Maggi Nimmo

In the last few years I’ve had uncharacteristic and occasional sleep difficulties. It’s origin: stress, hormonal changes and bad sleep hygiene. The day after a bad night’s sleep I am irritable, forget tasks and am generally inefficient.

I’m a fairly good observer of my own behaviour and those weary days made me very aware of the wonderful world of sleep and how essential it is for my wellbeing. After a good nights sleep I wake in morning and spend relaxing time taking in the light and season of the new day, I stretch and get up slowly allowing my body to orientate, I feel great. After a poor night’s sleep I wake groaning, stiff, irritable unable to take in the light ambiences from my bedroom window. The only thing I want to do is pull the bed covers around me and curl back to sleep. I carry that feeling of weariness all day.

I started to consider the how’s of getting enough sleep and enough quality sleep. Apparently the most physically healing, restorative part of sleep is the deep sleep that you have more of at the beginning of your sleep period. Towards the end of the sleep period you have more REM (rapid eye movement sleep) and that indicates a dreaming state. Dreams have been described physiologically as a response to neural processes during sleep and psychologically as reflections of the subconscious. The significance of dreams depends on the person having them and the cultural context. Suffice to say good REM sleep enhances your good mood during the day.

Sleep stages and brain activity
Stage 1 (Drowsiness) – Stage 1 lasts just five or ten minutes. Eyes move slowly under the eyelids, muscle activity slows down, and you are easily awakened.
Stage 2 (Light Sleep) – Eye movements stop, heart rate slows, and body temperature decreases.

Stages 3 & 4 (Deep Sleep) – You’re difficult to awaken, and if you are awakened, you do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and disoriented for several minutes. Deep sleep allows the brain to go on a little vacation needed to restore the energy we expend during our waking hours. Blood flow decreases to the brain in this stage, and redirects itself towards the muscles, restoring physical energy. Research also shows that immune functions increase during deep sleep.

Stage 5 REM sleep (Dream Sleep) – At about 70 to 90 minutes into your sleep cycle, you enter REM sleep. You usually have three to five REM episodes per night. This stage is associated with processing emotions, retaining memories and relieving stress. Breathing is rapid, irregular and shallow, the heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, males may have penile erections, and females may have clitoral enlargement.

Dreams may be the retrieval and reordering of long term memories or a physiological repair mechanism, no body really knows.
If you are interested have a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream
Research suggests that common aspects of modern lifestyle suppress dreaming or REM sleep. Many widely used medications legal and illegal – especially antidepressants and sleeping pills, as well as evening alcohol consumption and cannabis, constrain normal dreaming. And now, new findings are establishing a clear connection between the loss of dreaming and serious illness.

Sleep problems – insomnia
Insomnia means difficulty with either falling or staying asleep. Usually, people keep themselves awake by worrying about going to sleep. Insomnia can be treated at home, but chronic or long-term sleep problems may need professional treatment.
Insomnia is a symptom, not a disease. It means having trouble with how much or how well you sleep. This may be caused by difficulties in either falling or staying asleep. Self-reported sleeping problems, dissatisfaction with sleep quality and daytime tiredness are the only defining characteristics of insomnia because it is such an individual experience. Long-term chronic insomnia needs professional support from a sleep disorder clinic.

The concept of ‘a good sleep’ differs widely from person to person. While the average night’s sleep for an adult is around seven or eight hours, some people only need four, while others like up to 10 hours or more. What seems like insomnia to one person might be considered a good sleep by another.

A common complaint
Over one-third of people experience insomnia from time to time, but only around five per cent need treatment for the condition. Such things as stressful episodes, jet lag, and changes in sleeping environments, some acute illnesses and stimulant medications typically cause transient or short-term insomnia. Normal sleeping habits return once the acute event is over.

If a person has experienced sleeping difficulties for a month or more, this is called persistent or chronic insomnia. There are many causes of persistent insomnia. These include:
• Secondary insomnia – due to a range of medical and psychiatric problems and the chronic use of drugs and alcohol.
• Primary sleep disorders – include circadian rhythm disorders, central sleep apnoea-insomnia syndrome, inadequate sleep syndromes and periodic limb movement or restless legs syndromes.
• Idiopathic insomnia – sleeplessness without a known cause, formerly called childhood onset insomnia.
Keep sleep in perspective

People who suffer from insomnia are normally frustrated or annoyed by it. Paradoxically, this emotional state contributes to keeping them awake. It helps to stop expecting a set amount of sleep every night. Having less sleep than you’d like doesn’t cause any harm. Allow yourself to fall short of the ideal without getting anxious about it.

Simple remedies for short-term insomnia
Reducing anxiety and sticking to a day–night routine can improve sleep quality.

