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the role of sleep in healthy buildings + workplace wellness with charlie morley
97 Plays4 years ago
Welcome to episode 46 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate.
I’m your host, Matt Morley of Biofilico Healthy Buildings and in this episode I’m talking to none other than Charlie Morley, a bestselling author and teacher of mindfulness, lucid dreaming and all round sleep expert whose latest book deals with resolving trauma affected sleep through a set of practices called ‘Mindfulness of Dream & Sleep’.
Charlie, who is as you may have guessed my brother, was “authorised to teach” within the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism by Lama Yeshe Rinpoche in 2008. Since then he has written four books, delivered retreats in more than 20 countries, spoken at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, as well as the Ministry of Defence Mindfulness Symposium and The Houses of Parliament.
Our conversation explores the connections between my world of healthy buildings and interiors, and Charlie’s world of healthy sleep. We discuss sleep hygiene, the physiological impact of sleep on our bodies not to mention our brains, pre-industrial age sleeping habits vs todays, the power nap as a productivity tool, how to create restorative spaces or sleep pods in an office or educational environment that people will actually use, and the role of meditation and restorative deep relaxation practices in improving rest.
https://www.charliemorley.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 46
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to episode 46 of the Green and Healthy Places Podcast, in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate. I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of Biofilico Healthy Buildings.
Meet Charlie Morley
00:00:24
Speaker
And in this episode, I'm talking to none other than Charlie Morley, a best-selling author and teacher of mindfulness, lucid dreaming, and all-round sleep expert.
00:00:33
Speaker
Charlie, who is, as you may have guessed, my brother, was authorised to teach within the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism by Lama Yeshe Rinpoche in 2008. Since then he has written four books, delivered retreats in more than 20 countries, spoken at both Oxford and Cambridge universities, as well as the Ministry of Defence, Mindfulness Symposium and the Houses of Parliament.
00:00:55
Speaker
Our conversation explores the connections then between my world of healthy buildings and interiors and Charlie's world of healthy sleep and dreams.
The Science of Sleep and Productivity
00:01:04
Speaker
We discuss sleep hygiene, the physiological impact of sleep on our bodies, not to mention our brains, pre-industrial age sleeping habits versus modern day sleeping habits, and the power nap as a productivity tool during the workday. We also look at how we can create
00:01:23
Speaker
or collaborate together potentially on restorative spaces and sleeping pods in offices, something that I might design and that he might orchestrate in terms of the experiential component, for example. We also look at the role of meditation and restorative deep relaxation practices in improving rest and sleep later on in the day. So we hope you enjoyed this conversation with Charlie Morley. Okay, let's do this. Let's start with a big picture, right? So when we're thinking about sleep,
00:01:54
Speaker
and the sort of building blocks of creating a good night's sleep in terms of how much do we need, the risks of sleep hygiene and what you've described as a sleep delusion. Like how do you evaluate and measure a good night's sleep?
00:02:08
Speaker
So I think the measure of sleep is inherently subjective. How do I feel upon awakening? What are my energy levels the next day? What is my cognitive ability the next day? So we can look at it like that. However, there's also a lot of research now that points to, unless you are part of the sleepless elite, which is less than 1 percentile of the world's population who can do very well on five hours or less sleep,
00:02:34
Speaker
almost everybody in the world, seven to nine hours per 24 hour period is still the golden standard of sleep. And they've done some interesting tests where people who
00:02:44
Speaker
Very high achievers who are only getting kind of six, five or six hours sleep, great social lives, heads of business, this kind of stuff. And they say, this is all I need. I work perfectly well in six hours sleep. But then you put them into a brain scanner or you give them cognitive ability tests. And although they say they feel optimal performance, their brain shows significant suboptimal neurological performance.
00:03:07
Speaker
Now, that's one of the scariest pieces of research I came across because it shows that even if you think you feel fine, in fact, a state of sleep deprivation has been so normalized by ourselves and by society that our natural, I feel fine state is actually one of suboptimal neurological functioning. So what's the next step?
Debating Sleep Tracking Technology
00:03:25
Speaker
You force these people into a position where they have to have one extra hour of sleep per night. Sorry, one extra hour of sleep per day. That's really important. It can be a natural in the day.
00:03:34
Speaker
could be an extra half an hour at night and then a half an hour nap. You have to get one extra hour per 24-hour period. Their cognitive ability goes through the roof. The descriptions they have is like it feels like I've accessed a superpower. Their social lives become more vibrant. Their relationships, their interpersonal relationships get better. Their performance at work gets better just through one extra hour. So yes, it is subjective.
