Want To Have A More Appealing Sleep? Read This!
Sleep is something fascinating; we all need it and very often we don’t have the sleep we want, we are awake for hours. How can we understand our sleep and make it part of our life pulse?
How is your sleep?
We all sleep. It is an inherent part of our human condition. Did you know that we use only 5 to 10% less energy while we sleep than when we are awake? A great deal is written about sleep; this article offers you a new perspective.
Sleep helps you to define who you are. It nourishes and nurtures you and it completes what you started during the day. Who you are is a spiritual Self or soul that forms a partnership with a human Self. This human Self is a physical body and its energy field or personality. This energy field has seven distinct layers that penetrate each other and the physical body; you can also discern seven energy vortices or chakras. Barbara Brennan offers us in-depth descriptions of our human energy field in her books.
In this article we start with the scientific perspective, and then we add the spiritual knowledge and make use of our insights on the life pulse.
- The purpose of our sleep is to integrate and assimilate what happened to us and around us during the day.
- Our different sleep stages correspond to specific brain waves and each set of three stages is alternated with a phase of dreaming.
- The moment between waking and sleeping is a moment of deep connection between our soul and body-mind.
- Our sleep itself is a process of moving back from the seventh (outermost) level of our energy field inward through all the levels until we arrive back in the cells of our bodies for another moment of stasis.
What is the purpose of our sleep?
Sleep is universal in the animal kingdom, and during sleep most systems in an animal are at a heightened state of growth and rejuvenation.
Our metabolism is only decreased by 5 to 10%. So our sleep is not a time when we conserve energy. We need this expenditure of energy, as research has revealed that the overall role of sleep is the consolidation and organization of synaptic connections that were formed during learning, experience and recent memory. The complete purpose and mechanisms of our sleep are only partially clear from a scientific perspective.
How will our insights of the life pulse add more depth to these scientific perspectives? The life pulse is a cosmic principle of alternating phases of expansion, stasis, contraction and again stasis, through which all living beings and nature move.
Like the life pulse, sleep consists of stasis, contraction and back to a moment of stasis before the start of a new day. You assimilate and integrate what has happened to you and around you in the outgoing movement, in the expansion of the waking hours.
Awareness of these phases adds to the quality of life in this human incarnation. Now we will delve deeper into the scientific stages of our sleep.
Dreaming and non-dreaming stages of sleep
Our sleep is divided in two broad types, rapid eye movement sleep (REM) and non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM).
NREM sleep has three stages. The first stage takes place between wakefulness and sleep. Research has revealed that the muscles are active, involuntary movements occur easily at this stage, and there are mostly alpha brainwaves.
In the second stage, sleepers move to theta brain wave activity and become gradually harder to awaken.
In the third stage, sleepers have delta waves and they are less responsive to the environment.
After this third stage, a phase of REM sleep helps us to return from deep sleep into an NREM stage-one sleep.
REM is associated with our capability to dream. These brainwaves are similar to the waking stage, which are mostly beta brainwaves. Oxygen consumption by the brain is higher than when the sleeper is awake. We have REM sleep almost every 90 minutes and more REM in the second half of our sleep. Dreaming is the perceived experience of sensory information. We use images, sounds, taste and feelings, all our senses can be used. When we reconcile this information with what we know about our energy field, we realize we use dreaming on the unstructured levels of our energy field. The seven layers of our energy field are alternating. The first, third, fifth and seventh are structured with lines of light and the sixth, fourth and second levels of our field are unstructured, more with clouds and waves of colour. On these unstructured levels, we access the senses through the different chakras. Scientists are now convinced that we are composed of energy and that we are surrounded by energy.
In REM sleep, within the physical body, the neurons of our cerebral cortex fire randomly, which presents nonsensical sensory information from which our forebrain creates a story in an attempt to make sense of this brain activity.
The firing of our neurons during contraction is affected by our expansion during the day.
Our expansion affects our contraction and vice versa. We often feel uncomfortable when we are awake during the night. And maybe being awake is okay and what we need in the wave of contraction of our sleep.
We gain insight in the NREM and REM phases of our sleep. We are ready to journey back through the levels of our field for a deeper explanation of the sleep cycle. A summary table is provided at the end of the next section.
