#like who knew sunlight and a healthy environment was good for your mental health???

[spitefully-alive]

My aunt and uncle and their pool have single handedly cured my depression within the two weeks I’ve been here

[sobdasha]

had a few more thoughts about the Honda family

and all the Souma parallels.

(and by “a few” I apparently meant “a lot”, I did not mean to write this many pages)

In the other post I’d made a comment about how Katsuya’s romance with Kyouko, severe age difference issues aside, is just plain pathetic, a point which I believe to be Upheld by canon. And I wanted to talk more about that, the implications of that, and how that further builds the Akito and Tohru parallel. And also, Why Tohru Can’t Love Her Mom And Kyou At The Same Time.

The ideal, in Fruits Basket, is that when you make a connection with one person who loves you and sees you, this will enable you to make further connections with the people around you. Tohru does a whole heck of a lot of this; for one example, see Yuki explaining this to Kisa in the liking-yourself speech. Yuki does some of this for bitty Haru and later for Machi. Kazuma does this for Kyou. And so on and so forth. The positive experiences are meant to have a ripple effect.

It’s important to be grateful for what you have (Yuki and Machi’s “just one person would be enough” scene), but it’s human to crave more than that (Kyouko telling Saki that it’s probably normal to want other people to accept you even if you already have a loving and supportive family). It is important to crave more than that.

This was, in fact, the entire point of the curse. God meets cat. Cat’s companionship allows god to form connections with other animals. Cat is dying and god decides that 13 friends is the perfect number of friends and starts the reincarnation cycle. Cat says, “god you never once left your house. I wanted to see you go down and make friends with the humans. I wanted to see you experience the world and laugh in the sunlight. God you made 13 new friends but you’re still lonely and closing yourself off to the world forever, this is wrong and I am sad.” The banquets were supposed to be the gateway drug of friendship and meaningful connections, not the place where 14 souls stagnated alone and isolated until it became a curse.

That same wrongness happens in Ren and Akira’s relationship, where finally making a connection with one person who loves you and sees you made their world smaller and smaller. It wasn’t healthy, probably because 1) they remained in a toxic environment, 2) Kureno implies that Ren has mental health issues and I assume those existed prior to Akira’s death and were exacerbated, rather than created by, her grief; also I can’t imagine she actually came from a non-toxic family herself, and 3) Akira’s “you’re going to die an early death and the only thing we need from you first is a successor” trauma. Akira never found anyone other than Ren who understood how upset he was. Ren never formed a relationship with anyone other than Akira, partly because she was now trapped in a toxic family that despised everything about her and she refused to Prove Them Right by leaving. They both viewed their child as an object rather than a person; Akira seeing proof that he and Ren were definitely OTP and the Souma could go shove it, and Ren seeing a Rival.

I have a memory that I said at some point—probably in a Talking About Shigure post—that Kyouko helps Katsuya connect with other people. But this, I think, is not really true. I was thinking of how Kyouko helps bridge the non-relationship between Katsuya and his father. But that’s just one person.

Really, Katsuya and Kyouko are more like Akira and Ren.

Marrying-someone-who-just-graduated-ninth-grade aside, the fact that Katsuya and Kyouko meet is genuinely a good thing. Katsuya finally connects with the humanity in another person. Kyouko is finally cared about as a person. Their misanthropic-jackass-and-abandoned-cat relationship improves both of them, probably. Their connection is definitely the reason Kyouko decides to go to high school and quit her gang. It’s harder to tell with Katsuya, but you could argue that seeing Kyouko struggling and fighting and screaming against the world, as honest about her joy as she is about her loneliness-channeled-into-rage, causes Katsuya to say screw it and pursue the career in pharmacy that he’s interested in, instead of fake-politely submitting to the world’s expectations and internally resenting and disdaining everyone around him.

Katsuya softens in his relationship with his father. Both Katsuya and Kyouko see their child as a person in her own right, Tohru, rather than an object. Katsuya, in fact, is adamant about that fact when Kyouko is terrified of her pregnancy—that they can treat their baby as her own person, and if they aren’t perfect parents and they hurt their child, they’ll apologize—because Tohru is a person and an equal—and admit that what they did was wrong and why it’s wrong. They’ll treat Tohru with the respect they should have gotten all along.

But I don’t think it ever goes any farther than that. Like god, the Honda family becomes more and more isolated.

Does Katsuya make any work friends? We don’t really get a complete view of their lives, because Takaya is one person who can only do so much and space is very precious, so we only see what’s crucial to the story. But I would be really surprised to find that Katsuya had made any close friends outside of Kyouko. I honestly doubt that he has anything more than casual work acquaintances. (In contrast, we repeatedly see Kyou together with the two guys who got names in the anime that I forgot in his class; his friendship with them doesn’t get explored much in the manga, presumably because it doesn’t do any heavy lifting for his character development, but Kyou clearly has casual friends who seek him out and whom he doesn’t mind being with. See also the way Saki and Arisa also interact with those guys as a part of the group, while Tohru really only interacts with Saki and Arisa or the Souma.)

And I don’t think Kyouko fares any better. Does she have any close friends, other than her husband and daughter? Does she make friends at work? I don’t know what kind of work Kyouko does, and if she would have the opportunity to take her breaks socializing with coworkers. But it appears she spends her work breaks in an abandoned area socializing with a first or second grader. Kyou is the only person, as far as we know, that mid-twenties Kyouko can start to open up to. She doesn’t get all the way there—Kyou doesn’t connect the dots until much later—but it’s the closest she comes to talking about how she hurt Tohru after Katsuya died.

Where are the family friends? It doesn’t strike me as weird that the Honda family doesn’t have them, because I have also grown up in a poorly socialized household, but even I am used to running into unfamiliar people in public who explain that they know my mom or dad. I’m pretty sure family friends are a normal thing, and that’s how you get aunts and uncles that aren’t related to you, much in the same way that I’m pretty sure it’s normal to be friends with your cousins (especially if they’re in a similar age range and live nearby) and it is very common for grandparents to bring grandchildren with them to the grocery store because the grandchildren are staying over and they’re having a relationship.

Where is anyone but the Honda family at at Kyouko’s funeral? Kyouko made friends with Arisa and Saki, but did she ever make friends with Saki’s parents? Where are Saki’s loving and supportive mother and father and grandmother when the Honda family is arguing about who has to take on the burden of Tohru? Where are they, if they knew of the bad blood between Kyouko and the Honda family (and the disinheritance between Kyouko and the Katsunuma family), to sweep over Tohru’s protestations and tell her that it will all be fine, they’ll make it work out (they packed up and moved house for Saki, after all), it’s not Tohru’s job to worry about being a burden, it’s the job of people who love her to take care of her?

It can be both “because of the necessity of the plot” and “because they didn’t know.”

Tohru inherits this small, isolated world. And because of the trauma of being abandoned by her grieving, depressed, absolutely-not-coping mother, Tohru picks up on that Souma curse mentality. Tohru’s dad left, and Tohru’s dad tried to take her mom with her, leaving her with no one but Grandpa (who is not intimately part of their world but is not fully outside it either). Tohru’s dad is now a Rival. Tohru’s dad is now an Outsider. Clearly, a bond with an Outsider weakens the True Bond that Tohru had with Kyouko. Clearly, Tohru’s dad is Not Needed (because the other alternative is that Tohru is Not Needed). Clearly, only one of them can have Kyouko.

And it’s going to be Tohru.

Tohru picks up Katsuya’s fake-polite speech, equally disingenuously but from the opposite direction (ie, Katsuya was fake-polite to be an asshole, and Tohru is genuinely polite but faking the words). Tohru is pretty sure this is a form of wicked manipulation (much like Yuki is convinced that “be kind unto others as you would have them be kind unto you” is a form of wicked manipulation). Tohru keeps up with it anyway. Kyouko, as Kyou suggests, was probably comforted by this; rather than going full Akira “you exist to prove that I lived and loved a woman”, seeing Katsuya’s mannerisms in Tohru reminds her that her husband did exist without having to erase Tohru as a person. Kyouko does a lot of growing on her own, but with no support system and no friends outside the family and being fresh-out-of-college age, it’s not surprising that she fails to talk with Tohru about this, and tell Tohru that she knows why Tohru’s doing this, she knows how she hurt Tohru and it was wrong, you don’t have to do this anymore. This is a hurt between them, a grief, that they never talk about, even though they both know it’s there and Kyouko tries to smother it with love and affection and Tohru tries to shut it up in a box of denial.

Tohru’s world is now just Tohru and Kyouko. Tohru doesn’t make any friends until middle school. We know she gets bullied and doesn’t fit in throughout her entire school life. She is a riceball in a fruits basket and probably just manages to scrape by in conformity culture. When she does make her first friends, Arisa and Saki don’t count as Outsiders who compromise Tohru’s bond with her mom because Arisa and Saki are also misfits on the fringe. They are outcasts Tohru can bring into the circle. They are all monsters together, like the cursed Soumas (the only reason no one refers to Akito as a monster to her face, the way they do the rest of the Zodiac, probably has less to do with the fact that Akito doesn’t transform and more to do with the fact that Akito being in a position of power is useful for their own ends, so best not to undermine the head of the family by pointing the whole monster thing out).

And then Tohru’s mom dies.

Tohru isn’t god and she can’t make an eternal banquet. Tohru doesn’t know how to process her grief and how not to fall to pieces. Tohru knows how to empathize with other people, but she doesn’t know how to be vulnerable. Did she remember Kyouko wanting to follow Katsuya, and think about doing the same? But Tohru also wants to keep living, somehow.

So she makes her mom not be gone. Her mom is dead, Tohru knows that, just like Akito knows that Akira’s soul isn’t in the box choosing her over Ren and showing her the way to happiness. But maybe. So she talks to the portrait of her mom. She tries to rescue her mom from suffocating inside a mudslide. She takes her mom on holiday to the onsen. Her mom gets kidnapped once by Hiro. Tohru’s mom is definitely not gone. Tohru and her mom definitely still have an eternal bond. Tohru’s mom will always be first in her heart, so that Tohru will always be first in her mother’s heart. Tohru will never abandon her. Tohru will never leave her behind.

(Tohru will never be left behind.)

Tohru’s world is just Tohru and her mom.

