Grex Ing Conference

Item 31: The SleepING Item.

The following comments come from Item 27, The SkiING Item

From response 15.  The God of Silence (vidar) mentioned:

...I only get one hour of sleep a night.  What's the point in going
 to bed.  Better yet, what's the point of sleeping if I can only get an
 hour?

From response 16.  Rane Curl (rcurl) replied with:

 Sounds like a good starting point for a sleepING item. I don't know, vidar,
 what is the point? Perhaps your brain only needs an hour to catch up on
 its record keeping and filing. 

I think Rane is right.  It's high time for a sleepING item.  It's 2:32 AM,
and I can't sleep.  It's two hot, and I'm bothered by hay fever, or, as
my doctor says, "Allergic Rhinitis."  But then, he makes a lot of money to
use big words.
 

I bicycled about 40 miles and did about two hours of yard
work in yesterday's humidity, so I was in no shape to stay up late.
In fact, I crawled onto a futon in my basement around 9:30 pm and
promptly fell asleep.

I'm an early to bed, early to rise kind of person and need 7-8 hours
of sleep.

  I too, could not sleep so I just played the hell out of my nintendo and
kept my cool rag nearby. I fell asleep at 6am and slept until 1. 
I really need 7 to 10 hours and cannot sleep when it is this humid.
there should be laws against high humidity.

I've recently decreased my sleep time from ca. 7 hours to 5+, by staying
up later. I seem to need the "quiet time" after the family has retired,
to read, compute, grex, etc (but no machine tools...). I do tend to doze
off during the day, though. I probably have what would be called a 
"sleep disorder". For heat and humidity, we use a fan - until it gets
like today, when the central air goes on (first time in 1993, though).

I've just decreased my sleeping time from 1 hour to about 1/2 an hour.
My body just doesn't like sleep, I guess.

You should contact a sleep laboratory, and volunteer for their studies.
I have never heard of anyone getting by on as little as 1 hour of sleep
a day.

Most people who think they're only sleeping as little as 1 hr a day are
sleeping more.

Think?  I KNOW I'm only sleeping 1 hr. a day.  I look at the clock when I go
to sleep and when I wake up only an hr. has passed.

Do you check the calendar too?

I couldn't sleep very well last night, I didn't get to bed until two am, and
couldn't get to sleep until four.  Then, I woke up around eight and couldn't
get back to sleep.  I'm not feeling too tired, though, for some reason.  My
sleep lately has been about nine or ten hours, because it is vacation, but
during the school year, I usually get by on ablut six and a half.

Re #8: Yep.

Last night I didn't sleep at all.  My body managed somehow to store the
information while I was consious.  I think pretty soon I'm going to turn into a
 Living Zombie, unlike the undead, but still a little mindless.

Don't drive.

Maybe you are asleep when you are awake.

Since here we are with a sleepING item, I'd like to hear if folk have
particular techniques for getting to sleep, when anxiety, worry, coffee,
etc interfer? The only intentional technique that I have found to work
for me, is to use the word "sleep" as a mantra. I suppose I could use
the word "sheep", but that doesn't have much to do with sleep, except
apocryphally. Perhaps I am using a form of self-suggestion.

How about an muscular person, punching me in the head?  That's about the only
thing that would work for me.  Asleep while I'm awake?  I don't think that's
possible.  
ould work for me.  Asleep while I'm awake?  I don't think that's

vidar must've nodded off there.  :)

No, I hit ^D on the wrong line.  I was perfectly awake.  Anyway the last
word would have been "possible."  

I've found a couple of methods to help me sleep, on the rare occasions that I
actually *want* to indulge in such a wasteful activity. <g>
 
The first is a relaxation technique I learned some years ago - starting with
your toes, slowly tense and relax, then do the same with the feet, then with
the feet and the calves, etc., until you've involved your entire body with the
tense/relax routine.  Another thing I used to help me sleep involved
visualisation while listening to the radio set at a low volume - picture
something similar to a player piano scroll in your mind, with the words to
whatever song that happens to be on the radio at the time on it.  I found it
to be a good mental exercise, and it got my mind off of whatever was helping
keep me awake.

We were told about this while my wife and I were going to one of those
silly classes you go to when your expecting your first child.  My wife
uses it quite a bi

I actually got 13 hours of sleep last night.  Help me!  I've wasted 13 hours
of my life!  How do I get it back?!

Bummer dude!  I like to sleep.  It gives my mind time to exercise.

