resolved to change this habit. The effects of a lifetime of incorrect sleeping positions vanished within a few weeks. The body is super intelligent, and when you start doing what’s good for it, you would be pleasantly surprised at how wonderfully cooperative it can become.

  The Bed-time Ritual

  We are creatures of habit and habitat.

  Do you notice how, when you enter different parts of your home, you want to do the things they represent? Sit at your workspace, and you start focusing on your tasks. Linger around the dining table, and hunger kicks in. Relax in your favourite armchair, and you feel like watching a movie, reading a book or meditating.

  When you step into your bedroom, it should ideally make you want to sleep. These days, though, bedrooms have become multifunctional areas.

  Reserve the bedroom and your bed for sleep, sadhana (meditation) and sex. I hope by now you are convinced that sleep it vital. If it is important, then it needs to be given importance, right?

  When I was ten years old, I would ardently follow a cartoon series that would always end with a man placing a few bottles for collecting milk outside his house and also putting his cat out there, just before heading to bed. The camera would zoom out to show the entire village asleep. What a superb way to depict a bedtime ritual! Even my father would lull us with music before bed. Every night, we would listen to soothing classics as we got ready to sip the honey-heavy dew of slumber.

  You need to get ready for sleep, like you would to go on a hot date. An hour before you go to bed, wind down.

  Enter your bedroom and do some relaxing activities that signal to your brain that you will soon be sleeping. These vary from person to person, and you can do whatever feels right for you. Here are some examples of winding down that we ourselves do at home.

  Dinner at least 2-3 hours before bedtime.

  If you are feeling peckish before bed, sip a glass o
f water.

  Or have a cup of chamomile, valerian or kava tea. Just the herbs brewed in steaming hot water. Nothing else.

  Or a cup of milk, not sweetened please. Make sure you are using the Gir cow A2 milk. I love hot chocolate before bedtime, but chocolate contains caffeine and that compromises sleep quality. I still indulge in it once in a while.

  No gadgets or TV in the bedroom.

  Talk about what happened during the day. List out five things you are grateful for. Challenge yourself each night to come up with a new list, so you never repeat what you have already mentioned. Doing this exercise every night for a few months rewires the brain. You will begin to spotlight on things that have gone well, instead of the usual habit most adults have of nitpicking and focusing on all the things that have gone wrong.

  Play a nice board game. Mumbai Connection highly recommended!

  Read a printed book. We like to read either a romance or a comedy. A few shlokas from the Bhagavad Gita or Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are great if you have a more spiritual inclination.

  Take a nice, hot bath.

  A couple of light yoga stretches can feel wonderful.

  Dim the lights.

  Essential oils like lavender, chamomile, sweet marjoram, clary sage, valerian root or their combinations can lull you to sleep. I like to mix 20-40 drops of each oil if I am doing a combo, and about 50 drops if I am using just one, in a spritzer bottle full of water and spray the room. You may even put a drop or two of the oil directly on your pillow, but I find that overpowering. Lavender is in particular supposed to be sleep inducing.

  Listen to, or chant some Sanskrit mantras just before bed. I love to listen to the soothing Devi Kavacham as I drift off to sleep. Have you ever suddenly heard a song or a melody from a time long ago that you used to love and have now almost forgotten? Did you notice how it brought a goofy smile on your face as happy, nostalgic memories arose? Sanskrit being an ancient language has the same refreshing effect on the deeper layers of our consciousness. You smile goofily from deep inside and something just feels sublimely right.

  No work of any sort allowed in the bed room.Ÿ.Ÿ. with one exception. You may think about one, maximum two things, you wish to accomplish the next day just before sleeping. This is like an assignment to the subconscious. You will be pleasantly surprised at the ideas you may get in the morning.

  You may practise Yoga-Nidra (Yogic Sleep) as you begin to drift off. I get the most amazing slumber when I begin my sleep with this lovely practice. Yoga-Nidra involves effortlessly and gently taking your attention to various parts of the body. You can download a recording we have made of the Yoga-Nidra from www.happinessexpressbook.com/audios/yoganidra.

  Sometimes, the simple act of changing into comfy loose pyjamas can send a strong signal to your system that you are getting ready to sleep. Please don’t sleep in your day attire. I personally know of an astonishing number of people who do that. They often wake up in the middle of the night feeling the need to change into something more comfortable, or rise groggily in the morning with all sorts of itches and pains. Day wear isn’t designed for sleep. Slip into something light and easy. Get ready for that date with the ‘fair enchantress’.

  Sleep and wake up at more or less the same time daily. Create a bedtime ritual and follow it every night. Remember ‘habit’ and ‘habitat’.

  It’s interesting to note that the last thoughts you have while going to sleep are exactly what would be on your mind when you wake up the next day. Be more and more aware of this phenomenon.