Tohru has two best friends, Arisa and Saki, but she won’t let them in. She won’t depend on them. She won’t tell that that her grief is crushing her and that she’s living in a tent because she’s terrified of being abandoned. Tohru makes a lot of new friends in the Souma family, and she’s very happy, but she won’t let them in either. Tohru can’t open up to any of them freely.

I don’t think I saved it anywhere the survived the computer death, but I saw at least one post in the fandom talking about the growing disappointment of the reboot anime, and they had a valid point, so I’ll bring that in now.

I really like the reboot, but I am losing my passion in the final season. Adapting a story from one media to another is hard, and at the beginning I thought they were doing a good job. Small things were being cut, scenes were being rearranged and stitched together, but there was a definite purpose behind it. Instead of literally following each chapter, each episode tried to be a self-contained theme in the same way a manga chapter would be. Because themes repeat again and again in Fruits Basket in a slow build, this was working well. But small things that didn’t quite fit got cut. Scenes I liked and was sad not to see, but that I accepted had to be left out to make the episodes stronger.

But they’ve been piling up and piling up. Small holes have accumulated into big plot holes that the third season is tripping over. I’m sad that we don’t see the small progressions of Yuki and Machi’s relationship, the quiet scenes that show Machi is trying to pay attention to Yuki the way he has paid attention to her, and also all the Mogetas. I’m sad Komaki is the new manga-only character. If we don’t get Kyouko’s full backstory, we lose a lot of the context that’s in this post. I could go on and on.

But most importantly, as that someone else pointed out, we missed out on the progression of Kyou and Tohru’s flirting. It’s too late to cram all of that into a montage episode, and so now we’ve been given episode after episode of Mom Tohru, and hardly any Tohru Struggling With Romance In Addition To Struggling With Grief before suddenly everyone is confessing their love and I’m not as into it in the anime as I am in the manga.

So many of the Souma love and accept Tohru, but Tohru remains an Outsider—not because of the curse, but because she hasn’t formed close friendships with them. Tohru has a lot of people among the Souma she likes who like her, but she’s always a Mom to them. Tohru shares some of her own pain with them, but it’s shared for their benefit, not for Tohru’s own catharsis. Tohru shares so she will be loved, not so that she will be accepted.

Except Kyou.

Kyou, who looks at Tohru and thinks, “I’m pretty sure she’s that lonely person even now, even while she’s smiling and genuinely enjoying every moment with us.” Kyou, who’s falling in love with Tohru. Kyou, whom Tohru’s falling in love with.

Kyou is the only one that Tohru takes a desperate risk with. Kyou is the only one Tohru ~disillusions~ and ~disappoints~ in the hope that he’ll accept her regardless.

Kyou is the only one Tohru tells, “I don’t talk about my dad because I kicked him out of the family. I know my dad loved us and I loved him back, but I pretend to talk like him so my mom will forget about him and love me instead. He came between me and my mom and now I pretend he doesn’t exist. And I know I’m an awful person for behaving like that, so I keep his picture and pretend I don’t, and I pretend he’s the Bad Guy who earned it.”

The idea that Tohru can’t love both her mom and Kyou is, in a way, true. (I think that same post I’ve been referencing also talked about how dropping the budding romance also dropped a lot of the clues that this is Tohru unable to process her grief? Which is also very true. But if Tohru has the Souma mindset, then actually she has a legit point about not being able to love two people at once despite being a very loving person. Both can be true. Multitudes.)

Kyou is an Outsider to the world of Tohru and her mom. And if Tohru chooses to love him, it will weaken her bond with her mom, which is predicated on loving her mom more than anyone else. If she expands her world to include him in it, she will be betraying her mom. Tohru will be the Bad Guy who left her mom behind and abandoned her. Tohru will be her own villain, condemned for the same crimes she pinned on her dad.

Kyou 100% gets where she’s coming from with this, because he turns this exact argument on her when she confesses to him and he panics (akin to when Tohru chases him down in his true form and he slashes her and, in the reboot, yeets her into the lake, so that she will be hurt so bad she’ll never pity/love him again). He asks her if her love for her mom—her bond—was just a lie.

Tohru making friends after Kyouko’s death has been a lot like Akito letting Yuki and Kyou out into the world, certain that it would drive them back to the bond. Yuki getting character development is a huge betrayal. Tohru wanting to be together with Kyou, when she should only want to be together with her mom, is a huge betrayal.

Tohru has no model for expanding her world. She’s good at loving people, but bad at letting them in (Kyouko was bad at that too—like Mom Tohru, she was very good at sharing anecdotes about her violent youth, but very bad about sharing how she’d failed Tohru as a mom). Like Akito, she only really knows the bond—the certainty that her mom would love her. She’s been so terrified of not being loved that she’s acted this entire time like her mom is still around. When Kyou’s love is a possibility, she can only conceptualize it as a betrayal of her relationship with her mother.

It always seemed a bit too abrupt that Tohru looked at Akito with the knife and went “oh shit we’re literally the same”, but now that I’ve thought this all out, it makes eloquent sense. The whole time Tohru’s been working against the curse, she’s been in denial about her own blessing-burden-curse. Now that she’s just admitted it and had it thrown back in her face, she can look at Akito and see another person in an insular little world, isolated and lonely and walled-off from the world. Of course Tohru desperately wants to make friends with knife-wielding Akito—she just decided to let go of her ties to her mother that were suffocating her, and take her first steps into the world, and got immediately dumped by the person she loves. Of course she wants to make friends with someone who knows exactly where Tohru’s coming from and how terrifying what Tohru just did is and how awful it is to be rejected even though she’s got other friends she loves out here in this world she’s decided to finally step into.

Tohru is so damn lonely, and Akito is there, also lonely and screaming and crying and undeniably human.

(Smile, Tohru tells herself in the hospital. Smile and tell Kyou you were happy to meet him and just let him go. Don’t be a curse. Smile and let him find his own happiness. Which is more or less the same struggle Akito is also going through. But maybe they’re going through it together. Maybe they used their words, together, when they couldn’t confide in anyone else. Although it feels a bit unlikely that Tohru let herself break down about Kyou in front of Akito, and Akito already had one pity-party in front of Momiji and may not have wanted to burden Tohru with a second.)

One thing I really love about Fruits Basket Another is that Hajime alludes to the fact that Kyou probably won’t inherit Kazuma’s dojo after all.

Kyou inheriting the dojo is something both Kyou and Kazuma have wanted, and it gives me many warm fuzzies. It is very narratively satisfying. The dojo, while Souma property, is not actually part of the main estate.

What I love is that Kyou probably won’t take over the dojo specifically because he and Tohru have made so many friends in their new town that they don’t want to pick up and leave. Kyou finally succeeds in freeing Tohru from that small, lonely world, much like he’s been freed from the fate of the Cat Room. Their relationship enriches them personally and also enables them to make so many new connections. Kyou has friends at the dojo! Tohru has friends at work maybe! Friends where they buy groceries, friends among the parents of their children’s classmates, friends outside of their extended Souma family! They’ve kept ties that don’t hold them back and made new ties that don’t weaken or steal away any of their old ties!

When they left Tokyo, Tohru was prepared to go anywhere as long as it was with Kyou. Now, she and Kyou both don’t want to leave because their world is so much larger than just their nuclear family and they’ve put down roots. They’ve seen each other not only lonely in the moonlight and worn thin by death and loss, but they’ve gotten up and gone down the mountain to where the people live and made friends among them, laughing in the sunlight. Just like the cat always uggghhhhh I’m not crying I’m just so damn happy for them I can’t

[mirovoi1]

REFLECTIONS OF A JAILBIRD

It can be quite hard to force myself to concentrate on writing when myriad distractions abound: I have the internet, snacks at hand, and a curious mind that prefers wandering than getting stuck into the arduous task of gathering my thoughts and organising them into one structured essay.

What is worse is that there are also myriad birds outside my windows that are eager to show off how free they are - while it is me that is cooped up inside an aviary. And this has been my daily life for months already here, in the middle of Istanbul.

The world has surely been turned upside down.

And my state of being has now too.

Have you ever been to prison without being involved in a crime?

The laws of lockdown have worked; they have successfully restricting my body to the house, but it has also set loose thoughts and emotion; and the things that stir inside an idle being.

In fact, I am usually the opposite: a busy body with a braindead head – not a rioting soul in a dead body.

Thus, has been a rare chance to engage in some very unique, albeit testing, self-reflection and what I have observed is that my own mind is actually hell-bent on getting away from me.

Out of due respect for public health, I have not really been anywhere for a full three months. And during this home-sentence, I have been battling with another prison: a mental prison consisting of high walls that forbid me from doing any proper constructive written work.

The summer warmth has arrived in Istanbul; finally replacing the long, wet winter - the heat and sunlight have come and replenished the empty hole that is known as ‘lockdown’. This is a very good change in events. Weather does alter one’s mood.

The uplifting summer-scented air has called me to begin writing down a few notes to share with you all. Although, however lovely days of sunshine and birdsong may be, it seems my newly-found prison-life has offered some useful (and dire) insight into how many lives are lived.

*

Morning after morning after morning, I wake up in the same fashion, with the sound of pigeons outside my bedroom window. They sit there and mumble the same stuff at each other. I get up for a coffee. The sparrows chirp like mad in the big leafy trees from morning till dusk and I am always here to hear it. Now that all forms of unnatural noise have subsided over the past weeks, the world has revealed that there are even chickens living on the banks of in front of the apartments opposite me.

Who would think chickens exist in a city of fifteen million people? Well, I believe it. It is hard not to believe it when their bleating is sometimes all that is left over now that cars and engines sounds have left the room. Right now, it is a bird’s world and I feel as if I am the only living creature that sits around stagnating all day.

Those birds are busy with their lives and I am the one who is sat in the bird cage waiting for some sort of seeds to appear in my bowl.

*

During my lifetime, I have always wondered how come old people so often tend to be miserable.

I was confused as to why oldies were always angry when kids’ balls come over their fence. I thought that old people should know that life goes along better when the world is a tolerant and friendly place - after all, judging by their bent posture and wrinkly skin, it could be safe to say that they have been around for a bit and should be aware of the tricks of the trade.

The world over, I have been yelled at by grumpy old people – usually for noise or some other form of unruliness. But my anticipation for some eventual grey-haired wisdom to save the day always fell through as they most often would revert back to their own form of unruliness – that being their decrepit emotional composure in the face of something minor.

