Feature
because the body is generally restful through
the day. Whatever activity you may be doing,
it remains restful, so it will not demand more
sleep.
Yogic Practices –
Shoonya Meditation
There is a certain meditation we teach which
is called Shoonya. This is taught in a program
that we conduct only in the Isha centers in
southern India and the United States. We
do not teach it elsewhere because it needs
a certain atmosphere, training and other
processes. Shoonya can bring your sleep
quota down dramatically. It is just a ¿ fteen-
minute meditation but you will see, if you
settle down into this meditation process
properly, your metabolism will drop up to
twenty-four percent. Twenty-four percent is
the deepest drop you can have in conscious
states of meditation.
If you go beyond that, you will not be
conscious in the usual sense. To be able to
be relaxed to a point and then to come out
consciously, you cannot go beyond twenty-
four percent. You will ¿ nd these ¿ fteen
minutes of meditation is equal to two to
three hours of sleep in terms of restfulness.
Because there are such drastic physiological
changes in the body, especially on the level
of your blood chemistry, phenomenal things
will change – which is why it needs to be
taught in very controlled, focused conditions.
Bring Natural Foods
in Your Diet
If you are sleeping eight or nine hours a
day, one thing to look at is the food you
eat. Consuming at least a certain amount of
vegetarian material, particularly foods that can
be eaten in their natural, uncooked condition
is very important for your general wellbeing.
When you cook food, a large volume of prana
or life energy is destroyed. This is one reason
why lethargy can set into the body. If you eat a
certain amount of fresh fruits and vegetables,
there are many bene¿ ts, but one thing you will
notice immediately is that your sleep quota
will come down.
From Stove to Plate –
Make it Quick
In Indian culture, traditionally it is said that
any cooked food should always be eaten
within 1.5 to 2 hours of being cooked.
Keeping cooked food in a fridge for long
periods of time and then eating it can raise
your sleep quota in addition to causing many
other problems to the body. The same is true
for canned food. There is something called
“tamas” which literally means “inertia.” Food
that is kept like this will have a lot of tamas,
which can bring down your mental agility and
alertness.
How Much to Eat
How keenly you manage your energies is what
decides your alertness. To meditate, alertness
should be not just of the mind but of your very
energy. To assist this, for people on the yogic
path, it is said that you should eat only twenty-
four mouthfuls, and you must chew every
mouthful at least twenty-four times. This
will ensure that food is pre-digested in your
mouth before it goes in, and it will not cause
dullness. If you do this during your evening
meal, you will easily wake up at three-thirty in
the morning. In the yogic system, this period
is called the Brahma Muhurtam. It is an ideal
time to do yogic practices because there is an
extra support from nature at that time for your
Sadhana.
Don’t Forcefully Deny
Sleep
How much sleep your body needs depends
on the level of physical activity you perform.
There is no need to ¿ x the quantum of either
food or sleep. When your activity levels are
low, you eat less. When they are high, you
may eat more. The same goes for sleep. The
moment the body is well rested it will get up,
whether at 3 AM or 8 AM. Your body should
not wake up to an alarm bell. Once it feels
suf¿ ciently rested, it must come awake. If
you forcefully deny sleep to the body, your
physical and mental capabilities and whatever
else you have will drop. You should never do
that. You must give the body how much sleep
it needs. But if the body is somehow trying to
use the bed as a grave, it won’t want to come
out. Somebody will have to raise you from
the dead! It depends on how you are handling
your life. If you are in a mental state where
you want to avoid life, you will naturally tend
to eat and sleep more.
Don’t Sleep Right After
You Eat
There are quite a few people who are in such a
mental state that unless they load themselves
with food and make the body dull, they cannot
fall asleep. You must give suf¿ cient time for
digestion to happen before you sleep. I would
say 80% of the food that you eat will go waste
if you fall asleep within two hours of eating. If
you are in a condition where you cannot sleep
unless you have a full stomach, you need to
address this issue. This is not about sleep, this
is a certain mental state.
The Right Position
For Sleep
When the body is positioned horizontally, you
can immediately make out that your pulse
rate drops. The body makes this adjustment
because if blood is pumped with the same
force, too much will go into your head,
causing damage. The blood vessels which
go upward are a ¿ ner arrangement compared
to those going down. As they go up into the
brain, they become almost hair-like, to a point
that they cannot take an extra drop. When
you sleep, if you place your head towards the
north and stay that way for 5 to 6 hours, the
magnetic pull of the Earth will cause pressure
on your brain because iron is an important
ingredient in your blood. It is not that if you
sleep this way you will fall dead. But if you
do this every day, you are asking for trouble.
If you are beyond a certain age and your blood
vessels are weak, it can result in hemorrhages
and paralytic strokes. If your system is sturdy,
you may not sleep very well because there is
more circulation in the brain than there should
be. If you are in the northern hemisphere, East
is the best direction to keep your head when
you sleep. Northeast is okay. West is alright.
South, if you must. North, no. In the southern
hemisphere, don’t put your head to the south.
Keep Your System Pure
The nature of a human being is such that while
every other creature adapts to the situations it
is placed in, a human being is able to create
the situations that he wants. That is what
makes us distinct. If you have any sort
of concern for yourself, you have to be
conscious about what goes into your system.
The question is not of how long you live but
how well you live. What you hear, what you
say, how you eat – these things are practiced
in yoga because by keeping the ambience, our
tongue, our mind and body pure, there is a
certain freedom, intelligence and blissfulness
to your existence. Let me tell you a joke.
Two Presbyterian nuns were driving in the
Montana countryside and they ran out of gas.
So they walked to a nearby farm which was
¿ ve miles away. They found the local farmer –
he was sloshed out – and they asked him, “We
need some gasoline.” He said, “Take it from
my tractor.” So they went to the tractor, but
they did not have a can. Then they saw an old
chamber pot. So they emptied gasoline from
the tractor into the chamber pot and carried it
to the car, ¿ ve miles back. They were slowly
pouring it into the car. A Baptist priest was
passing by. He saw these nuns pouring things
from the chamber pot into the gas tank, and
he stopped, backed up and said, “Sisters, I
really appreciate your faith, but believe me,
it doesn’t work like that.”
If you just pick up some things here and
there and put it into your system, it won’t go
very far.
GolfPlus
FEBRUARY
2019
15