Where Do We Go When We Are Sleeping
We spend
one third of our lives sleeping, and this plays an important role in how energetic,
productive and how healthy we are, as well as how the other two-thirds of our lives
can be spent. Understanding how sleeping interferes with our efficiency and
quality of life, is something we should all consider, while others may also ask,
or look for answers about where do we go
when we ae sleeping?
Usually when
we sleep well, we wake up feeling peppy, refreshed and alert for another day´s activity,
but maybe there is something more to the structured sleep activity we go
through every night.
During a normal
night sleep the body has time to complete all of the phases needed for muscle
repair, memory consolidation and release of all the hormones that regulate proper
growth and health.
A normal sleep
structure follows a pattern:
Alternating
REM (rapid eye movement) and NREM (non-rapid eye movement) sleep - throughout
a typical night, in a cycle that repeats itself about every 90 minutes.
NREM (75% of night): As we begin to fall asleep, we
enter NREM sleep, which is composed of stages 1-4
N1 (formerly "stage 1")
1 - Between
being awake and falling asleep
2 - Light
sleep
N2 (formerly "stage 2")
1 - Onset
of sleep
2 - Becoming
disengaged from surroundings
3 - Breathing
and heart rate are regular
4 - Body
temperature drops (so sleeping in a cool room is helpful)
N3 (formerly "stages 3 and 4")
1 - Deepest
and most restorative sleep
2 - Blood
pressure drops
3 - Breathing
becomes slower
4 - Muscles
are relaxed
5 - Blood
supply to muscles increases
6 - Tissue
growth and repair occurs
7 - Energy
is restored
Hormones
such as Growth hormone, essential for growth and development, including muscle
development are released at his stage.
REM (25% of night): First occurs about 90 minutes after falling
asleep and recurs about every 90 minutes, getting longer later in the night
1 - Provides
energy to brain and body
2 - Supports
daytime performance
3 - Brain
is active and dreams occur
4 - Eyes
dart back and forth
5 - Body
becomes immobile and relaxed, as muscles are turned off
In
addition, levels of the hormone cortisol dip at bed time and increase over the
night to promote alertness in morning.
Sleep helps
us thrive by contributing to a healthy immune system, and can also balance our
appetite by helping to regulate levels of the hormones ghrelin and leptin,
which play a role in our feelings of hunger and fullness.
(Information on
sleep structure gathered from sleepfoundation.org)
And then
there are dreams - which may be lovely,
funny or scary and totally negative, but these do not change the sleep structure.
Despite how
it may feel, though, disturbing dreams don’t always have a significant effect
on the sleep structure - meaning they won’t necessarily change how much time
you spend in the different stages of sleep or the number of times you
awaken. They can, and usually do, change how long it takes to fall back asleep,
and how challenging it is for your body to switch between Non-REM and REM stages of sleep, which may leave you feeling less
rested.
Many years ago
I used to say that I got up in the morning more tired than when I had gone to
bed at night; one day I told my doctor this, to which he humorously responded with a
question: - where do you go during
sleep? I laughed then, but did think about this for many years without a
definite answer, a clue or a plain and simple justification for my state of morning
tiredness, which as it appeared so long ago, also disappeared without a warning,
but not before a trace to the trail was left behind, so I could start putting the
pieces of the puzzle together and get the answer to this enigmatic mystery
which I will reveal soon.
When we lay
down to sleep every night, we don’t just sleep in our lovely and comfortable
bed; we travel – we actually travel to what we refer to as different astral
planes. We may also do this when
meditating, daydreaming, or during a hypnosis session, but today our subject is
sleep, so let´s stay within the main subject.
Without
going into the description of the seven existing astral planes, let´s just stay
with the thought that we can travel to and through them. In as much as the majority may want to travel
through the positive astral planes, as the negative planes contain energies
that are in opposition to light and spiritual evolution, it is difficult to
know for sure, whether some night stops are not made at those dark places, during
sleep. Let´s face it, these are not very nice places to visit, as they are
actually where some estranged or lost souls might be wandering through. But we
might be even traveling to some distant or near place where we have a loved one
going through a bad experience such as being in a hospital, an hospice or even
a prison; and those places, are for sure
full of dissonant energy.
When we do
travel to our so called “Heaven” we normally come back refreshed because we do
it to recycle our soul’s energy, learn something more from our Akashic Record Library,
or even just for the sake of missing home. When we do this, we are identified
by the ones with the silver cord, as we have an ethereal silver energy cord
that attaches us to Planet earth – everyone knows that the ones with the silver
cord still belong to the earth plane. This ethereal blue energy cord is only
severed upon death and can be further described as a strong, silver-colored,
sort of an elastic cord which joins a person's physical body to its astral body.
Curiously
the silver cord is mentioned in the Bible in Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 King James
Version (KJV)as:
6 Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
The silver
cord in metaphysical studies also known as the life thread, refers to a life
linkage from the higher self-down to the physical body.
When I
started to do Remote Reiki Therapy Sessions, I did it at night before going to
bed, but this interfered, sometimes, with my normal life activities such as
when I had a dinner with friends and had a drink! Alcohol interferes with
energy! Although this was something that only happened very sporadically, I did
not want any interference - and although
I don´t like routine - I do know that
for my Remote Healings to work properly, I do need a stable and steady structured
routine, so I changed the therapies for first thing in the morning. As I
started to do my daily Reiki Therapy Practices first thing in the morning followed
by meditation, I started to notice several changes – from my level of energy to
the no need to eat any breakfast. Regarding the latter you may read Rethinking Physical and Spiritual Nutrition if you haven´t done so yet.
This did
not happen from one day to the other, though! At a certain point of my learning
and adapting phase, because I was such an open source of pure light energy with
weak or no protection, I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling
terrible because my body was being “invaded” with dark energy. I did have to learn how to protect myself and
even then, there was a morning when waking up I heard my higher-self tell me I
needed extra self-healing that morning, because I had been in a very dark place during
the night.
After so
many years I finally have the answer to my doctor - “where do you go during
sleep”? Now that I know this, I am sure I am doing the right thing to keep
myself well, protected, balanced, no longer feel exhausted in the morning, and am very grateful
because it really changed my days; do you know where you go when you are sleeping?
Much Love
and Light!