I always liked to imagine that someday, I will become the seemingly only old man in the world who is patient, kind and unconcerned with little things that are of no apparent bother. I thought I would be the kindest granddad who would come out of his house, and instead of shouting with a stick in hand, he would come with a packet of chocolate biscuits and tell the kids just how great they are doing with their soccer skills.

But now I get it.

A silent, idle life, void of real things to do and people to talk to just makes people become dank. Now I understand. A rattle in the refrigerator has the power to really piss people off. I never knew of that rattle when my life extended beyond these four walls.

In a tiny little world, tiny little things just appear so big.

Now I realise, I too, in the future, am capable of becoming an angry old man.

*

In Istanbul you often have company from giant seagulls which are a key part of the infrastructure of this giant port city. Istanbulites love to feed animals, and these massive birds easily get their beaks into heavy pieces of stale bread. They do not want to share their findings with others and so they fly onto the rooftops and drop it, hack at it and throw it around in order to break it into smaller, edible size pieces.

I live on the top-floor and often have to deal with them stomping around on my roof. I have a rooftop sky-window that I can open up and be part of the goings on up there, but they are too busy to care. They are very happy. I am not though, and I give them the evil stare from under the window pane. And, again, they are too busy being happy to care.

*

May is the month of Ramadan and at times some very rhythmic Anatolian music seeps out from behind some bushes somewhere near where those chickens live. There is also drumming at 2am each night. Sometimes I hang myself out the fifth-floor window to try to get a piece of the vibe. I always found the concept of music to be extremely fascinating. Music is such a human thing.

I admit I have felt a bit self-conscious before dancing in front of other people, but I have to say that I feel downright embarrassed doing so in front of animals. So, I don’t. I am sure animals understand the pleasure in moving around and having fun, but the style we do it in… well, I don’t know about that. We must look absolutely ridiculous. But it is Ramadan, and it is a time for celebration.

There is a family of crows that lives in a branch – rent-free – just opposite my biggest windows in the lounge area. I enviously watch them coming and going, and taking turns at sitting on their babies. They screech and caw, as I do when I think I am singing.

As I hum along to these sudden outbreaks of traditional folk tunes, I wonder why we humans feel the need to offer a bit of our own noise to an otherwise good-enough piece of music. We also like to move our bodies along with to the beat, as if that was called for. If you can get past your own two feet, that is, then this timely shuffling is generally known as ‘dancing’.

So, it seems that adding some singing, some lyrics, and well, ultimately some sort of mouth and body movement to the music, it just makes it all come alive.

*

We humans make order of our thoughts through speech. We navigate our world through the use of the mouth; through words; through language, through lyrics, through conversation, through stories, constantly feeling the need to incessantly release some form of mouth-made noise with/to/towards/at other people: we engage in civil, amicable chitter-chatter; we emit our oral vibrations out of rage at poor kids who have lost their ball over the fence, we thrust our noises into the music as we groove along in tow…

…and somehow this makes us feel better about the world.

I can honestly say I am utterly embarrassed to be a human. But, the innate, instinctive need for talk and movement dictates our psyche. The necessity for social interaction with other people and physical interaction with our environment is indisputable. This is the source of a large part of our health. And without it, well…

We humans are a group mammal after all – perhaps more so than the feathered ‘free-folk’ outside that even feel free enough to crap all over my windowsills. But it is obvious: being around people and engaging in meaningful conversation regulates our mood and emotions so that we can avoid entering the otherwise guaranteed free-fall to hell…

…where a lot of us are right now.

All of this has now become starkly clear as I sit in here doing the opposite of what a healthy person does. All the animals accentuate the fact that they can get more done in life now that us human-beings have ceased to be part of the furniture; and we are not around anymore to bother them. Unless I decide to dance behind the glass or something - and that could bother a soul or two.

I mean, if you have to be a human being, then you also have to know how to meet a human being’s needs. That is not to say I dance, but it does mean one needs to be able to think well, speak properly, and move more.

This may seem obvious and straightforward, but I can assure you… it is not.

Just as one may think six months at home would be heaven, and when it comes around you realise it is actually a nightmare. Human beings may sit around in their homes dressed in clothes with their fancy gadgets, but can assure you, we do not always really understand what it is that we need. Nor do we properly see things for what they are…

A lot of us have never learnt to think, nor learnt to move, nor learnt to speak. Properly, that is.

*

Over the years, I have had a number of students who could fall under the category of ‘depressed’; or ‘hell-bound’ would be a better way to put it.

There is a thing called clinical depression, but this dispiritedness is often just simply an environmental, psychological, physiological or sociological inadequacy or imbalance. Sort of like a form of vitamin deficiency that comes good again with the right adjustments.

That is basically to say… yes, as it seems, a lot of melancholy folk typically seem to lead a full-time lifestyle of lockdown.

Try that! What a bloody existence…

I have observed many teenagers of mine who regularly take part in physical activity in their daily lives, be it sports or dance, are generally much more mentally and emotionally healthy – not to mention physically so. They tend to hold onto less negative energy and have a lighter, bouncier kick in their way of being.

Those that have good social, conversational and inter-personal skills tend to have these similar healthy characteristics. In short, those that are well-equipped to meet their simple human needs fare well in the world.

But this species of well-equipped kid is actually depressingly rare. A huge number of adults do not qualify either. That has frustrated me for a long time.

*

Normally at this time of year, I would be busy preparing for the summer holidays for when my students and I hit the long road with our backpacks on.

This year, that is not going to happen though, which is a pity because we were planning for some very exotic locations (Cuba, Madagascar…). And it is also a pity for some of my students that are, and/or have always been full-time-lockdown-lifestylists who would greatly benefit again from a couple of weeks-long de-shackling from the mundane.

However, this virus has offered me a very unique opportunity:

With the ditching of my passport and car-keys and the forgoing of my usual travel-lifestyle, I now get the chance to exist on this great planet in another fascinating way…

By being in prison, experiencing the psychological state of depressed prisoners, getting to know and understand the inner-world of many of my students, rehearsing for when I am old, and getting to write about it all.

More unfortunate is getting to brush up on my knowledge about myriad aspects of birdlife and how damning similar it is to ours. Even more unfortunate than that is the succumbing to the fact that I am capable of using words like ‘myriad’ myriad times in a six and a half page-long essay…

13 May 2020

(Period of lockdown from Covid-19)

(Some Photos from Around My Place in Istanbul)

[insession-io]

Is It Time for a Sleep Divorce?

That buzz saw snoring next to you, the freezing room, the elbow in your face. One way to a better night’s sleep may mean creating a separate sleep space.

Maybe Lucy and Ricky Ricardo (and the censors) had it right all along: Sleep in your own bed.

While most couples consider sharing a bed to be an expression of intimacy and togetherness, research show there may be grounds for sleeping separately — like the bedroom scenes in the 1950s TV show “I Love Lucy,” starring Lucille Ball and her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz.

Couples who sleep in the same bedroom are more likely to experience nocturnal disturbances from their partner (like snoring, bad hygiene, tossing and turning and different schedules). And all this can lead to health problems, sexual dysfunction and marital spats.

A 2016 study from Paracelsus Private Medical University in Nuremberg, Germany, showed that sleep issues and relationship problems tend to occur simultaneously. In fact, a 2013 study from the University of California, Berkeley found that one partner’s sleepless night caused by disturbances from the other partner can result in conflicts in the relationship the next day.

“While there are benefits to sleeping together, one partner’s troublesome sleeping or annoying bed habits can affect the other and increase production of the stress hormone cortisol, thus causing issues that impact the couple as a whole,” said Mary Jo Rapini, a relationship and intimacy psychotherapist based in Houston.

Feeling rested, the experts say, could help you manage life with more focus and control, which in turn can make you feel more content and happier in your relationship.

“When both parties are getting a restorative night’s sleep it allows them to feel emotionally, mentally and physically healthier without one resentful of their partner for keeping them awake, nor the other feeling guilty for disturbing his or her mate,” said Jennifer Adams, the author of “Sleeping Apart Not Falling Apart” (Finch Publishing, 2015). “That’s a good foundation on which to build and weather a relationship.”

Not sharing a marital bed is becoming many couples’ dream.

A 2012 survey by the Better Sleep Council showed that one in four couples sleeps separately for a better night’s sleep. Yet 46 percent of 2,000 Americans polled last year by the marketing research company OnePoll on behalf of the bedding retailer Slumber Cloud said they wished they could sleep apart from their partner.

“Some couples feel strongly that sleeping apart has made their relationship more solid,” said Ken Page, a psychotherapist based in New York City and the author of “Deeper Dating” (Shambhala Publications, 2015) and the host of a podcast by the same name. “I have worked with couples who have said that not having to worry about their sleep being disturbed was such a relief that it allowed them to appreciate the good things in their relationship and lifted any resentment they may have felt in the past.”

Couples, of course, have their own reasons for sleeping apart.

“Spending some nights in separate beds was not so much a choice, as a practical solution to my difficulty getting a decent night’s sleep sharing a bed with my husband,” said Jill Goebel, 52, a professional home organizer from Brisbane, Australia. “It was a combination of his increased snoring and my increased difficulty settling into sleep.

She said that she and her husband, Dr. Brett Goebel, 52, a scientist, “eventually agreed on me sleeping in the spare room a few times a week, but we still share a bedroom.”

The more secure partners feel in their relationship, the more comfortable they tend to be with the idea of sleeping separately.

“Happy, long-term couples are more inclined to have well-developed communication skills and patterns, which are key to making separate sleeping arrangements work,” Ms. Adams said.

Some say that gender also plays a role. “It’s usually the wife or girlfriend who favors the idea of separate beds,” Ms. Rapini said. “Women are more sensitive to their bed mate’s bad habits and pregnancy and hormonal changes or problems can cause them to want to sleep alone.”

A study published in 2007 by the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms found that women are more likely to be disturbed by the man’s presence in bed than men by a woman.

“We started sleeping separately when I was pregnant with our first child. I would toss and turn and not get enough sleep, so on occasion I would sleep in the spare room,” said one 41-year-old woman from Brisbane, who did not wish to be identified for fear of being stigmatized in her social circle. She has been married 18 years and has two children with her husband, also 41. “Once I was pregnant with our second baby, one of us would sleep in the spare room to ensure we both got a good night’s sleep,” she said. “My husband’s snoring and blanket-hogging frustrated me when I was very tired and I would sometimes wake him up to tell him to stop, which of course he didn’t appreciate. It wasn’t until years later that it became more routine.”

