CHAPTER 14
The Aligned Evening—Accessing the Superpowers of Sleep
“A life not examined is a life not worth living.”
—Socrates
What would you say is one of the most undervalued compounds our bodies have access to for feeling fantastic? It may be a remnant of my gym-rat background, but I’ll go with anabolic steroids—the ones naturally produced inside your own body (not the scandalous variety popular among many professional athletes). One of these strength-boosting chemicals, human growth hormone (HGH), is a complex protein produced by the pituitary gland in the brain; it plays a huge role in childhood development, adult tissue quality, healthy metabolism, and may even increase life span. Big news: Experts suggest 75 percent of human growth hormone is secreted during sleep!
Want to hear a dirty little secret of the fitness industry? One doesn’t really build muscle in the gym. It’s that precious sleep of yours that does the work of building the body and repairing the brain. This is likely the most undervalued practice among the majority of the workaholic, hyper-productive individuals who skimp on shut-eye in an attempt to squeeze all they can from each day. They don’t realize that truly “seizing the day” is only possible when you conquer the night with optimal rest. Let’s begin by exploring how and where to sleep, shall we?
CHOOSING A BED
You would likely expect me to suggest you sleep on top of a straw mat thrown over a cold floor after all my heretical claims that spending more time on the ground is actually good for you, but you can relax. I like beds, too. Whether you’re two inches from the ground on a traditional Japanese tatami mat or two feet from the ground on a traditional Western mattress, I care most about your comfort.
Technically, a lower bed will add many more squats to your lifetime, which will pay big-time dividends in hip, ankle, knee, and spine health, but you know what else is great for your joint health? Sleep, and I suggest you get as much of it as you can and truly consider your bedroom to be a restful sanctuary. I recommend investing in an organic mattress made from natural materials like wool and cotton, along with organic bedding (nobody needs to be breathing synthetic chemicals while they sleep). What firmness should I get? I hear you ask. According to Dr. Michael Breus, an expert in both sleep and circadian rhythms and the author of The Power of When, you should look for a combination of support and comfort.
SLEEP MECHANICS
A fascinating physiotherapist by the name of Michael Tetley has written extensively on the topic of sleep positions in relation to other primates, tribespeople, and the manner in which our ancestors likely spent their nights. In one article, he shows the uncanny similarities between a mountain gorilla and a Kenyan man lying on their sides to catch some ZZZ’s. This is the position we will be focusing on for the sake of this book, as I am not enamored of the amount of torque placed on the neck all night via belly sleeping. or the prolonged low-back extension from sleeping on your back (for most people). That said, many sleep experts also feel that sleeping on your back can be beneficial, too. So if you’re a stomach sleeper, try to start transitioning to either your side or back, using several additional pillows to pin yourself in the desired position if necessary.
At the end of the day, the most important thing is for you get to sleep—if that means you need to curl up like a bug or stand on your head to do so, I’m in support of what permits you to get ample rest. Here are some ideals I’ve encountered via the available research on optimal sleep mechanics for your brain and body.
WHY SIDE-SLEEPING IS ALIGNED
First of all, how do we choose a side to sleep on, and does it even matter? There is some convincing evidence that sleeping on your left side is beneficial for reducing the incidence of heartburn symptoms, which can wreak havoc on sleep. One hypothesis for why this could be is that lying on your left side keeps the junction between the stomach and esophagus above the level of gastric acid. Or it could be because right-side sleeping relaxes the lower esophageal sphincter, between the stomach and esophagus. Whatever the reason, if GERD is something you deal with at night, try sleeping on your left side and see if that helps.1
Circulation
Sleep specialist W. Chris Winter, MD, medical director of the Martha Jefferson Hospital Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, and author of the book The Sleep Solution, recommends sleeping on the left side as well for cardiovascular health. In an interview with CNN,2 he explained that after the freshly oxygenated blood is pumped out through your body, it returns to the heart on the right side. If you sleep on your right side, you’re potentially putting more pressure on the blood vessels that are attempting to carry the blood back to the heart for another pump. This should hypothetically assist in more efficient circulation (Ayurvedic medicine recommends the left side for enhanced lymphatic fluid circulation as well) and increase blood flow back to your ticker while you sleep.
Brain Health
It’s also suggested by a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience3 that lying on either side has brain-boosting benefits by enhancing brain glymphatic transport, which means your body more efficiently removes interstitial waste (brain gunk such as tau proteins and amyloid-beta—a peptide that accumulates in the brain of people with Alzheimer’s and other degenerative brain diseases) from the brain during sleep. This study was conducted on mice, so we cannot be positive it exactly relates to humans, but better safe than forgetful.
