semi insomniacs’ site

I don’t just post in the middle of the night. People without much sleep are plenty productive during the daytime too. We just need some rest. There are many ways to take good care that don’t involve a bed – certain restorative positions you can assume that revive the brain as if you had slept those highly acclaimed eight hours. It’s all about aligning the spine: your rounded head in the same plane as the long chain of those 26 vertebrae. Go ahead and decompress your nerves!

My favorite is just legs up on an ottoman or chair. Ninety degrees bent at the knees, feet flopping freely. Let your legs rest on the object you’ve chosen. Head on the floor in alignment with spine. Arms by your side, palms facing up, and hands relaxed and empty – a convincing symbol of letting go. Nothing to do now but close your eyes. No phone! The weight of your closed lids triggers an ocular nerve that knocks on the door of your parasympathetic nervous system. This means rest and digest. This means you too can recover from a poor night’s sleep in about fifteen minutes.

Oh, you might think you have to learn Latin to understand basic anatomy. But plainly put, there are over six hundred and fifty skeletal muscles that move your two hundred and six bones through space. Amazing! But they can get tight from overuse. We get bent out of shape.

We are made of rivers of blood with a sump pump in the chest. The heart, also a muscle, activates automatically to move needed oxygen through your bloodstream. And the lymph…don’t forget to swing your arms and leg…get a little exercise to push the waste fluids through your body.

When you lie down to put your legs up, think of yourself as a luxury cruise ship on a beautiful ocean. Need water to float your boat. Drink plenty of it. Think of yourself as a magnolia bud before blossoming – fuzzy and furious potential.