Brain Bites

[(Zl-eye-f)-nea]

Sometimes if I have something I'm finding a pain, I go looking for a mechanism for change that will help me. Recently I found I couldn't get up in the morning, no matter how much I tried I was always tired. I went looking and found many answers, but one I found really useful:

Before you sleep, imagine you'll never wake up, and when you wake up, wake up before your world, alive and remembering.

Maybe you think that is nothing, that it is obvious and simple - but to me it is like finding the answer to a koan. Sometimes the best things, the ones that stay with me, are only a sentance long.

So I wondered if anyone else does this, and if any of these sorts of things have helped with something and they might want to share?

Z

[Shadowseeker]

Showers.

To me hot really hot showers are like a reset button, almost better than coffee and who knows.

[Curiose]

I personally haven't tried this, but my Social Science teacher taught me once the best way to study:

If you're studying something for a test, and say.. for example, it's math, you use the left side [creative hemisphere] of your brain to better convey the information.

The same goes for creative things.

By using both sides of your brain, you learn things a lot easier, including you remember it more.

In that same lecture, he said that if you think of a specific time you want to wake up in the morning, all you have to do is repeat it before you go to bed and your brain is wired to wake up at that time. Personally, I have done this and it works from time to time. : 3 But it's always good to have an alarm clock just in case.

[Roland]

Well I do not know exactly how to word this, as I never tried to explain it before...but I will try. When in college and confronted with a challenge, I would envision the question(s) and then begin to take a walk around my mind (literally around my brain). I guess you could almost call it a walk about:). My answers esp. in regards to math (not my strong suit), came to me shortly.

I also use this technique when facing demons from my past. As I drive down the road I envision myself being freed from my past regrets..they kind of fly out of the windows (does that make sense). It lead me to the following conclusion: You can't spend your life looking in the rear view mirror.


Neat question Z!

[Atrumist]

OK you found the solution for getting up fresh thank you I'll try it. But please if someone can tell me why my brains randomly turns of several times during the day while my body is absolutely fit and in good condition . I feel like I'm sleeping about 10 minutes but I'm awaken in the same time. Its not lucid dreaming cause I'm not dreaming. I'm conscious that my brain is off. Any idea, low pressure maybe?

[Grido]

Imagining I'd never wake up would terrify me personally, I have insomnia as it is and that'd probably make it worse
The idea of thanking for waking up is a nice one though.

For thinking, I like to sit on steps, or failing that in really odd seating positions depending on what's around

[quote name='Shadowseeker' timestamp='1291152413' post='73849']
Showers.

To me hot really hot showers are like a reset button, almost better than coffee and who knows.
[/quote] Same here, I love it when i don't have anything to get to and can just stay in the shower a little longer, to forget everything

[quote name='Curiose' timestamp='1291153517' post='73854']
In that same lecture, he said that if you think of a specific time you want to wake up in the morning, all you have to do is repeat it before you go to bed and your brain is wired to wake up at that time. Personally, I have done this and it works from time to time. : 3 But it's always good to have an alarm clock just in case.
[/quote]Have done this myself, didn't know it was a recognised method, just randomly started doing it one night and it worked, so long as it's 6/7 hours after I go to sleep, always works for me

[phantasm]

righty tighty, lefty loosy...best phrase ever if you work on your own vehicles.

[Chewett]

[quote name='phantasm' timestamp='1291226236' post='73998']
righty tighty, lefty loosy...best phrase ever if you work on your own vehicles.
[/quote]

But then i end up wondering if its anticlockwise of clockwise

Since when he spanner is in the 12hr part of a clock, left is anticlockwise, But when its in the 6hr part left is the other way!

[Muratus del Mur]

comming from a person that has no reaction to sleeping pills..i can say that i would gladly trade the way i go to sleep for the way i wake up. Dropdead when exhausted should become stand up instantly when enough sleep, and wake up over 3 hours should become feel sleepy 3 hours untill i cant remember when i fall asleep.