Suggestions include:
• Don’t nap during the day.
• Cut down on smoking and drinking.
• Avoid tea, coffee and other caffeinated drinks before bed.
• Take regular exercise each day but don’t exercise strenuously just before bedtime.
• Do something to relax, such as meditate or have a warm bath.
• Learn to relax with Yoga Nidra relaxation techniques
• Only go to bed if you feel sleepy.
• A magnesium supplement taken in or with a hot drink can relax your whole body.
• Numerous plants have a sedative action. Herbs commonly prescribed as aids in promoting sleep include: passion-flower , hops, valerian , skullcap and chamomile. Take as a tea.
• Hop flower sachets. The scent of hop flowers are soporific, so if you can get fresh hop flowers put them in a muslin bag and put it under you pillow.
• Lettuce soup, taken as the last meal at night, is very sleep inducing.
• Go to bed later.
• Stop reading, worrying or watching television in bed and limit your activities in the bedroom to sleeping and sex.
• If you can’t sleep, get up, go to another room and do something else until you feel sleepy again.
• Get up at the same time every morning regardless of how much sleep you have had.
• Avoid ‘judging’ your sleep on a day-to-day basis.

Treatment for long-term insomnia
Insomnia that has persisted for years needs professional support and a lot of patience. It might take some time to re-establish normal sleeping patterns.

Some of the techniques used by a sleep disorder clinic might include:
• A sleep diary, to help pinpoint the pattern of insomnia
• A program of mild sleep deprivation
• Medication to help set up a new sleeping routine
• Exposure to bright light in the morning
• Behavioural therapy.
Things to remember
• Insomnia is a symptom not a disease. The cause (or causes) of insomnia needs to be identified and corrected.
• Insomnia means having trouble with how well or how much you sleep.
• People keep themselves awake by worrying about going to sleep.
• Long-term chronic insomnia needs professional support and a lot of patience.

I sleep well most nights now. Experiencing transient insomnia left a very positive effect on me. Rather than just take a good nights sleep for granted I have come to value it as one of my best tools in feeling good. I’ve come to regard sleep as important, if not more important, than sex. For me a good nights sleep is worth altering my behaviour, it’s like a valued and loved partner in my quest to feel fabulous and is my greatest tool in looking good and not aging.

Lately I’ve been reflecting, remembering my childhood, little vignettes, windows open along the time line that passes for my life. As I remember the big windows that let in the light and shadows  of my past I remember more and more little stories, for that is what they are, little stories, maybe they are partly fiction, constructed from photos, from stories I’ve been told, memories reconstituted as I recall more ingredients.

My father was a bitter man who died with no friends at his funeral. His life passed, probably not remembered, because we as humans avoid the difficult moments, unless force fed by Doctor Life and Nurse Reflect.

Think. When do you talk about your deep concerns, admit to your own character flaws? Yeah, well it’s usually only when the gloom of sadness descends or the mask of tragedy is drawn on the face of your experiences. Then you and I scramble to the self help books: “Seven Steps to Happiness” ,”Hell to Heaven through Tantric Sex” ,”Eat as Much as you Want and Still be Thin”, “You’re Already a Millionaire, You Just Don’t Know It”, ”How to Snag the Perfect Man”…

Or, then perhaps the Doctor’s pills (anti depressant, anti coagulant, anti inflammatory, heart stoppers, heart starters, anti fungals, vitamins, pain killers) prescribed in vast numbers and often as a first resort. I’m not adverse to the judicious use of medications. Did I say judicious? I mean careful, cautious, prudent.

I owe my independent, some would say, delinquent inquiring nature to my clever father whose indifference to me made me unselfconsciously able to observe behaviour. As a child it was a survival tactic.  I could read the nuances of mood in the grind of my father’s heavy hand and foot on the accelerator and brake as he coasted or lurched up the drive way. I knew from afar the smell of tyranny emanating from the hall.  I felt dark disdain from my father even in his most benign moments.  There I was,  a child learning the basic lesson of the spiritual initiate: “Don’t take other’s behaviour personally.”  It took a while but I realised not only did I dislike him, nearly everyone else did too.  I remember sighing as I sat at my desk one Autumn,  I think I was reading a history book, and I thought, “There must be a better way to be.”

That thought led me through many a dark place and I often opened up to experiences that more loved souls, more balanced personalities would have eschewed. I have lived on some sort of edge and as a result balance often escapes me and then my search for balance escalates. There are many types of balance and imbalance and many events just throw you.  For example, your work gets excessively busy, the economy sucks blood from stones and you have to work immoderate hours just to pull a dollar in. You panic, forget or can’t (your perception) go to the gym, attend your yoga class or even shop for a decent meal, it’s ‘take-out-city’, there you go, tired in the morning, revved on coffee, taking an antacid, worried, even the bloody roses are not worth sniffing as they’re all scentless hybrids, there’s no stopping the descent into physical pain, stomach ulcers and exhaustion.  You visit your doctor and if wise in any way they advise more exercise and/or sleep, but you can’t sleep you are stressed so you promise to exercise and to only use the Sleeping Pills when you absolutely have to.  Yeah sure.