00:03:58
Speaker
but also there are very objective measures that show seven to nine hours for most people is seven to nine hours will allow us to function optimally and crucially just one extra hour per night can do massive, massive benefit to everyone. And how do you see then in terms of integrating an element of tech
00:04:20
Speaker
so that you're able to literally see the sleep quality over the course of the evening, or over the course of the night, that otherwise you might have a sense of how you slept, but you don't really know. Are you buying into this? Do you think there's real value in it, or are we being sold a product and a service that, frankly, we've managed pretty well without all these years, and we're in a sense trying to create a desire that
00:04:44
Speaker
that we don't necessarily need to own these things. So at the moment, one of the kind of higher end sleep track is called the Aura Ring, who sponsored a sleep science study that I was part of. Even the Aura Ring, which is really the top end of the market, is still only 60 to 70 percent accurate, which means there's a crucial 30 to 40 percent at the time where it's just getting it wrong. And that's the Aura Ring, let alone most people have a much cheaper version, the kind of, you know, the wrist based ones that hook up to your iPhone and stuff like that. So
00:05:14
Speaker
If sleep trackers are benefiting your sleep, if they are making you feel more refreshed, if they are leading to more healthy relationships with sleep, then continue to use them. But for a lot of people, they lead to a real neurosis around sleep. So take them with a big pinch of salt. I mean, in the new book, the first chapter is about becoming your own sleep tracker. So in the morning, taking notes of how do I feel upon awakening? What are my energy levels throughout the day? Yes, what time did I go to bed? What time did I wake up? Any dreams I can remember?
00:05:43
Speaker
Becoming your own sleep tracker to create a baseline is far better than the level of tech we've got at the moment. However, there is something on the market that we use when we do these sleep science studies called the ZMax or the ZMax. Now, that's about $500 or $600, and that's like a mini EEG machine. That's very, very accurate. So give the technology five years when we can get the technology of the ZMax into an Aura Ring or into the app on your phone,
00:06:10
Speaker
and then sleep tracker days will be very very accurate but at the moment we're just a little bit behind so yeah I wouldn't take don't take it too seriously. So if we then jump into establishing exactly what's going on during
00:06:25
Speaker
a night's sleep.
Understanding Sleep Stages
00:06:27
Speaker
You have what you've described as light, light sleep, the dream phase, and then deep sleep. So sort of the top line concepts for each of those three and how is the sleep connecting with our health during the rest of the day? Like what are the processes going on?
00:06:41
Speaker
Sure. So there's actually two, there's the gateway in and out either side to the hypnopompic and hypnogogic and hypnopompic. So stage one of sleep is called the hypnogogic state and is experienced by most people less as a sleep stage proper, more a state of drowsiness.
00:06:58
Speaker
So you can still hear the sounds of the room. You can still feel your body in the bed. Brain goes into deep alpha and theta. The brain looks almost indistinguishable to a brain that is in hypnosis. So every time you fall asleep, the gateway into sleep, whether in a nap in the middle of the day or at night, you go through this natural state of hypnosis. And it's actually in that state that we can do a lot of really beneficial stuff for our sleep because it's in the hypnagogic state that we can practice.
00:07:23
Speaker
non-sleep deep rest, to use Huberman's term, or Yoganidra practices, or my term, hypnagogic mindfulness, which are these states of deep relaxation that happen just before we enter sleep. So we have the hypnagogic state, really good for you, deeply relaxing, but a state in which people who have stressed out sleep will spend a lot of the night.
00:07:44
Speaker
You're kind of tired enough to be in that drowsy state that you can't quite pass the threshold. Eventually, though, with normalised sleep patterns, you'll move from hypnagogic into light sleep. Light sleep is named for the quite un-technical reason that it's just quite easy to wake people from. Back in the early days of sleep science, they would register the depth of sleep just by poking someone and saying their name.
00:08:06
Speaker
So light sleep, as it sounds, you're easy to be woken from it. You are now blacked out. You can't hear the sounds in the room unless they're loud enough. You can't feel your body in the bed, but you're yet to be dreaming. Light sleep is really good for procedural memory integration. So sleep is all about memory. That's why there's a direct link, as we know, with our mum, between sleep and Alzheimer's and sleep and memory.