A deeper journey exploring the sleep cycle
Our sleep starts with a moment of stasis in the seventh level of our field, a phase between waking and sleeping. This moment is an opportunity to connect your body-mind with your soul. It is often joyful. We may experience a connectedness with all living beings no matter how our expansion unfolded during the day. We are not always aware of this precious moment. This is the first stage of an NREM type of sleep. We are still easily awakened or might have difficulties falling asleep, surrendering into sleep.
Regression hypnotherapist Michael Newton discovered a great deal about our lives in between lives and our sleep through his work with clients. He says, the first thing we do when we fall asleep is clear our mind. I guess that makes sense, and we do this as we move through our seventh level back inward. He assumes we have received a great deal of information that we do not need. Some traditions invite us to go over our day consciously to clear our thoughts, images and beliefs before journeying into sleep.
We continue with the contraction of our sleep from our seventh level back inward, we move through the second and third phases of NREM. The seventh level holds our Divine knowing and all our beliefs of how we assume the world is. In the second phase of NREM, we assimilate what we already know and strengthen our beliefs of how we see the world through what happened to us and around us during the day. In the third stage of NREM, we nourish our seventh level and access Divine knowing.
We then arrive in our sleeping time at our sixth level, which is Divine love. When our sixth level is well nourished, we experience bliss in this stage, a profound happiness. It is a meeting with our soul. In this phase of our sleep we move through a REM sleep. We dream about the spiritual love. Regression hypnotherapist Michael Newton says this is a phase where our spiritual guides come in and where we eventually travel through our soul channel towards our spiritual family. Our soul channel is the tube that connects us with the spiritual realms on one side and with the Earth on the other side. Through this channel, we incarnate as a spiritual being. It holds our longing, our life task, and our intention to accomplish what we want to achieve in this human reality.
In some people, this level can be constricted and not hold much energy. As a result, they will experience less bliss and connection with the spiritual world.
We move further in and arrive at the fifth level, which is the level that provides order and clarity to make sense of what happened during the waking state. It feels this is the stage where we combine and assimilate all our knowledge; we combine new information of what happened around and to us with what we already know. This is another stage described by Michael Newton. We see new solutions from assimilating all that we already know. We again move through the three stages of the NREM sleep.
We move further in, and on the fourth level there is again a phase of REM sleep. We have different dreams in this REM stage, we engage more in relationships. Often our dreams take more time on the fourth than on the sixth level. The amount of energy in this level affects the depth of our dreams.
We move further inward and we arrive on the third level, where our thoughts reside or resurface. I notice how I often wake up during this time of my sleep. Sometimes I might remember my dream of the fourth level at this moment in my sleep. I easily worry and have thought complexes around what I have to do, should do, ought to do. However, if I align my soul and body-mind or open my mind, I am able to gain clarity and stop worrying—it is possible to really gain a balance between my intuitive and rational mind here. Here we again move through the three stages of NREM sleep.
The next level deeper is our second level. This holds how we feel about ourselves, and it makes sense that this is strongly affected by our thoughts. This is again a REM phase where we dream. These dreams might be more easily accessible and have to do with how we feel about ourselves. The duration of our dreaming depends on the strength of our level of the field. If we run more energy in our second level, our dreams might be stronger and more vivid. It seems that most people dream more in the second half of the night, which might represent stronger lower levels of the field. The content of our dreams will be different according to which level we are at in our journey inward. Our dreams on the sixth level are more related to Divine love, on the fourth to relationships, and on the second more about our sense of self.
The next level is our first level, and this level is about our physicality, how it feels to be in a physical body. At the first NREM stage, we can wake up perceiving physical symptoms and eventually remember our dreams of the second level. The second phase of the NREM sleep is the end of the contraction wave of our sleep. We take care of our physical bodies.
