Sleep Dr — Rubin Naiman

Dr Rubin Naiman is man with a mission: he wants to elevate the status of sleep. He believes that for too long it has stood in the shadow of the waking state, only valued for its ability to make waking life better. “We have lost our deep regard for sleep,” he says and, as a result, we are in the midst of an insomnia epidemic, affecting half of all adults, and putting us at risks of all kinds of diseases.

Dr Naiman, clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona’s Center for Integrative Medicine  and one of the leading authorities on sleep, looked as if he got enough of it himself at the Sivananda Ashram in the Bahamas, where I heard his talk. He had a laid-back, yet alert, manner and was in good shape for his age. (Judging by his snow-white hair, tales of hippy drug taking in the sixties and mention of grand-children — i’d put him in his 60s). In fact he boasts of a regular eight hours, and says that age shouldn’t be a barrier to good night’s rest.

Sleep & dream

Sleep is essential for two main reasons, Dr Naiman says. Firstly, in deep sleep,  HGH (human growth hormone — essential for rejuvenation and healing) is released. Secondly, in dream, emotional information is digested. Deep sleep and dream occur in 90 minute cycles, with the former mostly in the first part of the night, and the latter in the second. “Dreaming is considered to be not as important as sleep in our society, but when we are out of touch with our dreams, we lose our sense of volition”, he says. Depressed people, particularly those on medication, literally suffer from a loss of dreams. Also he says substances like cannabis and alcohol inhibit dreaming, even though at first they may make us feel sleepy.

What stops us sleeping?

People are not sleeping enough due to over consumption. “We take in more energy than we counter-balance with sleep,” Dr Naiman says. The three main sources of our excess energy are:

• too much food. “Especially too much high glycemic foods – we over-eat, but are undernourished”.
• too much light. If you were too look at the earth from space at night, you would see a mass of bright lights, he explains, quoting Al Gore’s exclamation that it seems as if the earth has a fever. And it doesn’t matter if your eyes are shut, Dr Naiman adds, light still trickles through the eyelids.
• too much information. We are consuming more information than ever in this age of the internet, and a lot of it junk information.

Also there’s a tendency for people think ‘I can and must control sleep,’ he says. This is importing day-time thinking into night-time. Instead you should “let go of control” and “surrender to sleep”.

Sleep remedies

Here are some suggestions from Dr Naiman for a good night’s sleep.

• Dim your lights in the evening. (He calls it dusk simulation). Use candlelight and low blue lights and definitely try to avoid flourescent lights.
• Exercise regularly (although not right before bed). You body needs to cool down to sleep, and working up a sweat earlier in the day helps you to do so.
• Make sure your setting is conducive to sleep. “I’ve seen too many bedrooms that look like living rooms,” he says. The room should be quiet (in terms of both noise and what’s in it) and cool, so that heat can escape your body, although it doesn’t matter how many blankets you have. He thinks electric alarms are a bad idea (electromagnetic frequencies are disturbing).
• Respect the rhythms of nature by keeping a relatively regular routine. Try and rise at dawn and get some light in the early morning.
• Rest before sleep. Rest is not the same as recreation, he counters, and you need to be doing activities that will help you let go of wakefulness. Ever the old hippie, he suggests yoga, prayer, and spiritual study.
• Breathing. The 4-7-8 breath aids relaxation, he says. You breathe through your nose  for four, hold your breath for seven, and then exhale through your mouth for eight, making a whoosing sound.
• Journalling. One way of letting go of your day is to write about it. Dr Naiman recommends writing about your day as if it were a dream, noting any symbols and themes.

Sleep & spirituality

Eastern spiritual traditions, like Buddhism and Hinduism, have more respect for sleep than the Western world, according to Dr Naiman. “The scientific view is that in deep sleep we experience nothing. This is seen to be negative, but from the Eastern point of view, nothing is a positive thing.” This nothing, i.e. the ceasing of thought, is what we try to achieve in meditation. In fact, in meditation we can access the same states of awareness found in sleep, he says.

An interesting point that he puts forward is that the waking state and sleep are not mutually exclusive. “We’re always a bit asleep and a bit awake,” he says. “Sleep is an innate sense of peace and serenity. It’s always there, under our waking state. At night we surrender to it.”