I love to sleep!  I could, and sometimes do, sleep 16 hours at a time.
It's a "good" way to deal with depression, with boredom, and with being
tired.  Nothing feels as sensuous and curling into a bed that knows
my contours, feeling clean, cool sheets wrapped around me and a gentle
breeze from an open window or fan caressing my face--and to feel
sleep come and touch me and relax me...

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm -- I think I'll go take a nap.

Geez, you make that sound wonderful!

16 hours of sleep!  What an utter waste of time.  I find if I get much over 
eight hours I never wake up.  I may feel better rested than if I had gotten
seven hours, or six hours or something, but I seem to be more productive
on fewer hours.  Oh well, its summer... Who needs to be productive.

Re #20:  13 hours of sleep is not 13 hours of time wasted.  Just because
you're not *conscious* of being productive doesn't mean you're not being
productive.  Things happen during sleep that are essential to our
functioning while awake.  A great deal of problem-solving takes place
during sleep.

I prefer to sleep on only one night out of the week, and usually that's
saturday.  I could be doing more fun things than sleeping at night, for
example: wasting my money at Pinball Pete's.  Or Partying with my friends. 
With a lifespan as short as mine, sleep IS a waste of time.  Those things that
happen when you're asleep, happen to me sometime while I'm awake.

So why are you going to die on Aug. 4, 1998 at 6pm?

Because that's when the other guy, plunges his broad sword through my heart.
And afterwards, Tom Biancalana is responsible for igniting the drakkar.

That proves it.  You are asleep when you are awake.

when I have difficulty sleeping, I meditate. . then it's morning.

But, did you sleep?

Answer: Yes, Meditation is a form of sleep known as a trance.  While 
meditating your body relaxes and fills with energy, and then you wake up; 
refreshed.

Isn't that "recharged"?

I guess so.

I still don't understnd how it's possible to be asleep while you are awake.
I meditate, but I call that sleep.

No, when I meditate, I am awake.  When I am sleeping, I am asleep.  The two
states are different and they register differently on an eeg. Sometimes
I use meditation to recharge my energy.  Other times I use it to relax my
mind so that I can fall alseep.

Well, Excuse me for living.  I use meditation when I really feel the urge to
kill.  Which isn't very often but it happens, I have this weird obssesion with 
trying to kill anyone who so much as punches me, Once.  I came real close one,
the dude had ten seconds of life left had I continued strangling him.

Well, enough about me pyschopathic life.  Let's get back to the orignal topic.

I believe I heard that sleep is our natural state.  We're only able to wake up
and actually do anything because of some switch in our brain to override the
sleeping state.

Don't kid me. The egg is the natural state.

Huh?  Oh, now I get it.  But we are not the egg for our entire life.  Maybe
we only exist because we think we exist.

#39:
Sleep is certanly easier than being awake.  Maybe there is somethig to that.
Then again, do we have a "natural state?"

My point, exactly.

Maybe our average state is day-dreaming?

Don't we wish.....}-|

I daydream alot.  And I sleep alot.  When I was age 15-18 I would be able
to go a night without sleep, and when I did it would only have to be for
a few hours.  I remember coming home some nights at 3am and being able to
get up and catch the bus without a hitch.
That was something that persisted when I started college, but gradually
(like my eyesight, which used to be perfect but is now on its second
prescription) began deteriorating.  Sleep has begun to have a powerful,
gravitational effect on me.  I need 10 hours of sleep a night.  I actually
plan my schedule around this.  If I need to be somewhere at 10am, I start
getting edgy at midnight, and every hour after that I count as "cutting
in" to my sleep time.
This has effected the whole spectrum of my waking state.  There used to
be a time when if I daydreamed it was at school or when I was in my room
listening to music.  But now it has gained more territory in day-to-day
functioning.  I have to be "on my gaurd" for it.  Just the other day I
was talking to someone at work, someone who tends to "nose dive," while
they are telling a story, into complex explanations of things which, 
though related to the story, don't weigh on the conclusion.  Anyway, I
began realizing (because I talk to this person occasionally) that I
would "nose dive" myself, into daydreaming, while the this person was
burrowing into yet another bit of subtext, and that I could leave some
nmall portion of my mind "monitoring" up above, waiting for a key word
or phrase which might signal me that the story was now "back on track"
and that I should now haul all of myself up again to begin listening.
This has actually happened with greater frequency than I would like,
because now that I have begun relying on this system, it is always
trying to "get more hours," like those construction workers who, though
on the payroll, sit around drinking coffee waiting to get back to
work.
I don't feel that this is something unusual, only a state of being that
I have fallen into while at college.  I don't ever work full time, I
really don't study for most classes (my GPA reflects this, I'm no genius).
Nevertheless, it disturbs me.  If I really felt *satisfied* after I 
slept, that might make understanding it easier.  But I can truthfully
say that I have to fight my way out of bed.  It often involves a complex
pyramid of routines; first lying for a half hour, blinking, after the
alarm;  then propped up against the wall with pillows;  then sitting
in the bathroom for 5 minutes;  then on the couch, etc. 
I could probably spend another response commenting on how dismally
dissappointing my dreams are.  This makes getting up even harder.
Strangely enough, I've found that drinking will not only make sleep
mostly dreamless, but speed up the waking process.  It is much easier
to get up if one is prodded awake by the desire to get some coffee,
go to the bathroom, eat something, get the stale taste out, etc.
Another way is if you happen to sleep over someone else's house,
waking up in a different place with other people tends to make one
revive faster, especially if talking is involved (which is also 
something; many times, mostly on weekends, what stimulates me to get
out of bed is the phone ringing).