Mechanical Pointers
All right, let’s get down to business and break down some key points on how to align your sleeping position. A typical tendency is to get into a fetal position during rest. I recommend exploring what it feels like to maintain a more stacked spinal position and elongated neck, similar to if you were sitting upright on a chair but lying down instead. Here are a few key points:
Maintain length from your sacrum to the top of your head by imagining a dowel is connected from your sacrum to the back of your head.
Use a firm pillow high enough to keep your head in a neutral position. This involves your neck staying straight rather than too flexed or extended (which happens when your pillow is either too plump or too flat).
Feel free to use a pillow between your arms and legs to support your shoulders and hips, but occasionally practice sleeping without them as well so as not to become dependent. At some point you may not have them, and it’s wise to maintain adaptability to a variety of sleep environments.
Remember to breathe through your nose only (refer back to Chapter 5).
Finally, the most important thing is that you get good sleep any way you can. These are mostly ideals, and some are hypothetical at that. If your individual body may require something different—listen to what it says!
Now that we have a better sense of the mechanical components of getting a good night’s sleep, let’s explore a simple six-step plan to optimize your rest.
Step One: Protect Your Evening
In an old podcast episode I did with Robb Wolf, he jokingly mentioned guarding his sleep at gunpoint. It’s far too easy for our personal boundaries to expand or dissipate entirely, allowing the extra work of the day to spill into the evening. Culturally, working late is far too often worn as a badge of honor, instead of a lapse of priority. You can get away with an abbreviated night’s rest every now and again. Just don’t make a habit of it.4
I challenge you to become protective of your sleep hygiene by maintaining healthy evening boundaries like setting a bedtime determined by your chronotype (think early bird or night owl with a bit more sophistication—see Michael Breus’s book The Power of When for more on this) that you stick to more often than not and regularly granting yourself ten minutes of self-care before bed. Your new nighttime routine could include:
Five rounds of Aligned Box-Breathing: four seconds in, hold four seconds, six seconds out, hold four seconds, repeat, sitting in an upright position and breathing through the nose only.
Abdominal massage using fists: As you’re in your sitting position from the meditation, press your fists lightly into your abdomen just above your hips creating a subtle lifting of your belly. On a breath out, lean your waist over your fists and breathe into them for approximately ninety seconds.
Spinal Twist: Lie on your back with your arms reaching out to the sides and slowly raise your right knee up until your right foot is on the ground a few inches from your butt. Shift your hips to the right a couple inches and then reach your right leg across your body to the left, while maintaining contact of both shoulders on the ground. If it’s challenging to maintain your shoulders on the ground, try keeping the right knee bent or even bending both knees while rotating to make it a bit easier. Breathe into your thoracic spine (behind your heart) for approximately ninety seconds and then repeat on the other side.
Step Two: Cut the Snacks and Late Dinners
This one is near and dear to my heart because, in the past, it has been the most challenging habit for me to break. Before I more fully understood the implications, I had the nasty habit of “eating my feelings,” especially in the evening hours. The evening, after the debris of the day has settled, is often when the unaddressed emotional baggage of the week, month, or lifetime will present itself. I’ve heard a beautiful definition of success from an unknown source as, “being able to fall asleep when your head hits the pillow at night without feeling stress about the past or future.”
For many people, this whole idea may have not resonated at all. If that’s the case for you, kudos—you’re winning the game of life. Regardless of why we do it, it’s shown to be a biological bummer to stuff your face before bed. Researchers from Dokuz Eylul University assessed more than 700 adults with high blood pressure, examining the impact different diets and eating times had on their health.5 They found that eating a late dinner had significant impact on overnight blood pressure. Researchers also found eating within two hours of bed produced a raised blood pressure reading, an effect even more than that of our misunderstood ally, salt. It appears your health is not just influenced by what you eat, but when you eat as well.
Another study conducted by Brazil’s Universidade Federal De Sao Paulo observed the effects of late-night eating on fifty-two adult subjects ranging in age from nineteen to forty-five. This study found that evening eating consistently lowered sleep efficiency (amount of time actually asleep relative to total amount of time in bed), caused one to take longer to fall asleep, and subjects spent less time in the REM phase of sleep.6 It gets worse! This habit then sets you up for a vicious cycle of overeating the following day, increasing the likelihood of an evening food binge due to your satiety hormones being knocked out of whack from the night of disrupted sleep.