Only thing to make me go to bed is to know i need to do something boooring, and child stories do the rest. but lately not even that works anymore. There are certain hours that i feel sleepy and i could fall asleep then right away , but they fit badly in the day (6pm for example).

The only thing to make me wake up fresh is christmas day and my birthday when i know presents are there waiting to be opened. Oh , or when i make something cool in md and i wait for the next day to read reactions


If you find a solution to that, share it with me.
Last thing i tried were sleeping drugs for the mentally insane, and they are _no_fun_

My answer is not an answer but a whining of my own problems, i hope you excuse that, but you made me think of it and i wish i was a kid again, sleeping anywhere and waking up fully charged. those times are gone.

[Seigheart]

Your attitude when you wake up is the most important thing. If you are drowsy, and you think to yourself "Ughh, just a few more minutes." you are setting yourself up for failure.

If you think to yourself ,"Today is going to be a fantastic day!" (Or something along those lines) than you will become instantly alert.

At least, that is how I wake myself up. As soon as that alarm clock goes off, up and out of bed I am. It's actually at the point where I wake up five minutes before the alarm clock goes off. O.o

[Mya Celestia]

[color="#8B0000"][font="Palatino Linotype"]The clock radio is on the farthest side of the room for me. When it goes off, I lay there listening to the weather and then it happens. The station that the radio receives plays the world's most obnoxious song from an old kid's TV show. Drives me right out of bed to get away from it. Washing my face always wakes me up, too. Once I've done that, the day has officially started.

When I can't sleep at night because my brain won't settle, I try to imagine a plain white wall. I then try to force my mind to say 'blank'. I know that sounds goofy, but try it when your mind is racing. It can be quite difficult. It forces my mind into a reset mode which knocks me out.[/font][/color]

[Curiose]

When I can't sleep, it's normally because I have a lot of things on my mind, or I'm pent up.

This is where my heated blanket comes in. Turn it up on high, snuggle up in bed with a single blanket on top with a good bunch of pillows and such, lights off, blinds down, and I am allll ready to go in my little box of a room. Man, I love basements. bwahahaha.

But, nothing's better than having someone to cuddle up to. Ooooh that hits the spot. =3=

[Fyrd Argentus]

I have complex sleep apnea. When my snoring got bad enough, my wife made me go get evaluated and now I sleep with a CPAP/ASV machine - Boy! what a difference it made in terms of getting deep restful sleep.

The other item was getting rid of caffeine - I used to get up as many as 12 times a night to pee. No longer.

The remaining dragon to kill - too much on the mind - is solved by making a list of all the things I want to remember to do tomorrow. With that "accomplished" I can sleep without worrying about things left undone today, and wake up with a sense of purpose.

[Grido]

[quote name='Fyrd Argentus' timestamp='1291249993' post='74079']
The remaining dragon to kill - too much on the mind - is solved by making a list of all the things I want to remember to do tomorrow. With that "accomplished" I can sleep without worrying about things left undone today, and wake up with a sense of purpose.
[/quote]
Yeah, my doctor recommended that to me, they didn't seem to have much of a response when i replied that it wasn't "things" on my mind, it was random images, colours, or such which had no relevance to the next day or whatever

[Sharazhad]

[color="#2e8b57"][i]Im not a morning person. I love to sleep...
But Yoga helps me focus. Once I am out of bed (which is usually 30 mins after the alarm clock goes) I meditate for a bit and practice yoga for an hour - then Im ready for the day.

If not that - then a can of Red Bull [/i][/color]

[Peace]

I wonder into what category of people I am in.

For the past four years I have a season job mostly. Meaning I am working during March-September and do nothing between October- February. And surprisingly my biological clock always adjusts to that.

During the winter, I sleep for a really long time. Something between 10-15 hours per day. Occasionally I sleep for more than a day (24+ hours of sleep, constant sleep).

