The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time

The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.

REM sleep can help us process emotional stress.

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Dumbledore asks Snape not to wake Harry: "Let him sleep. For in dreams, we enter a world that is entirely our own. Let him swim in the deepest ocean or glide over the highest cloud.

By helping us keep the world in perspective, sleep gives us a chance to refocus on the essence of who we are. And in that place of connection, it is easier for the fears and concerns of the world to drop away.

These two threads that run through our life—one pulling us into the world to achieve and make things happen, the other pulling us back from the world to nourish and replenish ourselves—can seem at odds, but in fact they reinforce each other.

the prevalent cultural norm of sleep deprivation as essential to achievement and success.

When we feel like there isn’t enough time in the day for us to get everything done, when we wish for more time,” wrote sociologist Christine Carter, “we don’t actually need more time. We need more stillness.

Newborns (0–3 months): 14–17 hours Infants (4–11 months): 12–15 hours Toddlers (1–2 years): 11–14 hours Preschoolers (3–5): 10–13 hours School-age children (6–13): 9–11 hours Teenagers (14–17): 8–10 hours Young adults (18–25): 7–9 hours Adults (26–64): 7–9 hours Older adults (65+): 7–8 hours

Asking a teenager to get up at 7 a.m. is like asking me to get up at 4 a.m.

sleep is profoundly intertwined with virtually every aspect of brain health. Lack of sleep over time can lead to an irreversible loss of brain cells—yet another debunking of the myth that sleep debt can be made up.

THE POWER OF DREAMS—AND WHY YOU SHOULD RECORD THEM

Montaigne: “To practice death is to practice freedom.71 A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.” Being a slave to our job and our status in the world makes it much harder to put our day behind us and surrender to sleep.

People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills, when it is possible for you to retreat into yourself any time you want. There

Those who do contemplative retreats in hermitages are far from doing nothing, since they are constantly engaged in training their minds, but there is no ‘noise,’ no ‘waste’ to eliminate, no stress to cure, no chaos to reorganize. This means that there is less to repair during sleep and the sleep quality of meditators is deeper.