Separate sleeping arrangements can include pairing side by side beds of similar size, having a smaller plus a larger bed in the room that the couple could share when they want to be intimate, or designating nights in a spare room. Separate bedrooms is another option.

Tina Cooper, 45, a licensed social worker who owns a home in Baltimore with her boyfriend of 10 years, Donald Smith, 63, also a social worker, prefers having her own room. “I’m a private person and need space,” she said. “Everyone I’ve ever dated knew that if we married I would want my own bedroom. If they tried to change my mind I knew he was not the one for me.”

Like many other couples who like having separate bedrooms, Ms. Cooper and Mr. Smith have opposite sleeping habits.

“I’m a night owl, he’s an early bird,” Ms. Cooper said. “I need soothing sounds to fall asleep to, he likes silence. He likes a hard mattress, mine is soft and full of pillows. And because I don’t like the early day’s sunlight, Donald gave me the master bedroom which gets less light and he has the second largest room that gets the sunrise he loves.”

Being open and honest with your partner about why you want to sleep separately is essential. “What’s equally as important to why you want to sleep apart is how you plan to ensure intimacy is retained in the relationship,” Ms. Adams said. “Making sure you have a routine and set times to connect is key, such as having breakfast together each morning or a drink together before bed at night, and welcoming each other into your room.”

Ms. Cooper said that she and her boyfriend “do spend a lot of time together. We hang out in each other’s bedroom, but mostly in the kitchen. And we share the third bedroom as our office, where we each have our own desk.”

Healthy couples who sleep separately can be as happy as healthy couples who sleep together. “They seem to have as good a sex life as couples who share the same bed,” Ms. Rapini said. “They feel very close to their partner. Maybe it’s because they respect each other’s personal space.”

Paulette Sherman, a psychologist based in New York City and author of “Dating From the Inside Out” (Atria Books/Beyond Words, 2008) also noted that “some couples who sleep separately report missing one another and that it adds some excitement and longing to their sex life.”

The Australian woman who wanted to remain anonymous said she and her husband have a “wonderful relationship and in terms of intimacy we have a very healthy sex life. We certainly look forward to a night away and when at home he will either go back to his bed or we remain in mine the entire night if his snoring isn’t bad.”

Philip Shen, the chief executive of SleepChoices, a mattress company based in Coral Springs, Fla., has helped many couples resolve sleep issues by helping them choose the right mattress for their lifestyle. “Over all, the primary factor doesn’t stem from a lack of desire to be with a partner.,” he said. “It’s usually the case that their current sleep environment makes it challenging for both parties to enjoy quality sleep together.”

For couples not ready for separate sleeping domains, a happy medium could be met with the right sleep solution. Investing in an adjustable mattress that accommodates both partners sleeping needs or pushing together two separate mattresses can help solve conflicts while still allowing a couple to remain close.

“And have conversations about working out your sleep incompatibilities when you’re both feeling comfortable and connected,” Mr. Page added. “Not in the middle of the night when your partner’s snoring is driving you nuts.”

By Ivy Manners Image by Ellen Weinstein

Kathryn McNeer, LPC specializes in Couples Counseling Dallas with her sound, practical and sincere advice. Kathryn's areas of focus include individual counseling, relationship and couples counseling Dallas. Kathryn has helped countless individuals find their way through life's inevitable transitions; especially that tricky patch of life known as "the mid life crisis." Kathryn's solution-focused, no- nonsense counseling works wonders for men and women in the midst of feeling, "stuck," or "unhappy." Kathryn believes her fresh perspective allows her clients find the better days that are ahead. When working with couples, it is Kathryn's direct yet non-judgmental approach that helps determine which patterns are holding them back and then helps them establish new, more productive patterns. Kathryn draws from Gottman and Cognitive behavioral therapy. When appropriate Kathryn works with couples on trust, intimacy, forgiveness, and communication.

[ghaw2007]

6 Forest Bathing Benefits

6 Forest Bathing Benefits

1. Boost Immune Function

Forest bathing definitely makes the list of weird ways to stop an infection and also immune system boosters. A scientific review published in 2010 titled, “Effect of forest bathing trips on human immune function” finds that spending time in nature can significantly boost activity of white blood cells called natural killer cells (NK). This is huge because NK cells help to fight virus and tumor cells.

The review reveals how three days of forest bathing increased subjects’ NK activity, number of NK cells, as well as the levels of intracellular anti-cancer proteins. These positive effects of forest bathing are attributed to phytoncides, which are basically antimicrobial wood essential oils from trees such as alpha-Pinene and limonene. (3)

Previous scientific research with human subjects has also shown that exposure to phytoncides can significantly increase NK activity along with lowering stress hormone levels and increasing expression of anti-cancer proteins. (4) Finding forest bathing cancer patients is not uncommon since not only can being in the forest decrease the stress and anxiety associated with cancer, but it may also help the body to fight off cancer as well.

2. Lower Blood Pressure

High blood pressure or hypertension is not a condition to ignore. Thankfully, there are a lot of natural ways to get hypertension under control. Shinrin yoku forest bathing has actually been shown to help lower blood pressure. The researchers who published one forest bathing study in 2011 already knew that forest environments are known for lowering stress hormones like adrenaline and noradrenaline and produce an overall relaxing effect, but they wanted to find out more.

In their small clinical study, these researchers took a look at how walking in forest environments affected cardiovascular and metabolic parameters in 16 healthy male subjects. The results were very positive — habitual walking in forest environments appears to lower blood pressure by decreasing sympathetic nerve activity. The forest bathing also had positive effects on stress hormone levels. (5)

3. Improve Nervous System Health

Forest bathing is also known to have a positive effect on heart rate variability. This is very significant to nervous system health since heart rate variability (the variation in the time interval between heartbeats) is indicative of how healthy the balance is between the sympathetic nervous system (main function is to activate the physiological changes that occur during the fight-or-flight response) and the parasympathetic system (also called the “rest and digest system” or “recovery system” because it lowers blood pressure and heart rate).

To keep the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic system in balance is key to avoiding a constant stressed state of fight-or-flight, and forest bathing not surprisingly appears to help maintain this healthy nervous system balance.(6)

4. Reduce Stress

As a forest bathing NPR article pointed out, trees are known to infuse the air with compounds that may have very positive effects on human beings. (7) These compounds are called phytonicides and a study published back in 2009 found that they can actually decrease stress hormone levels in both men and women. (8) How do you obtain phytoncides forest bathing? Simply breathe in that good forest air!

5. Boost Mental Health

Research published in 2015 demonstrates yet again how we really can’t forget to spend time outdoors, especially as more and more people live in urban areas and feel disconnected from nature these days. This study found that participants who took a 90-minute nature walk self-reported “lower levels of rumination and showed reduced neural activity in an area of the brain linked to risk for mental illness compared with those who walked through an urban environment.�� (9)

As Irina Wen, PhD, clinical psychologist and clinical director of the Steven A. Military Family Clinic at NYU Langone Medical Center points out, “Nature can be beneficial for mental health. It reduces cognitive fatigue and stress and can be helpful with depression and anxiety.” (10)

In the mood for a mental boost? It may be time to take a bath (no soap or water required) in your local forest.

6. Boost Cognitive Function and Get More Creative

It probably won’t surprise you (or maybe it will) that spending more time in nature can really boost your creativity. A study conducted by psychologists from the University of Utah and University of Kansas, found that backpackers’ creativity test scores were 50 percent better after spending four days in nature disconnected from electronic devices. This study published in 2012 was “the first to document systematic changes in higher-level cognitive function associated with immersion in nature.” (11)

According to David Strayer, a co-author of the study and professor of psychology at the University of Utah, “This is a way of showing that interacting with nature has real, measurable benefits to creative problem-solving that really hadn’t been formally demonstrated before.”

He adds, “It provides a rationale for trying to understand what is a healthy way to interact in the world, and that burying yourself in front of a computer 24/7 may have costs that can be remediated by taking a hike in nature.” (12) Additionally, for so many suffering from smartphone addiction, getting out into nature is the Rx that most need.

Other Benefits of Being Outdoors

Being outdoors also gives you a chance to practice grounding or earthing, which is a method of connecting with the earth’s natural energy by going barefoot.

You can counteract seasonal effective disorder (SAD) by spending time outside, too. Researchers believe this disorder may be linked to a lack of sunlight and vitamin D. When you spend time outdoors, you can get more of both and the benefits of vitamin D are major when it comes to so many aspects of our health.

http://musicbanter.com/song-writing-lyrics-poetry/79770-ghaw2007s-lyrics-collection.html http://futureproducers.com/forums/production-techniques/songwriting-and-lyricism/ghaw2007s-lyrics-523656 http://musesongwriters.com/forums/index.php?/topic/65827-ghaw2007s-lyrics http://boards.soapoperanetwork.com/topic/55799-ghaw2007s-lyrics http://justusboys.com/forum/threads/435561-ghaw2007-s-Lyrics http://gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=536605 http://allthelyrics.com/forum/showthread.php?t=159439 http://writerscafe.org/ghaw/writing http://songwriterforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=11560.0

[sherristockman]

