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removes tiredness
lowers the basal metabolic rate (significantly lowered, as is experienced during yoga-nidra or
meditation, sometimes even less than 50 cal/hr)
results in physiological compensation (conservation of the Life Force, also termed as Vital
Energy or Jeevan Shakti)
induces a balancing effect on ANS (autonomic nervous system) and therefore, optimum
functioning of the PSNS (parasympathetic nervous system) regulated bodily systems
Adequate relaxation results in significant improvement in most chronic and acute conditions including
the psychosomatic conditions such as, fatigue, stress, anxiety, depression, most of the lifestyle
disorders, insomnia, hypertension, asthma, lower energy levels, loss of concentration, lowered
immunity, circulation and toxicity related disorders, indigestion and absorption related problems,
obesity, irritable bowel syndrome, hyperthyroidism, peptic ulcer, gastritis, PMS, erratic levels of
hormonal imbalance during menstrual cycle and menopausal phase, etc.
Sleep: Go to bed early and take about 6 to 7 hrs sleep at night, but avoid sleeping in the
afternoon. The quality of sleep during the night is much better than the day time sleep or sleeping
at late hours.
Quality of sleep is much better when going to bed early. With regular habit of going to bed early,
over a period of time, you need less sleep as body gets optimum rest in a shorter period.
There is nothing wrong in resting and relaxing for several hours a day once in a while, if you get
time.
Consciously relax yourself whenever feel stressed or exhausted physical and/or mentally.
Pleasurable pastime: Find time for yourself to do things you really like to do. Plan for such
pleasurable pastimes on a regular basis, such as walking in a garden or woods, going to movies
with friends, spending a few minutes in solitude, playing cards with friends, going for a swim or
jog, reading books, cooking your favourite dish, etc.
Hope, you find this information useful. Wish you a happy and healthy living!
Nimesh Shah
Yoga and Natural Lifestyle Consultant
Certified Ayurvedic Lifestyle Consultant
Diploma in Yoga (recognised by Yoga Alliance International)
Studied at Wellpark College of Naturopathy, Auckland, New Zealand
E-mail: nimeshkshah@gmail.com
Vadodara, Gujarat, INDIA
Stages of sleep
.Every 60-100 minutes we go through a cycle of four stages of sleep,
Stage 1 is a drowsy, relaxed state between being awake and sleeping breathing slows, muscles relax, heart rate drops.
Stage 2 is slightly deeper sleep - you may feel awake and this means that, on
many nights, you may be asleep and not know it.
Stage 3 and Stage 4, or Deep Sleep - it is very hard to wake up from Deep
Sleep because this is when there is the lowest amount of activity in your
body.
After Deep Sleep, we go back to Stage 2 for a few minutes, and then enter
Dream Sleep - also called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep - which, as its
name suggests, is when you dream.
In a full sleep cycle, a person goes through all the stages of sleep from one to four,
then back down through stages three and two, before entering dream sleep
Russell Foster, a professor of circadian [body clock] neuroscience at Oxford, shares
this point of view. "Over 30% of the medical problems that doctors are faced with
stem directly or indirectly from sleep. But sleep has been ignored in medical training
and there are very few centres where sleep is studied," he says.
But the majority of doctors still fail to acknowledge that a consolidated eight-hour
sleep may be unnatural.
Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people were forced
into periods of rest and relaxation, could have played an important part in the
human capacity to regulate stress naturally. In many historic accounts, Ekirch found
that people used the time to meditate on their dreams.