00:08:30
Speaker
So let's say you're learning to drive a car. It's in light sleep that you'll be processing the memory of how to do the stick and the gears and all of that and the pedal and the gas and everything. That'll be happening in light sleep, procedural memory. Whereas if you were in a car crash, that would be processed in dreaming sleep. So dreaming sleep is about processing emotional memory, memory reconsolidation, especially traumatic or stressful memories too.
00:08:55
Speaker
So we have the hypnagogic state, stage one, then light sleep for procedural memory and learning. Then we move into deep sleep. Deep sleep is very, very interesting. This is where the brain is almost entirely switched off. So your brain's never fully switched off. But if you look at the brainwaves of the waking state, they're very close together.
00:09:14
Speaker
If you look at the brain waves of someone in deep sleep, it's called delta wave, it's dominant brain wave. And they're very far apart. I know people can't see me, but I'm making slow deep waves signals with my hand. So in deep sleep, the brain's almost entirely switched off, very unlikely to be dreaming, very little happening in the brain.
00:09:35
Speaker
apparently, but actually if you look at the neuroscience of what's happening, loads is happening. Deep sleep is when cerebral spinal fluid is flushed up into the brain and it actually removes toxins from the brain. A bit like, imagine if you had a fruit smoothie and you've drunk all the fruit smoothie, but there's still kind of the remnants of the fruit smoothie in the bottle. And then if you put a bit of water in that bottle and shook it up, you could get all the remnants of the fruit smoothie out, right? That's what's happening in deep sleep. The cerebral spinal fluid is flushing through the brain.
00:10:04
Speaker
And the blood capillaries go big, small, big, small, big, small, which creates this kind of flushing motion. And that directly flushes out amyloid plaques, which are what cause Alzheimer's and many other forms of dementia. It's also a human growth hormone is released. So I know you're really into your fitness.
00:10:20
Speaker
If you have like a big workout during the day, like you're kind of working out, you're lifting weights in the gym, unless that night you get enough deep sleep, your muscles will not grow. There'll be massive reduction
Historical Sleep Patterns and Modern Implications
00:10:32
Speaker
in muscle gains. And the same goes for losing weight.
00:10:35
Speaker
So if you spent your whole day dieting, but then at night you don't get enough deep sleep, you will lose weight based on the calorific deficit of not eating that much, but you won't actually make change to your metabolism that leads to long-term weight loss. So deep sleep is so, so important for memory, for toxins flushed out, for changing the body in any way we want.
00:10:58
Speaker
We have that period of deep sleep, and then we'll move into dream. So dream actually comes at the end of the cycle. We think of dream as being a very active sleep state, and it is. But by the time you get to dream, you've been knocked out for at least 60, 70 minutes. And if you put those together, that makes up the 90-minute sleep cycle. The cycle continues throughout the night. What changes is the amount of time you spend in each one until you get to the last two hours, where you're almost in full dream for like two hours.
00:11:24
Speaker
Okay, so I think that's really given us the kind of foundations between these connections between sleep, what's happening at night and how we performing, how we feeling, how we cognitively, how we functioning during the day. So effectively, that is the basis of sleep as a form of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
00:11:46
Speaker
Yeah, there is no biological process that is no adversely affected by insufficient sleep and insufficient sleep is anything less than seven hours per 24 hour period. Every biological process is negatively affected.
00:11:58
Speaker
And yet we don't teach kids about this in school. We have a sense of almost pride that we can get by off a lack of sleep. It's crazy. It's like with the science is in, we know how important sleep is. I mean, just to give one interesting thing, because it's just happened in America, certain parts of America lost an hour because of the daylight saving. So like 1.6 billion people do this every year. Different times, but based on your countries.
00:12:26
Speaker
On that day where people lose one hour of sleep, the next day American studies have shown there's a 22% increase in cardiac arrest the next day just by robbing people of one hour sleep. That's tens of thousands more death because of one hour lost sleep. There's also a massive increase in traffic accidents the next day when you take one hour of sleep. Conversely,
00:12:49
Speaker
when the clocks change and you gain an extra hour of sleep, there's a 22% decrease in heart attacks the next day and a 15% drop in traffic accidents. Now, when you roll that out in 26 countries around the world that have these daylight savings, that is millions of people live longer or live shorter lives based on robbing or giving them one extra hour of sleep. Yeah, that's powerful stuff. If we can
00:13:16
Speaker
take a step back to a slightly sort of, let's say a historical perspective, just to understand the connection between pre-industrial age sleep cycles, modern sleep cycles, and the potential benefits in accepting and embracing the idea of a nap, a siesta, or sleeping again after the amount, number of hours that you managed to get during the night. So when do you draw the line between like,
00:13:43
Speaker
how things were before the industrial age and how things are now and does that necessarily have the optimal version of our sleep pattern.