Bottom line: What you eat matters, and so does the timing. Healthy short-term decisions build the foundation for long-term growth. Your present state of being is not a product of your last five minutes nearly as much as it is the last five weeks, months, or years aggregated together to form your present state. The body is continually keeping track of the subtle, seemingly minute decisions we make, and a key to health is consistent, long-term beneficial choices that become patterns with repetition.
If late-night eating is a habit for you, take a closer look to see if the habit is masking an undesirable sensation. Consider the possibility that stress could be addressed in more appropriate ways than a late-night burrito frenzy. I’ve found stepping back to do five minutes of meditation or breath work can be a beautiful way to reset when these late-night cravings come out to say “hello.” Rumi said, “The cure for the pain is in the pain.” Disappointingly, he never mentioned anything about the cure being found in another box of Oreos. As an alternative to nighttime snacking, try instead a gentle physical routine such as the one mentioned in the previous section to help flush out some of those feelings.
While you should avoid bingeing on junk food, a little sugar might actually help you stay asleep, as your brain uses as much glucose during REM sleep as when you’re awake. If you’re not diabetic or on a keto or paleo diet, then stirring a little raw, local honey in a mug of non-caffeinated tea thirty minutes before bedtime can be beneficial. If you fall into either of those categories, then skip the sweet stuff and use guava leaf tea instead.
That said, fasting and time-restricted eating (limiting food consumption to an eight-, ten-, or twelve-hour window) sometimes can also promote better sleep. A 2017 study published in Cell Metabolism concluded that regular fasting can reinforce healthy and consistent circadian rhythms.7 Another paper released in the journal Sleep & Breathing noted that during the intermittent fasting of Ramadan, participants experienced reduced nighttime wakefulness.8
Step Three: Block the Blues (and Embrace Them during the Day)
Our bodies depend on healthy rhythmic cycles of all sorts, including the rhythms of light and dark in the day. One of the best ways to ensure a healthy night of sleep is to be exposed to adequate light during the day. We’re like biological pendulums, and so the further we “swing” in our daytime habits, the more these will be reflected in the nighttime swing that follows.
You will experience a more robust rest side of the swing by doing your damnedest to expose your body to an adequate amount of the sun’s rays during daylight hours (as discussed in Chapter 13). Get started early, as morning sun exposure prompts your body to create more of the building blocks used for melatonin, the chemical that prompts drowsiness after sundown. Remember, the rays vary depending on where the sun is relative to the horizon, and we benefit from the whole range.
Once the sun is down, or at least a couple hours before you hit the sack, start thinking about toning down the lights around your home and or using lightbulbs that don’t emit the blue light frequency. This frequency of light rings your biological alarm bells, suggesting to your glands that morning has come, and it’s time to get fired up! Your body releases a cocktail of stimulating stress hormones preparing you to charge forth into the rising sun, unaware that your actual intention is to sleepily watch some Netflix and hit the sack.
ALIGN YOURSELF
Some simple steps to upgrade your lighting so you can improve your sleep include:
Get some salt lamps for rooms you frequent at night. The orange light they emit is easier on the eyes, and the salt cleanses the air.
Check out HealthE lightbulbs, which have a light spectrum that’s more conducive to restful sleep than ultra-bright LEDs.
Grab a pair of blue-blocking glasses to wear when you don’t have control of the type of evening lights, such as when you travel.
Download apps on your electronics to block blue light at night such as f.lux. Or just simply set your phone on the lowest light setting.
Instate a no-screen rule in the house at least one hour before bed.
Install an automatic timer to turn off your Wi-Fi at night and turn it back on when you need it in the morning—it’s not a light thing per se, but not having the temptation to go online is a potential game changer for your sleep hygiene.
Step Four: Create Anchors
In neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) terminology, “anchoring” refers to the association of an external stimulus with an internal response. With time and repetition, it can become a powerful tool to be accessed at will. Here’s what I mean: When I was eleven, I had a hockey puck signed by one of my old hockey heroes, Jaromír Jágr, from back when he played for the Pittsburgh Penguins (I grew up in Pennsylvania obsessing over ice hockey). I’d rub the puck up and down my hockey stick in a consistent pattern before every game to ensure I played a bit more like the Czech superstar.
This may sound like childish superstition, but I was actually practicing NLP well before I had ever heard the term. I was anchoring myself into a ready state by sweeping the blessed piece of rubber up and down my stick as a pregame tradition. Practices like this are no joke. It’s been repeatedly shown we can augment the chemicals circulating through our bodies via environmental cues (think Pavlov’s dog drooling when the bell went off signaling food time), and it’s happening whether you realize it or not.