Our sleep is not yet complete. We need to move through the third phase again of this last NREM phase of our sleep. This third phase is another moment of stasis, deep within the cells of our physical body. We keep on going deeper in our cells, within the cells, into the molecules, into the atoms and in between the atoms into the void, and we have a deep, really deep sleep. We get nourished and nurtured through the spiritual world, through a deep connection with essence. We have finally completed the full cycle and we are ready for the coming day. From this deep sleep, we sometimes move again into a last REM phase dreaming sleep, already the start of our expansion, and we start dreaming our day into being, so to speak, and be really fit and joyfully ready for our new adventures in life.
| SLEEP EXPLORATION: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE ENERGY FIELD | ||
| STASIS | ||
| NREM phase 1 | 7th level of the field | Between waking and sleeping. Deep connection between our soul and body-mind. Clearing excess of information received during the day. |
| CONTRACTION | ||
| NREM phase 2 | 7th level of the field | Assimilating what happened and checking our beliefs |
| NREM phase 3 | 7th level of the field | Connect with our Divine knowing, nourishing our seventh level. |
| REM | 6th level of the field | Dreaming, a stage where we easily visit our spiritual family, receive guidance. |
| NREM phase 1 | 5th level of the field | Assimilate what happened during the day, possibility to wake up and have difficulties falling asleep again |
| NREM phase 2 | 5th level of the field | Rebalancing order and clarity with what we already know. |
| NREM phase 3 | 5th level of the field | Connect with Divine will, precise order of everything, nourishing our 5th level. |
| REM | 4th level of the field | Dreams related to our relationships. |
| NREM phase 1 | 3rd level of the field | Thoughts and worries can wake us up. |
| NREM phase 2 | 3rd level of the field | Rebalancing our rational and intuitive thinking. |
| NREM phase 3 | 3rd level of the field | Clarity, nourishing our 3rd level. |
| REM | 2nd level of the field | Dreaming around our feelings and emotions about ourselves. |
| NREM phase 1 | 1st level of the field | Physical sensations, eventually pain in certain areas of our body, we sometimes wake up. |
| NREM phase 2 | 1st level of the field | Physiological balance, nourishment of our first level. |
| STASIS | ||
| NREM phase 3 | 1st level of the field | Deep connection within the cells of our physical body, gathering essence for the next wave of expansion. |
| EXPANSION | ||
| REM | 2nd level of our field | Dreaming the start of our new day. |
Conclusion:
Our sleep is an amazing opportunity to reconnect with our soul, to nurture and integrate.
All that has been discovered so far scientifically and spiritually makes sense in the broader perspective of the life pulse.
Awareness of the waves of expansion will affect the quality of our sleep and of our life.
Discerning this movement back through the levels of your energy field can help you to understand your sleep patterns, to assist you in accepting where you are on your journey and to have the sleep you need, not the sleep you want.
This article provides you with unique insights of the life pulse and how awareness can affect your sleep and your life. The life pulse is a fascinating concept extensively covered in my book Becoming What is Changing: Exposition.
Knowledge only becomes wisdom when we are able to connect it with our own experiences. I look forward to reading your comments.
Veerle
June 14th, 2014
VEERLE DE BOCK is a physician, healer, facilitator, trainer, coach and author of the trilogy, Becoming What is Changing. She spent nearly three decades of her life as a physician specializing in geriatric care, including a 21-year career as department head in an Antwerp regional hospital. In 2003, she began her study as an energetic healer, teacher, process facilitator and supervisor at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, and since 2007 has been leading many other trainees to master these same skills. In 2010 she was trained in the practice of Dynamic Facilitation by Jim Rough, which she now incorporates into her workshops and training sessions. In 2012 she decided to devote her work exclusively to writing, facilitation and coaching. That same year, she devised a new integrative practice of facilitation she calls ‘Guest House Facilitation’, that helps teams learn how to listen and utilise both the inner and outer processes within their organisation, to see it as a dynamic and living organism, and to reconnect to its intrinsic purpose and intention. Her book, Becoming What is Changing: Exposition, is the first part of a trilogy aimed at managers, team leaders and responsible employees who wish to bring this kind of transformation into the workplace, so they can create an environment where people are happy, satisfied and continuously growing.
Contact Veerle about the book, or to discuss coaching/facilitation for your organisation at:
http://www.chancestochange.com
http://twitter.com/VeerleDeBock
http://facebook.com/BecomingWhatIsChanging