There are many factors which contribute to good sleep. They include the following:
- Be a good-hearted person. Only a good-hearted person is blessed with sound sleep. Those, who lead a morally loose and dishonest life, gets the first, quick punishment in the form of lack of inner peace and lack of sound sleep.
- Always maintain a positive attitude. The more positive our attitude is, the better the quality of our life becomes and also, the more sound our sleep becomes. A negative attitude reduces not only our inner peace, energy and motivation level, but it also reduces the quality of our sleep.
- Work hard. Work hard during waking time so that your body and mind are fully exhausted when you go to sleep. The harder you work, the deeper and more relaxing sleep you get. This is one of many sweet rewards of labor – playing hard during play time is included in the notion of labor.
- Sleep only when you can fall asleep within 5 minutes of lying on bed. This is indispensable for a good quality sleep. Going to bed before we feel real sleepiness (5-minutes at max on bed before one falls asleep is the real test for knowing the time when one feels real sleepiness), is a direct route to unsound and shallow sleep. If one can’t fall asleep even after 5 minutes of sleep, know well that you have gone to bed before you should go: in such case, make sure, you go to bed later next-day.
- Don’t over-sleep for even a single day. Over-sleeping on one night reduces the quality of freshness and energy-level of body-mind on next day: apart from that, it also reduces the quality of sleep next night. So, ensure to neither over-sleep nor under-sleep. How to find out your optimum amount of daily sleep need is given in next section titled “When and how much to sleep?”. Not even in the worst possible attack of laziness, over-sleep by more than 30-45 minutes extra over your optimum amount of daily sleep need, otherwise your day (and next night’s sleep) will get ruined due to lack of freshness and high-energy in body and mind.
- Avoid watching movies & other videos within few hours before sleep. lots of dream will occur to you due to effect of movies & other videos, which will make your sleep shallow and disturbed. Otherwise
- Avoid watching images & reading anything on emotionally sensitive issues: likewise, avoid emotionally sensitive debates within few hours before sleep. Otherwise lots of subconscious thinking on these matters will happen throughout that night’s sleep and will make your sleep shallow and disturbed.
- Avoid having nerve-exciting foods & drinks within few hours before sleep. Such foods & drinks include coffee, tea, etc. They make it harder to fall asleep and even if you fall asleep, the nervous and mental excitation produced by these foods makes it hard for our nervous system and mind to repose in full rest during sleep.
- Doing thoughtless awareness exercises, reading emotionally soothing and inspiring literature and listening to soothing instrumental and other soft-music before going to sleep are always helpful in inducing sound sleep. Due to this reason, if you are not able to fall asleep within 5 minutes of lying on bed, just get out of the bed and get involved in these activities for few minutes to induce drowsiness – and of course, remember to go to bed next night later than when you went tonight
- Sleep after putting off light or using a very dim light, because bright light stimulates our body-mind system and makes our sleep shallow.
Sleep on left side preferably. The main reason behind this is: when we sleep on left side, breath-flow becomes nt in right nostril, which, in turn, helps in digestion process. The other reason is: for entire body and particularly for organs like heart and digestive system, sleeping on left-side is more comfortable and more suitable for proper functioning.
Sleep with head in East or South direction. Since in general, our bed is aligned either along East-West or North-South direction, this rule is very simple to follow. Sleeping with head in East is better than sleeping with head in West due to 2 factors: (a)the earth rotates on its axis from West to East. This induces subtle advantage by giving more rest and vitality to inner energy-field of body. (b) Since the earth rotates on its axis from West to East, the sun (source of vital energy for all life-forms) rises in the East – so, there is more vitality in East direction at night, with which our entire inner energy-field gets recharged. Sleeping with head in South is better than sleeping with head in North. This is because there is a magnetic field along our spine whose North Pole is in head and South Pole is in the lowermost part of spine. So, if we sleep with head in South, the North Pole of our spine’s magnetic field is attracted towards the South Pole of Earth and South Pole of our spine’s magnetic field is attracted towards the North Pole of Earth, thus increasing the vital energy in our body-mind. But, if we sleep with head in North, the repulsion between magnetic field in our spine and Earth’s magnetic field will make our sleep shallow and disturbed. These things are part of yoga-literature: modern science is yet to verify them. So, please forget this rule if you find these reasoning scientifically not convincing enough. I am including this because yoga has known many secrets about body and mind thousands of years before modern science could grasp them: but, feel free to accept or reject this rule
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