Well, thiis not to be depressive, because I do like sleep.  Someone
told me recently that I will probably sleep less when I can no longer
afford to sleep as much as I do.  I am starting to think also that diet
may have some influence on sleep, and that my arrival at college (and
my having to forage for myself) may be parallel to my sleep-scale's
upward shift.

Re#40:  The chicken is the egg's way of making more eggs...

As for techniques to aid fall asleep: the smell of violets is suppose to
help in terms of relaxing the brain. I don't necessarily support this
because it didn't work for me, personally, but maybe for someone else.
In terms of stopping my mind from working at a mile a minute and for 
decreasing the pain of a headache, I often concentrate on the word
"smooth." As for actually falling asleep, I sometimes concentrate on 
imagining a swirling item. 
I knew a guy who tried to cut his sleep time in half so he could work
all the more. Needless to say, it didn't work for him and he ended up
being even more tired than usual.

Correction on #48. That should be lavendar not violets.

ref #46: you really should have a sleep study done; sounds to me like a
classic case of sleep apnea.

Insomnia.  Tha's what I had and still have.  And perhaps my little
dream was not a dream at all, but an alternate reality.  I know that
I have not responded in, well, at least a year.  I sleep more easily
now, or would, if I couyld and my dorm room wasn't shaking with the
guy's up and downstairs (in relation to my room) blasting their rock
and heavy metal music.

I worried too much, which explains part of my insomnia.  Caffeine intake
is a major part of my life, but I know when I've O.D.'ed

I think that since I don't have much activity scheduled in addition to
classes, I tire easily and far before any normal person would hit the
proverbial hay.

then there is always the matter of my roommate slurping his ramen noodles
at midnight.

<bjorn yawns>

I usually read until my eyes are too tired to stay open, or I drink a glass
of milk.  The one techinique that gets me through stress-induced insomnia is
meditation, or hypnotizing myself.

I listen to music until I drift off to sleep.  Sometimes the radio is 
still on in the mornings.

One of my favorite quotes:  "Funny, I find the boring times to be the most
interesting."  (--from a book called Wise Child, I've forgotten by whom,
though.)  SO sleep, while boring to others, is very interesting for me. 
Sometimes I think I like to sleep too much; I can sleepo for 12 or 13
hourseasily, if I know I have nothing to do the next day.  Yet on the other
hand, I like being awayke these days as much as I like my sleep time; I can
remember a point in my life where sleeping was more of an excape than a means
of rest and relaxation......

A friend of mind last year clipped a bit out of the daily enews that
circulates campus, which was something about how we spend like, 9 years of
our life sleeping.  He sent it to us with the comment, "HEy, lemmie cash in
now!"  *chuckle*  It was in the middle of an Interlochen February, so it;'s
understandable that he'd feel that way....

That nine years of your life spent sleeping seems a bit low.  Assuming eight
hours of sleep in a 24 hour period (yeah, I know that's way more than people
tend to get), you would be sleeping a third of your life.  If only nine years
of your life were spent sleeping, you would only live to age 27.  Now consider
even if you only spend 4 hours per 24 hour period sleeping.  Still, you've
reached your nine years of sleep by age 54.

You're probably right....I wonder if I could dig up that email and see what
he really said...

I just read _Juniper_ and _Wise Child_ and loved them.
Signet, lavender makes a lot more sense.  Try combining with hops and catnip,
for a soothing tea as well as a sleepy-pillow.

<...snowth has not slept one wink all year.>

<dang...I've slept at least 17 hours so far>

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