Sleeeep
Our body clock 'the body's internal biological clock which is located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is made of around 50,000 brain cells and receives light directly from the eyes and through the optic nerve.
Light is responsible for resetting the body clock and in turn helps to regulate and keep a number of other functions working correctly, from hormones, temperature, sleep patterns, and helping us to understand meal times and sleep times.
We have free will when we are an adult, at what time and place we can sleep. As much control we may think we have, there is also the chemical processes within the body that actually force us to be tired.
Physical exhaustion and not enough sleep is a major factor to our health and can result in a number of physical and psychological problems.
Our normal sleeping pattern can be shifted due to stress, worrying, tension, trauma etc. Our ability to sleep well can be changed by our internal influences and the source of the 'distraction to relaxation' is usually a past or future worry in the present moment, stopping us from being in this present moment and relaxing. The source of these worries is usually; work, relationships, health, financial, as well as physical tiredness or illness.
During both wakefulness and our Dreamtime, only a small number of brain cells are responsible for keeping us in a state of rejuvenated constant sleep, the same goes for when we are awake, there are a small number of brain cells that help us keep awake and active.
Neurons that create peaceful sleep patterns also block out the ones that keep us awake. It is the normal body functioning for our mind and body to be awake for 16 hours and asleep for 8. These figures differ from babies, children, adults and the elderly.
How we stay 'awake' is usually by the signals in our brain firing to create chemical signals called neurotransmitters. When these are fired our brain becomes awakened and activated. During meditation, these are not so active, and our brains go into more theta and delta brainwaves with less 'awake' activity. It is possible for meditators to change their brainwave states to more relaxed for deeper states of consciousness.
In between these states of dreaming and awake, occur within seconds. You can fall asleep within seconds, dream in seconds, but your experience in that dream may feel or experience just like minutes. This is the 'switch' that scientists called 'a flip-flop switch' like a switch between circuits, much like sleep and wakefulness. In stable states of wakefulness or sleep these can quickly be experienced, especially if a person is deeply tired, we can often click out of waking consciousness and into sleep or dreaming visa-versa.
Keeping awake is important for our daily working lives, those of us who drink caffeine are able to stay awake because of the chemical adenosine. This chemical is produced by long periods of wakefulness and serves to induce deep sleep by inhibiting waking neurons. Typically in order to sleep, we usually need downtime to rest our busy mind from work or house duties for around 10 minutes. Although this isn’t required, it is an essential time period where we can reset our busy mind and enter into relaxation.
From the time our heads touch our pillow, sleep doesn’t happen straight away. On the average person, it takes roughly 10-20 minutes to get into a deep sleep. From there on there are several stages of sleep.
Changes in the body's need for sleep can be affected by the circadian rhythm signal, much like another switch