Why Sleeping Less Than Seven Hours a Night Is a Recipe for Ill Health and a Shortened Life Span Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola In the featured video, Joe Rogan interviews professor Matthew Walker, Ph.D., founder and director of the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science and author of the book "Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams,"1 in which he shares the latest discoveries about sleep and how it impacts virtually every area of your physical and mental health. I read Walker’s book last fall, and share his view that sleep is profoundly important — even more important than diet and exercise. After all, you’re not likely to reap maximum rewards from other healthy lifestyle habits if you’re constantly exhausted. Beyond that, lack of sleep has been shown to raise your risk for chronic illnesses such as dementia, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. In fact, the World Health Organization has tagged shift work as a “probable human carcinogen” because it causes circadian disruption.2 Lack of sleep is also associated with shorter lifespans. Like Walker, I believe getting quality sleep, and enough of it, is the single most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body and invigorate your health on a daily basis. Sleep Deprivation Is a Form of Self Abuse There are many reasons why you may sleep poorly, and one may simply be related to your mindset. Many, especially in the U.S., still view lack of sleep as a badge of honor — a sign of drive, ambition and achievement at the expense of sleep. Worse, good sleep is often characterized as a sign of sloth. As noted by Walker in one of his lectures,3 “We want to seem busy, and one way we express that is by proclaiming how little sleep we’re getting. It’s time for us to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep, without embarrassment or the stigma of laziness. In doing so, we may remember what it feels like to truly be awake during the day.” According to Walker, “Humans are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent reason,” and based on his studies, he is convinced no one can make it on five hours or less of sleep without suffering some level of short-term impairment or long-term illness. There’s an exceptionally rare genetic mutation known as advanced phase sleep syndrome that allows some to thrive with minimal sleep, but you’re far more likely to be struck by lightning than have this rare genetic mutation. Rogan and Walker also discuss more acute symptoms of sleep deprivation. This includes wild hallucinations, sometimes reported by ultra-marathoners and others who for various reasons have attempted to go without sleep for extended periods of time. As an example, Walker recounts the story of Peter Tripp, a disc jockey who, in 1959, tried to break the world record for sleeplessness. He stayed awake for eight days straight, doing a continuous broadcast from Times Square. “By Day Three, he was having florid delusions and hallucinations,” Walker says. “He was seeing spiders in his shoes; he became desperately paranoid, thinking people were trying to poison him … “ He also became belligerent and abusive toward everyone around him. “He was clearly psychotic,” one of the attending psychiatrists said. His experiment is detailed in the short video below. How and Why Sleep Deprivation Can Trigger Psychosis In a very real sense, when you forgo sleep for extended periods of time, you begin to dream while awake — hence the delusions and hallucinations. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a 90-minute deep sleep cycle during which you dream. Tripp’s experiment revealed that even though he was awake — walking around and talking — his brainwaves showed he was asleep, and it was during the REM cycles that he was most likely to hallucinate. Essentially, he was experiencing his nightmares in an awake state. Tripp finally went to bed after remaining awake for 201 consecutive hours, and slept for 24 hours. Upon waking, there were no signs of delusions and Tripp reported feeling quite normal. His wife, however, disagreed, saying he’d changed. The couple eventually got divorced. The attending psychiatrists also agree that after his experiment, his personality had changed, and that the change appeared to be permanent. He was no longer as cheerful and easygoing as he’d been before. Arguments with his boss led to the loss of his job as well. Those who knew him best insist those eight days of sleep deprivation damaged his psyche long-term. Parts of Your Brain Become More Active During Sleep As explained by Walker, your brain doesn’t shut down during sleep. Quite the contrary. While some parts are subdued, other parts become far more active than during wakefulness. During REM sleep, the visual, motor/kinesthetic, emotional and memory centers all ramp up their activity. Meanwhile, activity in your prefrontal cortex — the “CEO of the brain” that rules rationality and logical thinking — decreases. This is why dreams can be so visually and kinesthetically powerful, sucking you into a vortex of emotion while simultaneously being completely irrational and illogical. And, when you are sleep deprived, this “dreaming while awake” state can start to seep through, as it did in Tripp’s experiment. Indeed, studies have shown skimping on sleep is a surefire way to lose emotional control, become more emotionally volatile — and more irrational. If you frequently feel emotionally off-kilter or struggle with a short fuse, chances are you might manage your emotions a whole lot better were you to get more sleep on a nightly basis. Walker also cites research showing there’s a dramatic difference in injury rates between those who sleep enough and those who don’t. Athletes who get just five hours of sleep have a 60 percent higher injury rate than those who get nine hours. Five Common Enemies of Sleep Walker defines sleep deprivation as sleeping less than seven hours a night,4 and statistics show half of all American adults fail to get the recommended eight hours of sleep each night. An estimated 1 in 3 is getting six hours of sleep or less per night. According to a Gallup Poll,5 Americans slept an average of 7.9 hours a night in 1942. Today, the average is six hours and 31 minutes, Walker says, adding, “That means there’s a huge swath of people well below that average.” Walker also notes that “One of the big problems with lack of sleep is that you don’t know you’re sleep deprived when you’re sleep deprived! Your subjective sense of how well you’re doing with a lack of sleep is a miserable predictor for how you’re doing objectively.” So, with sleep deprivation being so rampant, what’s the cause? Walker pins the blame for our consistently declining slumber patterns on the following “enemies of sleep:” Alcohol and caffeine: These and other substances, such as sleeping pills, interfere with sleep quality and sleep time Artificial lighting: We have effectively electrified the night, and light at night damages your health by degrading your sleep Loneliness, anxiety and depression: The longing for connection and the effects of mental illness can often interfere with or cause people to forego sleep Long work hours: The international business environment, increased global competition and longer commuter times are just a few of the factors contributing to the increase in work hours and stress-related burnout Overcommitment: Schedules are filled from morning to night, and many people are unwilling to trade entertainment or socializing with family and friends for sleep When asked by The Guardian if he takes his own advice about sleep, Walker replied:6 “I give myself a nonnegotiable eight-hour sleep opportunity every night, and I keep very regular hours. If there is one thing I tell people, it’s to go to bed and to wake up at the same time every day, no matter what. I take my sleep incredibly seriously because I have seen the evidence. Once you know that after just one night of only four or five hours of sleep, your natural killer cells — the ones that attack the cancer cells that appear in your body every day — drop by 70 percent, or that a lack of sleep is linked to cancer of the bowel, prostate and breast … how could you do anything else?” Simple Sleep Hacks to Improve Your Sleep As noted by Walker, there are a number of ways to “hack” your biology to improve your sleep. Following are some of his favorites. For many more, see “Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to improve It.” • Keep a regular sleep schedule seven days a week. Go to bed and wake up at the same times each day, even on the weekends. This will help your body to get into a sleep rhythm and make it easier to fall asleep and get up in the morning. To this, I would add getting bright sunlight exposure in the morning and for at least a half-hour to an hour right around noon, to help reset your circadian clock. • Avoid bright lights and minimize use of electronics in the evening. Both bright lights and electronic screens are major sleep thieves, robbing you of the ability to fall asleep quickly. Research has shown that the more time you spend on electronic devices during the day, and especially at night, the longer it takes to fall asleep and the less sleep you get overall.7,8 Walker suggests dimming the lights in your room and reading a book rather than watching TV or using electronics before bed. If you must use electronics in the evening, I recommend installing blue-blocking software such as Iris, or use blue blocking glasses. • Make sure your bedroom is cool enough. Studies show the optimal room temperature for sleep is between 60 to 68 degrees F. Keeping your room cooler or hotter can lead to restless sleep. When you sleep, your body’s internal temperature drops to its lowest level, generally about four hours after you fall asleep. A cooler bedroom mimics this natural temperature drop. Sleeping naked can also help. • Keep your feet warm. While your body needs to be cool, your extremities need to stay warm for optimal sleep. At least one study has shown that wearing socks to bed reduces night waking. • Take a hot bath or sauna before bed. When your body temperature is raised in the late evening, it will fall at bedtime, facilitating sleep. The core body temperature drop that occurs when you exit the bath signals your body it’s time for bed. Beware of Electric and Electromagnetic Fields Based on the research I’ve done, I believe eliminating electric and electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in your bedroom is a really important factor that can improve both your quantity and quality of sleep. EMFs have the ability to disrupt your pineal gland’s production of melatonin and serotonin, and are a significant contributor to mitochondrial damage and dysfunction, which is at the heart of virtually all chronic disease. EMF exposure has also been linked to neuronal changes that affect memory and your ability to learn.9 EMFs harm your body’s mitochondria by producing excessive oxidative damage, so “marinating” in EMFs all night, every night, can cause or contribute to virtually any chronic ailment, including premature aging. Ideally, shut down the electricity to your bedroom by pulling your circuit breaker before bed. Also be sure to shut down your Wi-Fi. Keep in mind that even if you completely shut off the electricity in your bedroom, your room may still be electrified. This is what happened to me, and when I used sophisticated body voltage measurements I was able to detect this. This is a result of electrical fields (not electricity) transferred into your home by the electric utility and spreading in your home. This can be remediated using certain kinds of shielding paint that is then grounded to form a Faraday cage, which stops the fields from entering your bedroom. Should You Use Melatonin? Rogan asks Walker about the use of melatonin. Is it advisable to use melatonin if you’re having a hard time falling asleep? Walker recommends the use of melatonin to resynchronize your circadian clock when traveling between time zones. “You can use melatonin strategically for jet lag,” he says. “Once, however, you are stable within the new time zone, melatonin does not seem to be efficacious for healthier sleep … But if it works for you — no harm, no foul. Keep taking it.” Ideally, it is best to increase your melatonin level naturally, which is achieved by exposing yourself to bright sunlight in the daytime (along with full spectrum fluorescent bulbs in the winter) and complete darkness at night. If that fails or isn’t possible, I’d suggest trying a 5-HTP, which I believe is a superior approach to using melatonin, especially if you’re older. 5-HTP is a hydroxylated form of tryptophan that easily passes your blood brain barrier. Your body converts 5-HTP first into serotonin (which may give your mood a boost), and then into melatonin. In one study, an amino acid preparation containing both GABA (a calming neurotransmitter) and 5-HTP reduced time to fall asleep, increased the duration of sleep and improved sleep quality.10 You can also take some magnesium malate or glycinate before bed to increase body relaxation. Cannabidiol (CBD) oil is yet another option. CBD oil not only helps reduce pain and muscle spasms, which may keep you awake, but also promotes general relaxation and has been shown to improve sleep. To Optimize Your Health, Make Sure You Get Enough Sleep Regardless of the reason for your sleeplessness, research linking chronic poor sleep and lack of sleep to disease and illness cannot be ignored. Research (cited by Walker) has shown that a single night of sleeping just four hours lowered the amount of natural killer cells — powerful immune fighters that target malignant cells — by 70 percent. In other words, a single night of sleep deprivation throws you into what Walker calls “a remarkable state of immune deficiency” that raises the risk that cancer cells will multiply in your body. Additionally, each spring, when we lose an hour of sleep due to the switchover to daylight saving time, there’s a 24 percent increase in heart attacks — and that’s from the loss of a single hour. In the fall, when we gain an hour of sleep, there’s a 21 percent decrease in heart attacks. “That’s how fragile and vulnerable your body is to even just the smallest [change in] sleep,” Walker says. Sleeping just six hours a night for seven days straight has even been shown to distort gene activity. Genes related to immune function were switched off, while genes related to tumors, chronic inflammation and stress were overexpressed. The scientific facts underscore my belief that there is no substitute for, nor any excuse for not getting, a full night’s rest. If you think you “don’t have the time” to sleep for seven or eight hours because you have too much work on your plate, think again. As noted by Walker, “Why do we overvalue workers that undervalue sleep?” The fact is, sleeping less does not equate to greater productivity. In fact, the complete opposite is true. When you’re working on an inadequate amount of sleep, attention, logic, efficiency and productivity go down the drain and emotional reactivity goes up. Given its importance, I encourage you to take a few moments today to evaluate your sleep habits. Are you getting enough sleep? If not, what’s one change you can make to improve the length and/or quality of your sleep? If you need help getting started, check out my 16 Chronological Tips to Improve Your Sleep, or read through “Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to improve It,” hyperlinked earlier.