How do you escape that cycle. Well it’s not easy. It starts with a decision to be well at all costs and then to take baby steps towards that end.  Maybe it starts with taking 10 minutes to relax, breathe, stretch.  Maybe it starts with taking a few minutes during the day to stand up from your computer and stretch.  Maybe it starts with drinking more water.  A friend of mine was chronically constipated, he became really ill with a flu and rather than taking the over the counter flu medication he rang me.  I prescribed a homoeopathic, suggested bed rest, lots of water with lemon juice, soup and a few amusing DVD’s.  Within 48 hours he was feeling much better and returned to work.  In the 48 hours of rest his bowels started to move and he realised for himself that the water, which I had suggested he drink more of for years, had cured his constipation and to this day he drinks at least 2 litres or more a day and had never suffered constipation again.

What can I say to you all reading this far into this missive, be careful, realise that you have a future self one who needs exercise for bone density later, you have a future body that will deteriorate rapidly if you don’t put some foundations in today, good food and the careful use of all substances. There are so many ways to achieve balance even that illusive fey thing called happiness is doable or at least more possible if you inhabit a body uninhibited by chemical or physical imbalance.  In that state wise decisions are more possible. Relax! Life has an innate tendency towards growth and balance.

Take care my friends

Meditation and Relaxation Course
With Maggi Nimmo
Time: Wednesday 16th June, 7:00 to 8:15pm
Limited to 5 people.
Duration: 4 weeks Venue:  Balmain
Cost: $100.00
Contact: 0403095779

The treatments I have received and the daily observances I practice  are deep and subtle. I am really calm now and have got a handle or at least a start to becoming free in a way I really never imagined possible.

I had a stomach ailment but a homoeopathic remedy and rest sent it packing. I was left weak and tired. Some people confronted me with their old behaviour and I couldn’t even conceive of the possibility of responding to them as I have in the past. I am different, the inner quiet and calmnesss is deeper and informs  my responses.

The chemistry and structure of enlightenment and what constitutes enlightened behaviourhas always intrigued me. There is a structure in the central brain that can atrophy a kinda reward centre the Septum Pellucidum (SP) when activated it can heal pain, depression, anxiety and gives a sense of peace and joy.

The parietal lobes cause you to create associations in space, the orientation association area, they allow you to navigate between objects, they create a sense of self and other.

When this separation-orientation system is overactive the Amygdala-Hippocampus (A-H), a system in the central brain designed to assign a sense of importance or meaning to experiences, creates the reality in you that puts a very high importance or value on separation and this can lead to a distinct sense of a separate self and/0r absolute existential crisis.

The frontal lobes are associated with individual will and are the arousal system of your brain. This system is activated by dopamine. If this area is under active then you prevent yourself from arousing the quiescence system or full experience of now. This can lead to an overwhelming biological urge to choose to resist change, biological urges being greater than conscious intentions. If this system is active the A-H assigns importance or meaning to the activation of choice and enchantment.

This naturally flows on to the SP and varying degrees of a non separation or enlightenment experience. Lack of dopamine will increase a persons urge to maintain a sense of separate self will. Boredom is the result of under active frontal lobes.

If the parietal lobes are over active the SP is chronically under active. The SP can shrink, which makes joy less and less available. Once it has shrunk only extreme stimulation can produce joy. This is the biological basis of addiction.

These insights are complex and hard to put into simple terms. Old patterns change and addictions, all expressions, habits, obsessions, substances etc. become less important.

I’ve been studying addiction and the mental processes associated with it.  It’s a minefield. The ability to absorb experience and information on a real level and remain in a state of equilibrium is difficult.

I have discovered a huge range of sub personalities in everyone some opposing each other. The one discovery I have made is that there is no self only a temporary state of balance, that passes for self, maybe that is self.

That state of equilibrium is mighty hard to maintain if you use any substance. Though when you do use it can shut off the fast speed of my brain and slow down the really fast micro operations of consciousness. The reason this feels good is that your brain is vulnerable, unbalanced and consciousness exposed to vacillations and inner oppositions and these operations (sensations, impressions, inner experiences) are transformed specifically into sensations rather than thoughts.

Sensations are easier to experience than thoughts and they can be seductive to say the least but thoughts are more seductive, at least for me. I have exposed in me a state of mind where the structure of my brain and the structure of thoughts are similar. They feed each other and create at times cascades of almost irresistible impulses. The interface world of me.