00:13:52
Speaker
Sure. So I'm sure many of your listeners have heard this before, that before the Industrial Revolution, so about 200, 250 years ago, most people in Western Europe slept very differently. They didn't sleep all in one go, monophasically. Obviously, this depends on seasonal fluctuations. And a lot of the research was done in England, actually, especially the British Isles, where it can get dark as early as 4 PM in the wintertime.
00:14:20
Speaker
So people would go to sleep within about two hours of sundown because candles are really expensive. They're made of whale oil. Only the wealthiest people could have these candles. Kerosene was difficult to come across or whatever they used back then.
00:14:32
Speaker
So people would go to sleep within about two hours of Sundance. So it could be 6 PM, 8 PM, but like early, right? They'd sleep for about two, three hours. And then they would wake up again, like fully awake. Pubs would reopen. People would have these like tobacco circles. You kind of sit around and smoke. People would go into the fields and milk their cows. They believe the quality of the milk
00:14:55
Speaker
If you milk them at this time was better, people would have sex. They felt you're more fertile. That's actually true. There is a fertility boost at that time. There are hundreds of these records. There's even a 15th century prayer manual from Portugal full of prayers, especially to do in the second sleep. Sorry, between the first and the second sleep. So you get this reference, the first and second sleep. The way it actually came about was a crime researcher was looking at records in courts
00:15:24
Speaker
And a lot of crimes were committed after the first sleep, basically in the middle of the night. You'd get your three-hour sleep, you'd go out and rob someone's house and then go back to bed again. It was like the perfect crime, right? So this is how it first came into public awareness. Now, is that the best way? Oh, sorry. And then you would go back to sleep after two hours until sunrise and again, seasonal fluctuations. So you'd still be averaging about like six, seven, eight hours sleep, but crucially with a two-hour gap in the middle.
00:15:51
Speaker
Fast forward to the modern day. The most common form of insomnia in Western society today, most prevalent form, is not sleep onset insomnia, which is where you just can't get to sleep. It's actually sleep maintenance insomnia. Now, here's a description of sleep maintenance insomnia. The ability of the subject to fall asleep upon first awakening. Within two to three hours, the subject awakens again, feeling fully awake and conscious for up to two hours. The subject is then able to fall asleep again until morning.
00:16:20
Speaker
That is flipping exactly the same description as the pre-industrial sleep cycle. So could it be that there are millions of misdiagnosed insomniacs who aren't actually insomniacs? They are showing from an anthropological point of view a much more natural sleep cycle than the rest of us who are trying to black out for eight hours.
00:16:38
Speaker
Does it mean that blacking out for eight hours is not the way to do it and we should all be having that night time waking? No, not at all. Perhaps it's a chronotype thing, perhaps it's a body type thing, but it is important for people to know if they do have that sleep pattern, you're probably not an insomniac. And actually just knowing that it's okay to be awake in the middle of the night, move us out of the fight or flight sympathetic response that keeps us awake and allows us to fall asleep.
00:17:02
Speaker
And secondly, there are a lot of people who have that sleep pattern, but they don't know that there's a second period of sleep waiting for them in the wings. So they don't stay awake for two hours, they just get up. And it's like, ah, dude, there is another four-hour sleep waiting for you. But you have to allow yourself to slip back into it. Interestingly, the term insomnia was first produced in print as a kind of a coined term in the New York Times in 1901.
00:17:30
Speaker
It was called the newfangled malaise of insomnia. Within 30 to 40 years of us changing the way we sleep, we suddenly have this term insomnia cropping up. So very, very interesting. So no, I wouldn't say we should be sleeping like that. But if you are sleeping like that, it may not be such a bad idea. It may be just the way your body is working. And the main thing to know is there's nothing wrong with it. Nighttime wakefulness is not a pathology. For some people, it's just the way they're built.
00:17:59
Speaker
So I think there we introduced the idea of biphase or sleep being perfectly okay, or perhaps sleeping for X number of hours during the night and then catching up at another stage during the day.