During spring/summer my organism is sort of alert. No matter how hard I work, the hours I spend working, I can easily adjust to 4-6 hours of sleep per day. (one or two hours in that schedule is usually a nap.)

The thing during winter though... I can't get off of bed. I go to sleep usually around dawn and wake up noon. Often I feel very tired or very recharged, but this is a mood factor. It really depends on what I have to do the next day or what I went through before I go to sleep.

And I still haven't seen a doctor for that. Should I?

On another note, mood is a huge factor to this imo.

[KiraMPD]

Personally I enjoy the haziness when I wake up. Being up and ready to go after a good night sleep is rare for me since I tend to enjoy my dreams quit a lot! Even the "nightmares" that I have a rather amusing as they often have intense (though sometimes confusing) plot-lines. As long as I don't dream about something too personal (like my real family) I'm good!

My situation is similar to Mur in that my main problem is falling asleep though my case is not a serious as Mur's. Because of my busy day schedule during term-time I have gotten into the habit of staying up late to finish my work. As I have progressed in the education system my workload has increased and so my bedtime is constantly scheduled further into the wee hours of the morning (though my time for waking stays fixed at 6:45am, funnily enough >.<). I have gotten to the point where I only get 2-3 hours of sleep per night during term time.

But getting back to the point at hand, I think you should embrace the morning haze! I often find that my mind is most creative during that time plus I still remember my dreams well enough to jot them down (before I come to full conciousness and forget them).

[(Zl-eye-f)-nea]

Well...thank you Mur for totally derailing the point of the thread

Don't get me wrong, the haze is great...but...it isn't practical, and it's one thing to like to stream dream as I like to call it but it's quite another when you literally cannot open your eyes or walk. It's like being very very drunk in the middle of a snow storm in the dark with someone with a torch shining it directly into your face, that's how my mornings are...putting orange juice into cereal, seeing walls bend, washing your hands in after shave...yup...

Technique for getting to sleep - do not go to bed with the intention of sleeping. Go to bed with the intention of inactively thinking. That is, you do not focus and pin things down, analyse and disect as one might usually when they think, but rather you literally allow your thoughts to come and go and you allow yourself to think about them inactively. You do not try to stop yourself thinking about anything. Thinking about what you are thinking, passing mental comment about how stupid the technique is etc, they are all allowed. Let it all happen. Make sure you breathe well. You will be doing the equivalent of allowing ripples in a pool to tire themselves out instead of splashing about and causing more. Eventually, if you practise this technique, you will achieve a state of half sleep and if you are lucky actual sleep. Main issue with this is if you conjure up things that are unpleasant...but that's a different matter entirely.

Causing yourself not to sleep on the other hand -refusing to go to bed until you actually feel exhausted and the physical need to go to bed, can be another issue. I used to do sit ups for that one, but that doesn't work for most people. For most people it does the opposite. If you can reach a point where inactive thinking becomes an pleasurable actual activity for you, then that'll work because you will be 'doing' something.

Z

[Malaikat Maut]

[quote name='(Zl-eye-f)-nea' timestamp='1293007615' post='75867']
Technique for getting to sleep - do not go to bed with the intention of sleeping. Go to bed with the intention of inactively thinking.[/quote]
I do this. I find though, that if I'm thinking about something that excites or interests me I'll have a hard time sleeping. I can't force myself to consider philosophical or theological concepts inactively. So instead, I "daydream" about less important things: fictional characters for a book idea, my character or role on MD, anything like that. I look forward to the time to unwind in silence.

[quote]Causing yourself not to sleep on the other hand -refusing to go to bed until you actually feel exhausted and the physical need to go to bed, can be another issue.
[/quote]
For me it's more a state of mind than anything physical. If I don't "allow" or will myself to sleep, I think I could stay awake forever. My wife isn't like that. In the weeks after the baby was born, she would physically crash every few days and couldn't operate without a nap.