[cedarrrun]

The Dark Side of Meditation: How to Avoid Getting Stuck with Pain From the Past

https://www.yogajournal.com/meditation/the-dark-side-of-meditation-how-to-avoid-getting-stuck-with-pain-from-the-past What you need to know to avoid being blindsided by meditation′s potential negative effects.

For many months after the ordeal ended in 2014, Jane Miller * was haunted by her stalker, a man she had initially befriended, but who then tormented her and threatened her life. The nightmare was tumultuous for Miller and her husband, and the cloud of sadness, shame, fear, and anxiety had a devastating effect on her life. She fought the urge to stay in bed all day. Blinds closed and curtains drawn, she kept even the tiniest sliver of sunlight from penetrating her fortress. She only left her house for necessities.

Miller’s psychiatrist diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress and depressive disorders. Her therapist recommended that alongside regular therapy sessions she take a 12-week mindfulness meditation class to help her reclaim her life. Knowing she needed to do something to find peace of mind, she signed up and started the class full of hope.

‘I Was Having a Micro-Flashback’ Yet when she sat on her mat for the first time as the teacher began the class, her anxiety rose to the surface. She started sweating. Her heart began to race, and she was gripped by debilitating fear. “When class started that first day, a lot of negative self-talk flooded in. I closed my eyes, and silent tears started streaming down my face—and they wouldn’t stop. I felt so afraid; I didn’t want to open my eyes,” Miller recalls. “I was having a micro-flashback. It would tug at me, saying, ‘Remember this happened,’ or, ‘Remember, you did this.’ I didn’t have the necessary tools to work through traumatic flashbacks at that point.”

Despite the frightening episode, Miller returned to the class the following week hoping to experience the kind of healing and sense of calm she thought meditating would provide. The environment and the feeling of anonymity mostly felt safe. Yet each time she closed her eyes and listened to her mind and body, she’d quickly become ensconced in a traumatic episode, burrowed in a cocoon of shame. “I wasn’t ready to allow myself to heal,” she says. “I felt like I didn’t deserve to. I’d start to feel vulnerable, like the class knew my story, even though they didn’t. It was very hard to even make eye contact with people after the class had ended,” she says. “I would roll up my mat quickly, make myself as small as possible, and leave.”

Class after class for 12 weeks, Miller fought her way through each meditation. Desperate for an outlet that would help her heal, she stuck with it and even tried other classes on offer, such as restorative yoga. To her surprise, she was never approached by her meditation teacher, and the potential for these kinds of emotional responses during meditation was never addressed in any way. “In yoga class, we were offered modifications for physical limitations or if something didn’t feel good. But in meditation class, there was no recognition of potential mental limitation or injury,” she says.

Ultimately, Miller was glad she finished the class, because it led to her finding the mantra she’d eventually use on a regular basis: May I find ease; May I be well; May I be healthy; May I be happy; May I live in lovingkindness. Yet Miller wishes she had been forewarned that trauma survivors can experience flashbacks, dissociation, and even retraumatization during and after meditation—an awareness that may have helped her feel less afraid during those initial meditation sessions. “An anonymous questionnaire at the start of class asking, ‘What are you here for?’ may have been helpful,” she says.

Despite meditation’s ever-increasing popularity, warnings about the practice’s more difficult moments are rarely issued. Over the past decade, meditation has grown in popularity in the West, first at a steady pace and then at a sprint. For a society that’s overcaffeinated and overstimulated, mired in 60-hour workweeks, and juggling too many proverbial balls, meditation practices are often talked about collectively as a panacea for so many of the things that ail us. It promises to increase focus, productivity, and self-awareness while decreasing stress and anxiety. But that’s not the whole story.

Miller’s experience is not an anomaly, says Anna Kress, a clinical psychologist in Princeton, New Jersey, who teaches meditation techniques to her clients. She warns that we need to be more cognizant that there is a much broader range of responses to meditation than most people are aware of.

See also Find Your Meditation Style With These 7 Practices

Willoughby Britton, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University agrees, noting that the potential negative effects of meditation—including fear, panic, hallucinations, mania, loss of motivation and memory, and depersonalization—can be distressing at best and debilitating at worst. David A. Treleaven, PhD, author of the new book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing, says this potency meditation holds cannot be understated or underestimated by teachers or practitioners. “Meditation is a practice that can elicit challenging or adverse responses,” he says. “While many people benefit from meditation, some won’t.” When Britton first encountered some of the negative effects of meditation, she realized that part of the problem was lack of information and overemphasis on benefits.

“In 2006, when I was doing my residency, I worked at an in-patient psychiatric hospital, and there were two people who were hospitalized after a 10-day retreat at a meditation center nearby,” she says. “It reminded me that meditation can be serious, and that someone should study [that side of it].”

The Power of Meditation Studies regularly published in scientific journals tout meditation’s vast capabilities—including its positive effects on conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and PTSD—and its promise to help us cope with all-time-high levels of stress, depression, anxiety, phobias, and other mental health issues. As a result, we’ve seen an increase in popularity of mobile meditation apps like Headspace, Simple Habit, and Insight Timer, which offer guided practices. There’s also been a surge in boutique and franchise meditation studios, like MNDFL on the East Coast and Unplug Meditation on the West Coast, and now meditation retreats are commonly accepted as vacation options or corporate getaways. “The cultural pressure to meditate is very high right now,” says Kress. “But not every meditative experience is a positive one.”

During her residency, when Britton began encountering anecdotes of meditation’s negative effects, she looked for scientific research to explain what she was hearing—and came up short. “I started informally asking teachers about the kinds of issues and responses they’d seen and encountered,” she says.

When she realized negative reactions to meditation were prevalent, Britton decided to formally study it. “It was clear that a lot of people knew about these potential effects and weren’t really talking about it.”

She believes one of the reasons the darker side of meditation is being, well, kept in the dark is financial. “Mindfulness is a multi-billion-dollar industry,” she says. “One of the teachers I interviewed for my research actually said, ‘This isn’t good advertising.’”

Plus, says Britton, many people feel a lot of shame about negative meditation experiences, which speaks to the overhyped advertising that meditation is good for everything. It’s often portrayed that “if you have problems meditating, then you’re a super loser because it’s the best thing ever,” she says.

When Meditation Becomes Distressing When darkness falls Britton set out to investigate meditation-related experiences, specifically those that were described as challenging, difficult, distressing, functionally impairing, or requiring additional support. Her study, published in the Public Library of Science One journal last spring, looked at nearly 100 interviews with meditation teachers, experts, and practitioners of Western Buddhist practices—including Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan traditions—many of whom reported challenging meditation experiences.

The majority (88 percent) of the meditators in the study reported that these experiences had an impact on their lives beyond their meditation sessions. A whopping 73 percent indicated moderate to severe impairment (meditating prompted a reaction or result that kept them from living their normal, daily lives), 17 percent reported feeling suicidal, and another 17 percent required inpatient hospitalization for psychosis.

See also A Beginner’s Guide to Meditation

Though anyone can experience a negative effect of meditation, trauma survivors can be particularly susceptible, says Kress. “The first reason is that trauma survivors usually avoid distressing memories or feelings associated with the trauma—and meditation often involves leaning toward our internal experiences, which includes difficult thoughts and sensations,” she says. The second reason is that trauma may prompt feelings of shame “that can make it difficult to access self-compassion,” she says. “Sometimes in meditation, it is the first time someone is asked to direct loving feelings toward themselves. This can be a very difficult thing to do, and it can result in feeling emotionally overwhelmed.”

This kind of leaning in toward difficult emotions can prompt tough stuff to come up for anyone, not just trauma survivors, says Britton. Adding to the complexity is that it’s difficult to predict who might experience a negative response. Britton’s study identified more than 50 types of negative experiences, which means the vast array and scope of what can come up can make it hard for teachers and practitioners to know what’s normal, as well as when someone may need additional support during or after meditating.

How to Find the Support You Need One of Treleaven’s major goals in writing Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness was to provide teachers and practitioners with some basic scaffolding to understand what to look for so they are better equipped to offer modifications to a meditation practice. Kress says that there are a handful of important signs for teachers to look for that indicate a meditation student may be having a traumatic reaction. The common ones include prolonged crying, which may be silent but uncontrollable; shortness of breath; trembling; clenched fists; skin turning red or pale; and excessive sweating.

“Giving people who have experienced trauma a sense of choice is very important,” says Kress. “What that means is they get to choose when, how, and where they want to turn toward pain and when they want to get distance from it. I let people know that if they want to leave their eyes open, that’s fine, or if they need to take a break, that’s fine, too.” Britton adds that these kinds of modifications are important for teachers to know and offer­—to help cover the disconnect that exists between practitioners who are being told meditation can be utilized for mental-health reasons and the negative responses they may experience.

“People are expecting meditation to be like a mental-health treatment, but the people who are operating most of the classes aren’t typically trained in mental health. That’s something that we, as a field, need to figure out,” says Britton, adding that most people don’t know what types of practices will benefit which ailments or goals.

For example, someone looking to use meditation to help alleviate work-related stress would likely want to pursue a very different kind of practice than someone who is facing residual trauma from a sexual assault.

To that end, Brown University recently opened a Mindfulness Center, to help figure out how the reported effects of mindfulness on health are actually working. One big focus of the center is consumer advocacy and helping people who are interested in meditation find the right kind of program.