Napping for Workplace Productivity
00:18:12
Speaker
And interestingly, that's one of the connections between your work and my work. So when I'm looking at, say, a healthy building concept or trying to create spaces within a building that are
00:18:22
Speaker
designed to foster wellness and well-being for people spending eight to 12 hours of their days or nights. If it's a residential context or if it's an office environment, then it's a place where they go to work and to be productive. And with the leading healthy building standard that's called the WELL standard, there you have an entire concept around mind.
00:18:42
Speaker
One of the features there is the idea of restorative opportunities and a NAP policy. So we're starting to see the way sort of trickle down effect from the top whereby the certification systems that are becoming increasingly common now in the world of real estate are encouraging and completely accepting the
00:19:03
Speaker
concept of a nap being a healthy part of a work day. It might still sound confusing for some people, but it's out there and this will take some time to spread, but for sure it's already happening, it's already coming. Now, once you have that policy as an employer,
00:19:21
Speaker
you then need to offer some kind of a space where that happens so that might be an area where i'd say okay well i'm gonna try and introduce some some natural elements i'm gonna think about light i'm gonna think about thermal qualities of the temperature in there i need to think about this acoustic isolation when you think about what i know you've turned sleep hygiene and so the environment
00:19:44
Speaker
Which one goes to sleep what are your your key? Touch points there like what are the the essential elements that we need to think about when we're creating an environment whether it's at home or in a potentially office space where It's congenial to having a 20 or 30 minute nap during the day
00:20:01
Speaker
First of all, before I answer that, I'd just like to say that's so good to hear. That's part of new building regulation and part of what businesses are thinking about. Apart from any kind of philanthropic aim that the businesses might have, your employees will be 30% better at anything they do after a 60 to 90 minute nap. That's the science. That's a fact. It's like if you want to make more money,
00:20:25
Speaker
Give your employees a nap because they will make better deals and make better trades. They'll have better interpersonal relationships. It is very good for your employees. Yes. And also you will make more money. It seems crazy. They aren't implementing this. You know, I did a thing at Deutsche Bank at Deloitte. So I was telling them you will make more money if you do this. And has it been implemented? Not that I know. But really, anyone listening, the science is there. This isn't hippy dippy stuff. Your employees will be better at whatever they do after a 60 to 90 minute nap.
00:20:53
Speaker
So rant over, next bit. I would say when you, people sleeping in public is a really vulnerable thing to do. So actually your question is not so much about the bedroom at home, but actually sleeping in public, which is very different. Sleeping in public, I would say for a start, you need something that's lockable, if possible.
00:21:15
Speaker
something that's lockable. So I know these great sleep pods in, I believe it's Munich airport, you can rent them for like an hour a pop and these little kind of micro pod beds, but they're lockable. And it's really important that it's not just quiet and dark and all the sleep hygiene stuff, but they're lockable. And a lot of the traumatized populations I work with, like veterans and people with CPTSD, simply placing a lock on your bedroom door can increase sleep quality by up to half an hour, an hour a night.
00:21:44
Speaker
because there's something about us humans. We need to know no one's going to come in. We're in this deeply vulnerable state of rest. So I would say they need to be not only private and a correct temperature for sleep, and yes, dark and quiet if you can, but also lockable. There was one rest pod I went in, and there was a difference between a rest pod and a sleep pod, where my legs were exposed. There was kind of a big bubble thing over most of my body and my head, but my legs were exposed. Very difficult to fall asleep in one of those.
00:22:10
Speaker
My feet, people could brush by, they could do something to them. I wasn't able to fully sleep. So yes, it would be enclosed, it would be lockable, it would be private. Just to say, though, those rest pods, there is a difference between NSDR, non-sleep deep rest and napping. Non-sleep deep rest has loads of benefits, too. So even if you can't provide a full, private, lockable nap pod, even just a space for rest and mindfulness, like they have in the Google offices in London, are really, really good.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah, it is often the tech companies that are approaching me and saying, well, look, we want to create a space, in a sense, in your terms, clearly, that they would then actually be breathing a multifunctional space where there can be some of that deep rest slash mapping going on. It can also be a space where it's congenial to restorative practices, whatever that might be, taking some time out of your day, perhaps to meditate, perhaps to do your prayers.
00:23:04
Speaker
Or just simply take some time by yourself and in fact there's often the term the quiet room or a restorative space where the idea is really just to take some time away from your key tasks to recharge and to go back. And then I think within that there's perhaps a subgroup to it which is the nap pods or a sleeping pod.
