Cultivating Body

Rest & Sleep

“Life is all about balance. You don’t always need to be getting stuff done. Sometimes it’s perfectly okay, and absolutely necessary, to shut down, kick back, and do nothing”

— Lori Deschene

This Week’s Intentions:

This Week I will...

Learn about optimal rest techniques
Identify my own optimal rest patterns
Contemplate & Meditate on and how and why my body crave rest and its own natural rhythms

The Goal: Reclaim my body’s optimal rhythms by Cultivating Purposeful Rest.

Video Supplement:

“Hey everybody, AJ here with our next step in Cultivating Purpose. This week's theme is Purposeful Rest. Along with Purposeful Movement and Feeding our Purpose, Purposeful Rest is a true cornerstone for Cultivating Purpose. When our physical plane is aligned and operating optimally, our thoughts and intentions are freer and clearer, while our energy is more plentiful; so Cultivating Purpose become much easier to accomplish. Furthermore, when we are eating, moving, and resting optimally, we can see with clarity that what makes us most happy and fulfilled is the ability to help others-- whether that's friends, family, your significant other, your community, or the entire world.

So, what does it mean to cultivating Purposeful Rest? The obvious thing is getting enough sleep, which is a necessary for this to work. I aim for 8 hours every night, and many people say that's hard to accomplish. I can be sympathetic to this, but I would encourage you to find ways to achieve this goal.

For me, the first step is eliminating caffeine. I love the taste of coffee and tea, but I reserve that for special occasions, like I would with sugar and other nutritional indulgences. This may sound like a ridiculous thing to eliminate, and many of you readily acknowledge your addiction. But if you are not getting 8 hours of sleep per night, I would not be putting caffeine in my body, because this is probably effecting things. Check out this article for more info.

The second thing that I need to do to have Purposeful Rest is to adjust light levels based on the time of day. I am as glued to my electronics as anyone, but I try to shut lights when the sun goes down, mirroring the natural darkness outside. I dim my electronic backlights and turn on 'night-time' mode where applicable. Most importantly, I try to sleep before 10pm so I can wake up before 6am. It's a perfect 8 hours, coinciding with natural hormonal rhythms and the patterns of light and darkness outside. This obviously only works if you have relatively normal work hours (7a-8p). This may sound like a crazy lifestyle, but after a week of no caffeine and waking up at 6am, you can rest assured you will be tired and excited to sleep at 9:30pm every night.

This simple lifestyle-- no caffeine, asleep by 10-- gives me boundless amounts of energy. Grogginess is nonexistent for me-- I get up ready to tackle anything. And the energy lasts throughout the day-- I don't get the 2pm crash, or the 6pm crash that I would get in past years. And finally, I have reserves of energy when I need it. I routinely go until 3 am on weekends, and I don't lose a beat because I've built a solid base of energy.

My next step for Purposeful Rest is my mindfulness and meditation routine. My favorite way to wake up is to meditate as soon as I gain waking consciousness. Before I open my eyes, I immediately start focusing on my breath, and attempting to be as present and in-the-moment with my breath as possible. I let thoughts drift in and out of my mind, always refocusing on my breath. I do this for about 20 minutes every morning. I may continue this calm breathing as I walk into the shower. Most of the time, calm breathing leads to some profound thoughts. I start thinking about the kind of person I want to be that day, the kind of love my family deserves to receive, and if I've been eating right recently, I'll also be thinking about the optimal foods I'm going to fuel my purpose with that day.

My morning meditation has become a great blessing to me, as it provides additional rest while helping me set my intention for the day. I repeat this mindfulness process at night. When I turn off my lights, I lie on my back and focus on my breathing for about 20 minutes. Once again, I let thoughts come in and out of my head, and I let my consciousness refocus itself towards my resting body.

A few times a week, I also practice a variety of other meditation and mindful techniques. These are integral parts of my Purposeful Rest routine, but I will go more into meditation in later weeks. For now, I have included a link for a body scan meditation I do below.

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Being in a physically optimal state is a responsibility and a privilege, not just a luxury or a right we are granted. I think we have a sacred duty to take advantage of our opportunities; and this is no clearer than when thinking about self-care. I owe it to the entire world to take care of myself. How many people in the world have no opportunity to eat, move, and/or rest optimally? How many starving, malnourished, exhausted, and unhealthy people are there out there? Billions? And here I am, potentially wasting my opportunity to be healthy and happy. And more importantly, I'm potentially wasting my opportunity to be my best self for my family, my community, and the world. I firmly believe that we are product of our environment.

I did not grow myself to be the person I am today; I did not learn everything in isolation away from the world. Instead, I had a loving family, a network of competent teachers and school administrators, good friends, and a sociopolitical infrastructure in the NorthEast United States that allowed me to become the person I am today. I owe my identity to all of these things, as these are the things that shaped who I am. Therefore, since I am essentially just a product of all these things, I feel a responsibility to be my best self in order to give back to these things. In many ways, my meaning in life, my ultimate purpose, is to improve the ecosystem from which I sprang; to be a blessing to all that has been provided to me. I've learned that this is what gives me monumental satisfaction, and this is truly why I Cultivate Purpose (it's why I made this website).

So, in conclusion, I must maintain optimal sleep and rest, and I must eat and move optimally; because I need to be my best self in order to make the world a better place. And this is why I meditate, why I work towards 8 hours of sleep a night, and why I try to find my optimal circadian rhythms. I hope you can all find these things in your life as well. If we can, we'll be better equipped to change the world for the better.

Namaste.