I've always found the mind-body connection to be interesting, and mastering that, or more fully understanding it, unlocks immense power.

[KiraMPD]

[quote]Don't get me wrong, the haze is great...but...it isn't practical, and it's one thing to like to stream dream as I like to call it but it's quite another when you literally cannot open your eyes or walk. It's like being very very drunk in the middle of a snow storm in the dark with someone with a torch shining it directly into your face, that's how my mornings are...putting orange juice into cereal, seeing walls bend, washing your hands in after shave...yup...[/quote]

If that's your problem then your probably suffering from low blood pressure and/or very low blood glucose levels. I would recommend consuming some very sweet (glucose rich) liquid as soon as you wake up. I usually have a tall glass of hot chocolate milk and I feel fine after that. It's a routine I've been made to follow since I was 10 because I was diagnosed with an unusually high metabolism which causes me to become hypoglycaemic very quickly (and I have low blood pressure as well which kind of makes up for my metabolism but makes me very tired in the morning).

During sleep the body goes through a long period of time without any food intake (depending on when you ate dinner anyway) and glucose is the energy substrate for the brain, which is highly active during REM sleep. Since the brain depends on the blood supply for all of it's glucose, having a low blood sugar level can seriously effect the ability to function properly. It only makes sense to have something sweet and rich in carbs to get the body going again. Hypoglycaemic is very similar to having a hangover or being drunk (actually hypoglycaemia is a side effect of high alcohol intake in diabetic patients) so it could be possible that that is what you are suffering form in the mornings.

[Asterdai]

i dont know if i should post as im slightly off-topic but not in the fact that the topic has stimulated something inside of me to make me want to write, so i guess thanks for that, its interesting to hear about people sleep patterns

im a man, i have a relatively stable (cross fingers!) poorly paid job during the day. Finishing at 3 o clock in the afternoon, i settle on the sofa, turn the laptop on, and thats it. ive just become "single" again and this has made things a lot worse lol, let me try and explain
i would actually starve i think, or eat Very unhealthfully if mum didnt buy bread and stuff. I will sit their for hours, needing the toilet and wriggling getting really hungry, then get pissed off when i have to go to the toilet or spend 5 minutes waiting for a microwave meal. i think i can count on one hand the times i have decided, hmm yeh i think ill take a walk to the shops and that seems to be just to get ciggerettes...
i dont have kids, animals, or anything to worry about really. (apart from my family who i live with but cant really socialise much with..) I dont "need" to go on facebook, or even speak to my friends "out of situation". When i go home its my turn, and i relish in being the ultimate in lazyness.

i once lived in shared accomadation, it was horrible. i was sooo lazy that i couldnt be bothered to actually use the kitchen because id have to clear it up, montly room cleaning of plates and stuff id forgotton about was actually hideous.
and to put on top of that, its not that i cant sleep, i refuse to sleep until at least 3AM becuase i feel it would be wasting valuable time being awake. This is a stupid statement, as i never actually DO anything apart from sit on my laptop anyway.

i guess i feel bad, because not only am i probably in an envious situation, "ultimate" freedom in a way, no ties to anything, i am actually very unhappy about it

I find i am different around people, and i just function VERY badly by myself. i think its because i havent or i refuse to grow up.

i love little brain bites such as yours z, kinda like a haiku i can understand. and thinking about ways to wake up and sleep is interesting too
i did hear that using your eyes can help you feel tired and want to shut them. umm i think it was if you look "up" into the corner of your vision or the corner of your room for a while, you will naturally shut them... hmm let me search for it rather then just blabbing..
damn got distracted and found this instead.
http://www.wikihow.com/Clean-Your-Room (in case you dont know how to tidy your room...)

When i was with my partner things were different, i had a reason to do stuff, and was perfectly capable just thought id add that to delude myself and make myself feel better.

Edited December 28, 2010 by Asterdai