Optimizing Sleep Environment
00:23:25
Speaker
The issue there with my sort of design head on is okay you got to think about
00:23:29
Speaker
Hygiene now post-covid you got to think about ventilation if it's lockable and it's in closed space Then they basically have their own fans and and suddenly, you know, the prices do go up But I think there's there's real value in that so we've established you mentioned temperature just to
00:23:44
Speaker
dig into it so thermal comfort typically is actually cooler than we think in terms of the ideal sleeping temperature. I can't remember the exact temperature ideal sleeping temperature first of all they differ from men and women i remember a brilliant chapter in a book called the the descent of man by grace and perry
00:24:01
Speaker
And the title chapter was Air Conditioning as Sexist. Now, you see that as a title chapter. And you're like, oh, come on. Straight to that chapter. He's absolutely right. The default setting of air conditioners across the world are set to the male preferred room temperature. And women need it about up to one to two degrees warmer. So actually, air conditioning is sexist. So the first thing your pods would need to be, you would need to adjust it, because women would want a slightly different to men.
00:24:31
Speaker
Basically, if you're in bed and you can stick your foot out from the blankets or out of the duvet and it's warm enough to keep it outside, your room's too hot, your bedroom should be pretty cool. Not cold, but if you stick your foot out, it should feel cool. And your nose should be cool. This is cooler the better. Many people with
00:24:53
Speaker
sleep problems, they just have their room too hot. It becomes like the princess and the pete, you know, they pile up loads of blankets and and they get really, really hot. And you can't, you know, sleeps about thermoregulation. Remember the
00:25:06
Speaker
We used to, we now know actually that human beings used to even hibernate for long periods of time where the deep sleep state would go for a massive percentage and you could actually move into these almost hibernation states for days or weeks. And of course, what's hibernation about thermoregulation?
00:25:23
Speaker
So yeah, temperature's pretty important. So I'll put a note in the show notes on that, but there's a really interesting book that was published recently by the Harvard Chan School for Public Health by Dr. Joseph Allen, in which he discusses exactly that point around the differences between the two sexes in terms of
00:25:47
Speaker
body temperature and therefore thermal comfort within a space and it seems that a lot of the regulations that were still in place or sort of guidelines in the US and in fact even in all the buildings how the HVAC aircon systems are being programmed
00:26:04
Speaker
referring to some data that was plucked from sort of 1980s office buildings where, guess what was happening in 1980s, it was male dominated. They were probably wearing a suit and there's now just much more sexual, let's say, equality and therefore those, the man in the three-piece suit or in a shirt, a tie and a jacket is completely different to already sending it in a normal summer dress. So some of the solutions around that seem to be around
00:26:33
Speaker
ultimately creating almost microclimates within or having clusters or microclimates where it's adjustable. If they're getting there with the HVAC and ECON systems, it's sort of within the next five to ten years, it seems like that would be in a really smart building. It's like a high-performing building where they're able to adjust and allow each individual occupant to have some say over the temperature in this space just by the kind of
00:27:00
Speaker
airflow that's going on within that. So yeah, another crossover between your world and
Enhancing Sleep Through Mindfulness
00:27:05
Speaker
mine. Let's talk about mindfulness. Again, it is something that's part of the healthy building concept, the idea that allowing time within the day and allowing a space within an office environment, for example, where meditation or mindfulness practice and perhaps breath work can take place
00:27:23
Speaker
is positive again for productivity but also for worker well-being. So how do you integrate mindfulness and meditation with
00:27:34
Speaker
sleep is in theory for most of us at least there's no active meditation or mindfulness going on right until you get to like next level Tibetan Buddhist sort of practice of dreaming yeah exactly but before that how what's the connection between mindfulness and improved sleep quality so that if someone's perhaps practicing or finding time during the day they're also able to have a positive impact on the sleep at night which is I think you know another gain isn't it
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah, so mindfulness has a whole wealth of benefits. As far as sleep goes, actually more than mindfulness, it's about regulation of the autonomic nervous system through the breath and through deep relaxation. Those are the two things that you really find affecting sleep. And it's all based on this thing called parasympathetic drive.
