Sleep-deprivation is a disaster for your health on many fronts. Until I started using a simple visualization to get me to sleep I didn’t realize how badly I had previously been sleeping until this technique transformed my getting to sleep. In the past my mind would be a whir of thinking each as I laid my head on my pillow.

Now I visualize my favourite beach in the sunshine and breeze and myself beginning for a rapid sprint through the waves. I get myself into the moment and without fail, within seconds…I’m gone!!

In the short run sleeping in multiples of 90 minutes will have you waking up at the end of a sleep cycle and you’ll get up feeling fresh. But for long term health most people need around 7.5 hours sleep a night.

My most dramatic period of healing was one where my nightly sleep was 9 hours.

A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with sleep apnoea. This might account for my body’s bias for 9 hours. Because with sleep apnoea the brain keeps pulling the body out of refreshing deep sleep, hours of apparent sleep fail to refresh the body and mind as normal sleep would. To address this issue which comes to some of us with the years I now sleep with an earthing mat on my bed. This has completely stopped the problem of waking up coughing and spluttering. It simply doesn’t happen when I am earthed. I am planning to do a sleep study while earthed in order to get some solid data on what my earthing mat is doing for me. But on the basis of not waking up coughing and spluttering, a high quality earthing mat gets a high recommend from me. (Mine comes from Barefoot Healing Australia.)

Meanwhile you might enjoy this guided meditation for sleepfulness based on an ancient Celtic discipline called “Tuning the 5-stringed lyre.”