See also 7 Meditations for the Relationship Issues We’ve All Had

But even though meditation may not always feel good, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t meditate, says Kress. “Even experienced meditators can have a negative meditative experience and will need to find resources outside of meditation to process whatever arises in a healthy and healing way,” she says. For some people, a 10-minute guided meditation on an app is perfect; for others, learning meditation and mindfulness skills with a therapist is more appropriate.

As more diluted and tangential versions of meditation continue to arise, it’s important for practitioners, especially beginners, to remember that the practice has a long history in which students learned from a teacher—a highly trained meditation master who provided guidance. In its purest form, meditation was grounded in religious, spiritual, and philosophical purposes, not solely as a means of finding relaxation and inner peace.

“These days, we often just want to feel better, but we don’t have a sense of what we’re trying to achieve,” says Britton. “We also throw the term ‘mindfulness’ at everything. Oftentimes, people start meditating and they’re not necessarily clear whether the practice they’ve chosen is really the best match for the goal that they have.”

For Miller, that’s the kind of cautionary advice that may have helped her avoid being blindsided by the resurgence of her trauma and pain. It may not have spared her from the emotions that surfaced, but she says she would have been more prepared.

Still, she’s grateful for the meditation class, despite the tough stuff it churned up. “It took a while for me to trust the process,” says Miller. “But when I did, it was a feeling of the sun coming up, where I found this calmness.”

* Name has been changed for privacy.

[amyddaniels]

The Dark Side of Meditation: How to Avoid Getting Stuck with Pain From the Past

What you need to know to avoid being blindsided by meditation′s potential negative effects.

For many months after the ordeal ended in 2014, Jane Miller * was haunted by her stalker, a man she had initially befriended, but who then tormented her and threatened her life. The nightmare was tumultuous for Miller and her husband, and the cloud of sadness, shame, fear, and anxiety had a devastating effect on her life. She fought the urge to stay in bed all day. Blinds closed and curtains drawn, she kept even the tiniest sliver of sunlight from penetrating her fortress. She only left her house for necessities. 

Miller’s psychiatrist diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress and depressive disorders. Her therapist recommended that alongside regular therapy sessions she take a 12-week mindfulness meditation class to help her reclaim her life. Knowing she needed to do something to find peace of mind, she signed up and started the class full of hope.

'I Was Having a Micro-Flashback'

Yet when she sat on her mat for the first time as the teacher began the class, her anxiety rose to the surface. She started sweating. Her heart began to race, and she was gripped by debilitating fear. “When class started that first day, a lot of negative self-talk flooded in. I closed my eyes, and silent tears started streaming down my face—and they wouldn’t stop. I felt so afraid; I didn’t want to open my eyes,” Miller recalls. “I was having a micro-flashback. It would tug at me, saying, ‘Remember this happened,’ or, ‘Remember, you did this.’ I didn’t have the necessary tools to work through traumatic flashbacks at that point.”

Despite the frightening episode, Miller returned to the class the following week hoping to experience the kind of healing and sense of calm she thought meditating would provide. The environment and the feeling of anonymity mostly felt safe. Yet each time she closed her eyes and listened to her mind and body, she’d quickly become ensconced in a traumatic episode, burrowed in a cocoon of shame. “I wasn’t ready to allow myself to heal,” she says. “I felt like I didn’t deserve to. I’d start to feel vulnerable, like the class knew my story, even though they didn’t. It was very hard to even make eye contact with people after the class had ended,” she says. “I would roll up my mat quickly, make myself as small as possible, and leave.”

Class after class for 12 weeks, Miller fought her way through each meditation. Desperate for an outlet that would help her heal, she stuck with it and even tried other classes on offer, such as restorative yoga. To her surprise, she was never approached by her meditation teacher, and the potential for these kinds of emotional responses during meditation was never addressed in any way. “In yoga class, we were offered modifications for physical limitations or if something didn’t feel good. But in meditation class, there was no recognition of potential mental limitation or injury,” she says.

Ultimately, Miller was glad she finished the class, because it led to her finding the mantra she’d eventually use on a regular basis: May I find ease; May I be well; May I be healthy; May I be happy; May I live in lovingkindness. Yet Miller wishes she had been forewarned that trauma survivors can experience flashbacks, dissociation, and even retraumatization during and after meditation—an awareness that may have helped her feel less afraid during those initial meditation sessions. “An anonymous questionnaire at the start of class asking, ‘What are you here for?’ may have been helpful,” she says.

Despite meditation’s ever-increasing popularity, warnings about the practice’s more difficult moments are rarely issued. Over the past decade, meditation has grown in popularity in the West, first at a steady pace and then at a sprint. For a society that’s overcaffeinated and overstimulated, mired in 60-hour workweeks, and juggling too many proverbial balls, meditation practices are often talked about collectively as a panacea for so many of the things that ail us. It promises to increase focus, productivity, and self-awareness while decreasing stress and anxiety. But that’s not the whole story.

Miller’s experience is not an anomaly, says Anna Kress, a clinical psychologist in Princeton, New Jersey, who teaches meditation techniques to her clients. She warns that we need to be more cognizant that there is a much broader range of responses to meditation than most people are aware of.

See also Find Your Meditation Style With These 7 Practices

Willoughby Britton, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University agrees, noting that the potential negative effects of meditation—including fear, panic, hallucinations, mania, loss of motivation and memory, and depersonalization—can be distressing at best and debilitating at worst. David A. Treleaven, PhD, author of the new book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing, says this potency meditation holds cannot be understated or underestimated by teachers or practitioners. “Meditation is a practice that can elicit challenging or adverse responses,” he says. “While many people benefit from meditation, some won’t.” When Britton first encountered some of the negative effects of meditation, she realized that part of the problem was lack of information and overemphasis on benefits. 

“In 2006, when I was doing my residency, I worked at an in-patient psychiatric hospital, and there were two people who were hospitalized after a 10-day retreat at a meditation center nearby,” she says. “It reminded me that meditation can be serious, and that someone should study [that side of it].”

The Power of Meditation

Studies regularly published in scientific journals tout meditation’s vast capabilities—including its positive effects on conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and PTSD—and its promise to help us cope with all-time-high levels of stress, depression, anxiety, phobias, and other mental health issues. As a result, we’ve seen an increase in popularity of mobile meditation apps like Headspace, Simple Habit, and Insight Timer, which offer guided practices. There’s also been a surge in boutique and franchise meditation studios, like MNDFL on the East Coast and Unplug Meditation on the West Coast, and now meditation retreats are commonly accepted as vacation options or corporate getaways. “The cultural pressure to meditate is very high right now,” says Kress. “But not every meditative experience is a positive one.”

During her residency, when Britton began encountering anecdotes of meditation’s negative effects, she looked for scientific research to explain what she was hearing—and came up short. “I started informally asking teachers about the kinds of issues and responses they’d seen and encountered,” she says.

When she realized negative reactions to meditation were prevalent, Britton decided to formally study it. “It was clear that a lot of people knew about these potential effects and weren’t really talking about it.”

She believes one of the reasons the darker side of meditation is being, well, kept in the dark is financial. “Mindfulness is a multi-billion-dollar industry,” she says. “One of the teachers I interviewed for my research actually said, ‘This isn’t good advertising.’”

Plus, says Britton, many people feel a lot of shame about negative meditation experiences, which speaks to the overhyped advertising that meditation is good for everything. It’s often portrayed that “if you have problems meditating, then you’re a super loser because it’s the best thing ever,” she says. 

When Meditation Becomes Distressing

When darkness falls Britton set out to investigate meditation-related experiences, specifically those that were described as challenging, difficult, distressing, functionally impairing, or requiring additional support. Her study, published in the Public Library of Science One journal last spring, looked at nearly 100 interviews with meditation teachers, experts, and practitioners of Western Buddhist practices—including Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan traditions—many of whom reported challenging meditation experiences.

The majority (88 percent) of the meditators in the study reported that these experiences had an impact on their lives beyond their meditation sessions. A whopping 73 percent indicated moderate to severe impairment (meditating prompted a reaction or result that kept them from living their normal, daily lives), 17 percent reported feeling suicidal, and another 17 percent required inpatient hospitalization for psychosis.

See also A Beginner's Guide to Meditation

Though anyone can experience a negative effect of meditation, trauma survivors can be particularly susceptible, says Kress. “The first reason is that trauma survivors usually avoid distressing memories or feelings associated with the trauma—and meditation often involves leaning toward our internal experiences, which includes difficult thoughts and sensations,” she says. The second reason is that trauma may prompt feelings of shame “that can make it difficult to access self-compassion,” she says. “Sometimes in meditation, it is the first time someone is asked to direct loving feelings toward themselves. This can be a very difficult thing to do, and it can result in feeling emotionally overwhelmed.”

This kind of leaning in toward difficult emotions can prompt tough stuff to come up for anyone, not just trauma survivors, says Britton. Adding to the complexity is that it’s difficult to predict who might experience a negative response. Britton’s study identified more than 50 types of negative experiences, which means the vast array and scope of what can come up can make it hard for teachers and practitioners to know what’s normal, as well as when someone may need additional support during or after meditating.

How to Find the Support You Need

One of Treleaven’s major goals in writing Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness was to provide teachers and practitioners with some basic scaffolding to understand what to look for so they are better equipped to offer modifications to a meditation practice. Kress says that there are a handful of important signs for teachers to look for that indicate a meditation student may be having a traumatic reaction. The common ones include prolonged crying, which may be silent but uncontrollable; shortness of breath; trembling; clenched fists; skin turning red or pale; and excessive sweating.

“Giving people who have experienced trauma a sense of choice is very important,” says Kress. “What that means is they get to choose when, how, and where they want to turn toward pain and when they want to get distance from it. I let people know that if they want to leave their eyes open, that’s fine, or if they need to take a break, that’s fine, too.” Britton adds that these kinds of modifications are important for teachers to know and offer­—to help cover the disconnect that exists between practitioners who are being told meditation can be utilized for mental-health reasons and the negative responses they may experience.

“People are expecting meditation to be like a mental-health treatment, but the people who are operating most of the classes aren’t typically trained in mental health. That’s something that we, as a field, need to figure out,” says Britton, adding that most people don’t know what types of practices will benefit which ailments or goals.