  Wake Up Smiling

  Greet the new day with energy and enthusiasm. Be grateful you have been granted yet another day on our beautiful planet. The first few minutes after you wake up lays the foundation of how your day is going to be like.

  Make sure you catch at least 20 minutes or so of early morning sunlight. Just as we need to ban white light after sundown to ensure great sleep, morning light is equally important for us. It gives a clear signal to our brain to begin the process of waking up the entire system for the day ahead.

  Lux Chart

  Lux is a unit to measure light illuminance. 1 lux is the light from a candle; 10,000 lux is sunlight in the afternoon on a cloudless day. It is essential for our well-being that we get 1000 lux for an hour each day, preferably before noon. It’s important to note that this light should hit our eyes. You could be in direct sunlight for a few hours and still not get enough if you are wearing sunglasses.

  This light exposure keeps your awake army functioning well and amazingly even fuels your sleep army so you get better sleep. Many times, people don’t sleep too well at night because they have not got enough light during the day.

  Sleep Debt and Napping

  There are going to be occasions when you have to (or choose to) pull an all-nighter, either to study or prepare a presentation, or write a report. Or binge-watch Game of Thrones. Or play World of Warcraft or Albion Online. The next day, you’re likely to feel groggy and disoriented. You have accumulated sleep debt.

  X hours of sleep debt will take 3X hours of extra sleep to pay it off. These extra hours of sleep must be spread out over the next few days, not done all at once. The caveat is that it must be done right away. If you stay awake for a few nights, it wouldn’t harm you much if you clock in a little more sleep within the next fortnight or so. But if you postpone paying off this debt, the damage that lack of sleep would cause to your system is mostly irreversible.

  All those night-outs I had in my IIT days must have done some pretty awful things to me.Ÿ.Ÿ. I can’t do anything much about that right now. It’s something I will have to live with and keep moving ahead.

  A little side note: oversleeping isn’t good for you either. If you’re sleeping more than ten hours a night, you may have a condition called hypersomnia. Pay attention if you’re constantly falling asleep even during the day.

  A number of people tend to stay in bed on weekends to catch up on their lost sleep. Sleep debt cannot be paid off like this. To settle that sleep debt, you will need to sleep about half an hour more over a few nights. Not four hours more on the weekend. Oversleeping leads to fuzziness in the head, headaches, back pains and lethargy. Chronic oversleeping may heighten the risk of obesity, heart disease and depression.

  Psst! There is a cheat code here. It’s called meditation. It’s not a substitute for sleep, but it can help big time in paying off sleep debt even at a much later date.

  How about napping in the day, you ask.

  A nap that goes into N3 or REM can ruin your nightly sleep. Stay in N1 and N2, and you feel fresh and ready for the rest of the day. To make sure you don’t slip into deeper levels of sleep during your siesta, ensure you don’t snooze for more than thirty minutes. Practising Yoga-Nidra is a great way to power nap.

  Workplaces around the world are now building nap rooms on their premises. Making intelligent use of these little havens of peace can tremendously boost your performance.

  Finally, napping earlier in the day is much better than later.

  Sleep is almost always the first thing that is compromised when life begins to get tough. I am reminded of these lines from Robert Frost’s legendary poem:

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

  But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  Explore those woods and keep those promises. But always prioritise sleep. Otherwise, the woods will remain unexplored and those promises will have to be broken. Make it crystal clear to yourself—when sleep is compromised, life gets compromised.

  ‘Great Grades, Superb Social Life, Enough Sleep—Choose Two.’ Actually, you need to choose just one: ‘Enough Sleep.’ Everything else follows.

  Goodnight!

  Chapter 3

  MEDITATION

  Snap your fingers please. Good. Once more? Great. This means you are in the first state of consciousness: awake. When you are awake, there is awareness—you know what’s go
ing on around you, but being awake means there is no rest. You stay awake for too long and you will start to feel tired. Which brings us to the second state. . .

  Sleep. When you are sleeping, you rest, but there is no awareness. We explored sleep in great detail in an earlier chapter. Sleep is quite enigmatic and scientists and their gadgets have only in very recent times even begun to start to unravel its secrets. They all agree, though, that sleep is crucial. Seven and a half hours of sleep is almost non-negotiable for most adults, with children needing a few hours more. The hours we spend sleeping are an amazing investment—the return is incredible! Enough consistent good-quality sleep keeps us healthy, sane, smart, young, creative, productive and efficient. It improves life expectancy and, most importantly, its quality.

  The third state is the dream state. If we are going to have to sleep for seven and a half hours every night, I guess we would need some entertainment to keep us going. Nature provided us with dreams. We dream intermittently through the night, and dreams provide all the spectacle we could wish for, with a small catch: while dreaming, there is neither rest, nor awareness. Too many disturbing thoughts while you sleep—and you wake up complaining that you didn’t sleep well. There are treatises on dreams, how to interpret them and what they could mean. I wouldn’t bother about them too much. Gurudev once told us about the five types of dreams.