Start ingraining consistent habits of your choice around bedtime that cue you for the physiological state of rest. Bonus points if these habits are also sleep-inducing on their own, such as relaxing aromas, slow and deep massage, or a self-care routine such as the one described previously—or create one to fit your own needs. This concept is also referred to as classical conditioning, and the key, as you have probably guessed, is consistency. The cues you form become superpowers that can be called upon on demand, and once you’ve given them enough time to take root, they’re yours for life (or as long you maintain them).
Some evening anchors I’ve classically conditioned myself to associate with sleep include:
Hot cup of chamomile or reishi tea
Journaling
Meditation
Putting on an eye mask
Reading (great time for fiction) before lights-out
My secret weapon is listening to old recordings from one of my favorite philosophers, Alan Watts. Listening to someone speak may be distracting to many people, but at this point, after many years, it’s one of my most powerful tools for drifting off to sleep.
Step Five: Assess and Request
“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.”
—Thomas Edison
There is no more precious resource than your time. I repeat, there is no more precious resource than your time. Each day deserves at least a cursory glance over what went well, what you could have done better, and a setting of your intentions for the following day.
I find the structure of The Five-Minute Journal helpful for this, and I also derive value from scribbling my thoughts into a blank notebook; see what works for you and run with it. The key with this, as discussed in the anchors section above, is consistency. Journaling, like any habit, gains power with repetition. This is also a potent sleep aid tool in that it gets those meandering thoughts out of your head onto paper, where they become far less disruptive upon finding a physical home. This relates to your movement and posture, because if you’re stressed from thoughts constantly racing through your head or are suffering from a lack of sleep, you better believe your body shows it by holding excess tension in all those familiar sore spots!
ALIGN YOURSELF
The assess and request recipe…
Organize your home as a part of organizing your mind.
Give yourself the time and space for a five-to twenty-minute meditation/self check-in.
In your journal, write what went well, how you could have been better, and your top three intentions to make tomorrow exceptional.
Be thankful for three things.
Step Six: Make It Black
Once you go black, you never go back. I’m referring to the level of darkness in your bedroom, of course. Did you know your skin has photoreceptors, meaning it can actually detect light? It makes a bit more common sense that an octopus or earthworm can detect light through their skin but, sure enough, humans do it, too! In recent decades, scientists have discovered extraocular photoreceptors (light-sensing cells outside of the eyes) in the central nervous system, organs, and skin! So don’t think you’re getting away with skimping on blackout curtains just by putting on an eye mask (although I do use one, especially for travel).9 That said, if you, like some people, find that sleeping in pitch darkness makes it hard to wake up in the morning, then just go with the eye mask.
A dark room isn’t just so you can doze off—it also affects your overall quality of sleep and is a major factor in the prevention of misaligned mental states like depression. A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found even low-level nighttime light exposure to have negative repercussions for mental health. The study measured the light emitted in the bedrooms of 863 Japanese subjects and found people exposed to more than five lux of light (ten lux is similar to looking at a candle from about a foot away) were significantly more likely to experience depression.10 And a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine noted that light exposure or having a TV on in a bedroom at night caused women to gain weight.11
Alignment Assignment
Try these soothing movements to help wind down before bed.
1. Happy Baby: Lie on your back and bend your knees toward your chest. Grab the outside edges of your feet and lightly pull your feet back toward the ground. You can rock your body side to side or front to back and focus slow, deep, nasal breathing into the side of the ribs and belly. Hold this position for about ninety seconds.
2. Spinal Twist Shoulder Opener: This is one of my favorite ways to open up my shoulders while mobilizing the spine. Lie flat on your belly with your arms and legs outstretched and your hands wide open and pressed into the ground. Reach your left leg over your right leg until it reconnects with the ground—this will create a lengthening through your spine and a stretching sensation in the right shoulder. Hang out in this position for about thirty to sixty seconds and then repeat on the opposite side.
3. Assisted Plow Pose: Lie on your back and place a yoga block or foam roller under your sacrum, so that it lifts the sacrum and tilts it back toward your head. Bring your knees toward your chest and breathe into your belly, low back, and outside of your ribs from this position for two minutes (try to maintain nasal breathing). If you’re feeling flexible, you can raise your hips off the block or foam roller and bring your knees closer to the side of your head (as shown).