For example, someone looking to use meditation to help alleviate work-related stress would likely want to pursue a very different kind of practice than someone who is facing residual trauma from a sexual assault.

To that end, Brown University recently opened a Mindfulness Center, to help figure out how the reported effects of mindfulness on health are actually working. One big focus of the center is consumer advocacy and helping people who are interested in meditation find the right kind of program.

See also 7 Meditations for the Relationship Issues We've All Had

But even though meditation may not always feel good, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t meditate, says Kress. “Even experienced meditators can have a negative meditative experience and will need to find resources outside of meditation to process whatever arises in a healthy and healing way,” she says. For some people, a 10-minute guided meditation on an app is perfect; for others, learning meditation and mindfulness skills with a therapist  is more appropriate.

As more diluted and tangential versions of meditation continue to arise, it’s important for practitioners, especially beginners, to remember that the practice has a long history in which students learned from a teacher—a highly trained meditation master who provided guidance. In its purest form, meditation was grounded in religious, spiritual, and philosophical purposes, not solely as a means of finding relaxation and inner peace.

“These days, we often just want to feel better, but we don’t have a sense of what we’re trying to achieve,” says Britton. “We also throw the term ‘mindfulness’ at everything. Oftentimes, people start meditating and they’re not necessarily clear whether the practice they’ve chosen is really the best match for the goal that they have.”

For Miller, that’s the kind of cautionary advice that may have helped her avoid being blindsided by the resurgence of her trauma and pain. It may not have spared her from the emotions that surfaced, but she says she would have been more prepared.

Still, she’s grateful for the meditation class, despite the tough stuff it churned up. “It took a while for me to trust the process,” says Miller. “But when I did, it was a feeling of the sun coming up, where I found this calmness.”  

* Name has been changed for privacy.

[sherristockman]

Restless Quest for Sleep Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola On any given night, about half of Americans toss and turn, unable to fall asleep or stay asleep.1 Lacking in this fundamental human necessity takes a heavy toll, raising the risk of chronic diseases, obesity and premature death while costing the U.S. economy up to $411 billion a year in lost productivity alone.2 Needless to say, a tried-and-true solution to the epidemic of not sleeping, especially one that doesn't involve taking risky and often-addictive sleeping pills, could yield immeasurable benefits to society. Tech devices are among the newest additions in the battle against insomnia, but they're also increasingly popular — and expanding. There's Sense, the product of a 2014 Kickstarter campaign that raised $2.4 million, which uses sensors to collect your tosses, turns and other sleep data, which are then analyzed via a smartphone app to give you personalized insights into your sleep.3 Other tech-based devices to help people get more of the elusive "shut-eye" include the Sleep Shepherd headband, which monitors your brain waves while you sleep and, one of my favorites, Muse, which is a personal meditation assistant that promotes relaxation. When used before bedtime, it may help lull you into a restful night's sleep. Can Technology Help People Sleep Better? There are many anecdotal reports of sleep trackers and apps helping people to get more sleep, but the reality is many of these products are so new that longer-term studies proving their effectiveness have yet to be done. It's ironic, too, that technology is being used to cure sleep troubles that may be caused by the same technological advances; use of smartphones, computers and tablets after dark is a leading contributor to insomnia because their blue light interferes with melatonin production that's important for restful sleep (and other health benefits, like cancer prevention). Still, while there are hundreds of apps to track your sleeping habits, many do so successfully without interfering with sleep. Fitness-trackingwristbands, such as Jawbone's UP3, tell you what activities led to your best sleep and what factors resulted in poor sleep. There are also smart mattresses and mattress pads that track your sleep and provide reports so you can adjust your sleeping habits accordingly. Some even claim to help users regulate their body temperature during sleep. Once you're armed with empirical data, it's then up to you to make changes to support your sleep. No app or other sleep device can do that for you. There's also the issue of how accurate these devices really are, which Hawley Montgomery-Downs, a sleep expert and an associate professor of psychology at West Virginia University, believes has much room for improvement. She told The New York Times, "Sleep sensors are feeding back inaccurate information … They're telling people they sleep better than they do."4 Smart Sleep Devices Gather Your Data — and Then What? I've found sleep trackers to be useful for revealing the actual time I spend asleep (as opposed to the time spent in bed), which allowed me to adjust my bedtime to get my desired number of sleep hours each night. But others have found their data collection to be less useful, for instance letting the user know that they wake up in the middle of the night, something the user already knew. There are now smart pillowcases, smart pajama belts, bed sensors and smart alarm clocks, all of which promise to give you detailed reports on how you sleep. But while knowing your precise minutes of REM sleep, light sleep and other odds and ends that occur during sleep is arguably intriguing, it's not going to help you feel more rested or translate into helping you fall asleep faster. Ultimately, the data needs to be translated into a platform that gives users useful personalized feedback and advice that translates into a better night's rest. Still, in the meantime, having access to your sleep data could prompt you to pay more attention to your sleeping habits. At least one study has found activity trackers to be useful in the realm of sleep, with users reporting 30 minutes more sleep per night after a year of use.5 Study author Laura Pugliese, deputy director of innovation research at New York-based Healthcare Innovation & Technology Lab, told STAT, "People didn't realize how little they were sleeping, and it wasn't until it was in front of them and aggregated that they realized."6 Online Insomnia Therapy Puts Insomniacs to Sleep Another way technology may help fight insomnia is via online therapy programs. One recent start-up company created an online sleep improvement program called Sleepio, which features a virtual therapist, for instance.7 Cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is considered the gold standard treatment for insomniacs, but specialists in this area are hard to come by and many do not receive treatment. An online program could provide a way for people to get the help they need from anywhere with a working internet connection. In a study published in JAMA Psychiatry, more than half of people with chronic insomnia reported sleeping better within weeks of starting the online program and most were sleeping better one year later.8 According to the study: "In this randomized clinical trial of 303 adults with chronic insomnia, those who received the internet cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia intervention (Sleep Healthy Using the Internet [SHUTi]) had significantly improved sleep compared with those who received access to the patient education website, with 56.6 percent achieving insomnia remission status and 69.7 percent deemed treatment responders at 1 year." Misuse of Over-the-Counter Sleep Aids Common Beyond tech devices, over-the-counter drugs are a popular crutch used by many desperate for a good night's sleep. Yet, these medications can be dangerous, particularly when used for longer periods of time, a common practice according to a 2015 Consumer Reports survey.9 The survey included more than 4,000 Americans, 20 percent of whom had used an over-the-counter (OTC) medication for the purpose of improving sleep within the past year. Eighteen percent of them used such drugs daily, and 41 percent used the drugs for a year or more. The OTC drugs in question include Advil PM, Nytol, Simply Sleep, Sominex, Tylenol PM, Unisom SleepMinis, ZzzQuil and others, which include the active ingredient diphenhydramine, an antihistamine that can lead to next-day drowsiness and problems with coordination and driving performance, along with constipation, dizziness and confusion. The drug is only meant to be used for short periods of time (not longer than two weeks), as longer use can be habit-forming, leading to psychological dependence. Despite this, many of the drug packages advertise them as being "non-habit-forming." One study also linked its long-term use to an increased risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease.10 Many of the medications also contain other drugs, such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen, which carry other risks, including gastrointestinal problems, ulcers and liver damage. Considering the steep physical risks — and the mental and emotional toll chronic insomnia can take — you may be willing to try anything, even sleeping pills, to get some sound sleep. However, psychotherapy, specifically CBT-I, which helps people change their thoughts and behaviors regarding sleep, has been proven to be more effective than drugs. In a set of reviews commissioned by the American College of Physicians, CBT-I was the clear winner, helping to relieve insomnia with minimal side effects, as opposed to insomnia medications, which carried sometimes-severe risks.11 The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) also recommends psychotherapy as a first-line treatment for insomnia. In this way, technology, namely online CBT-I therapy, may prove beneficial in helping people avoid the pitfalls of sleeping pills, including OTC varieties. What Else Works for a Good Night's Sleep? If you're having trouble sleeping, I suggest reading my Guide to a Good Night's Sleep for 33 tips on improving your sleep. While tracking your sleeping patterns and time spent asleep may be helpful for some people, getting back to the basics of improving your sleeping environment is also important. No. 1 on my list? Avoid exposure to blue light, including LEDs, after sunset. Wearing blue-blocking glasses is a simple way to achieve this. Further: ✓ Avoid watching TV or using your computer/smartphone or tablet in the evening, at least an hour or so before going to bed. ✓ Make sure you get BRIGHT sun exposure regularly. Your pineal gland produces melatonin roughly in approximation to the contrast of bright sun exposure in the day and complete darkness at night. If you are in darkness all day long, it can't appreciate the difference and will not optimize your melatonin production. ✓ Get some sun in the morning. Your circadian system needs bright light to reset itself. Ten to 15 minutes of morning sunlight will send a strong message to your internal clock that day has arrived, making it less likely to be confused by weaker light signals during the night. ✓ Sleep in complete darkness, or as close to it as possible. Even the tiniest glow from your clock radio could be interfering with your sleep, so cover your clock radio up at night or get rid of it altogether. Move all electrical devices at least three feet away from your bed. You may want to cover your windows with drapes or blackout shades, or wear an eye mask when you sleep. ✓ Install a low-wattage yellow, orange or red light bulb if you need a source of light for navigation at night. Light in these bandwidths does not shut down melatonin production in the way that white and blue bandwidth light does. Salt lamps are handy for this purpose, as are natural, non-toxic candles. ✓ Keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher than 70 degrees F. Many people keep their homes too warm (particularly their upstairs bedrooms). Studies show that the optimal room temperature for sleep is between 60 to 68 degrees F. ✓ Take a hot bath 90 to 120 minutes before bedtime. This increases your core body temperature, and when you get out of the bath it abruptly drops, signaling your body that you are ready to sleep. ✓ Avoid using loud alarm clocks. Being jolted awake each morning can be very stressful. If you are regularly getting enough sleep, you might not even need an alarm, as you'll wake up naturally. ✓ Be mindful of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in your bedroom. EMFs can disrupt your pineal gland and its melatonin production, and may have other negative biological effects as well. A gauss meter is required if you want to measure EMF levels in various areas of your home. If possible, install a kill switch to turn off all electricity to your bedroom. If you need a clock, use a battery-operated one.