00:28:18
Speaker
So there's a system within the autonomic nervous system called parasympathetic drive, which is, think of it like a battery, which is charged up. Every time you do anything relaxing during the day, you charge up this parasympathetic drive battery. Now, the reason most people tend to sleep slightly better on holiday than in their working day is unless you are screaming kids and stuff. On holidays, you're probably doing more relaxing things. So every time you do anything relaxing in the day, zap, you get a little charge to the parasympathetic drive.
00:28:46
Speaker
If you spend at least half an hour a day doing something really, really relaxing that moves you into deep parasympathetic emphasis, such as yoga nidra, slow deep breathing, coherent breathing, other forms of non-sleep deep rest, you're spending 30 minutes charging up that parasympathetic drive.
00:29:07
Speaker
Now, what happens is then when you go to sleep at night, even if you charge it at 11 o'clock in the morning or 10 o'clock in the morning, that battery will store the drive until you choose to go to sleep at night. So when you fall asleep at night, the brain kind of downloads that battery power from parasympathetic drive, allowing you to fall asleep quicker and stay asleep longer. This means we need to completely reconfigure the way we view sleep.
00:29:31
Speaker
Sleep is not about, oh, it's half an hour before bedtime, quick. Put on some sleep hygiene tips, like not looking at my phone, going, wearing my fancy red sunglasses, all this kind of stuff. It's like, that's too late, dude, like if you've got high levels of stress or trauma. But again,
00:29:47
Speaker
who hasn't got a higher level of stress over the last two and a half years we've been through as a global society. Sleep, good sleep begins during the day. How much time can you spend charging up that parasympathetic drive battery? And that's where periods of mindfulness, but especially slow deep breathing and NSDR, non-sleep deep breaths, kind of the hypnagogic mindfulness practice, those really, really work.
00:30:11
Speaker
to regulate the nervous system and help you sleep well at night. So that's the link. Mindfulness is good because it can help create a habit of mind that sees not getting perfect sleep as more okay, because mindfulness creates a fosters an attitude of okayness with myself and compassionate acceptance if it's taught in the right way. But the link between just standard mindfulness and sleep is quite tenuous. The link between
00:30:36
Speaker
non-sleep deep rest and slow deep breathing and sleep is very very direct because it's based on this parasympathetic drive. So then you you see that there is effectively a short-term benefit that is if you like who's reaping those benefits well first of all the person in question so the worker the occupant and indirectly the
00:30:58
Speaker
They employ it, that's more than that. So the people who are then, that they're producing for once they go back into the work environment and are just sort of recharged and fresher and able to do more or get through the rest of the day without hitting X number of coffees. But then that same building occupant, that same worker gets their own slightly more medium term benefits. Later on in the day, it's an entirely private matter once they end up trying to get to sleep. That also suggests, you mentioned sort of the three hours, I think there's often
00:31:25
Speaker
You know, there's practical considerations, of course, around when you work out an exercise, right? But when I see people exercising at 9 p.m. and the best hours of sleep seem to be between about sort of like 11 and 1 a.m., right? There's just, it's a crunch between the late workout, getting to bed and getting good quality night's sleep. So that would then suggest, if at all possible, exercise should happen lunchtime slash middle of the day. Depends what the exercise is.
00:31:53
Speaker
So again, this is about the sympathetic and parasympathetic system. So for example, lifting heavy weights, like if you're doing a big weight session actually, can lead to such a parasympathetic hit afterwards, this deep tiredness that comes afterwards. It could be reasonably beneficial or at least neutral to do in the evening. However, as we both do a lot of martial arts, like Thai boxing, kickboxing, something really fight or flighty like Krab Maga at 10 PM. If you want to go to bed at midnight,
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah, you're going to be wired. You're going to be in that state. So it's not so much the exercise, but the type of exercise and the effect that has on your body. And you can feel it after your workout. Do you feel deeply relaxed? Do you feel that sense of of calm or do you feel this kind of jittery? You know, you've still got your pre-workout shake in your system or something like that. So.
00:32:42
Speaker
It's kind of subjective and personal, but generally exercise is really good for sleep. But yeah, if you can do it within like three hours of your preferred bedtime, that's best. Sorry, but do it not over three hours before your preferred bedtime, that's best. Cool. Well, listen, I think we could carry on for a while yet, but we're going to wrap it up there. So if people want to follow along, see more of your work or reach out with any questions or buy the books, like where is that all happening online?
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, my website charlimorley.com. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook and yeah, I'm very easy to find. So check it out. We'll put the links in the show notes. All right. Thanks my brother. Cool. Thank you.