I put this together for a couple of friends that were having problems sleeping so i thought you might like to see it. Do add your own tips.
Rules
“Sleep is for mankind not mankind for sleep” to reinterpret a famous scripture. It is to bless you, not for you to become so regulated in your life that you can not do other good things. Below I write guidelines to help you, but they are not rules that have to be followed always. Learn which are most important and how much you can vary from them. But if you have a pattern of problems it might be an idea just to do everything you can to overcome it and then later when you are sleeping well to find out how much you can break these “rules”.
Timing
Setting a time for getting up and sticking to it is the most important rule. It is much easier for you to change your getting up time and that will change when you will fall asleep. If you are having a real problem with sleeping it is worth sticking to it even at weekend and during holidays. Normally you can probably sleep in by a couple of hours at weekends, but don’t sleep in till midday or later. If you occasionally need extra sleep take an early night, as that doesn’t upset your pattern of sleep.
During a holiday you might have been sleeping later. At the end of that you need to take time to readjust your pattern of sleep. I often take a week to do it before term starts.
Your body has a natural cycle of wakefulness. Over a 1½hr period you go from alertness to tiredness back to alertness. If you are at 11:30pm and feeling tired you might think that you just want to do a little more, read a bit more of your book etc. But if you do, remember that it might be 1½hrs till you can get to sleep. Learn to recognise what your body is doing and work with it.
Exercise
Do exercise regularly, aiming for about 4 times a week or more, but take at least one day’s break. Exercise can be something quite small and easy, a 20 min brisk walk to work or a 10 min run, but look for something that you can fit in to your life easily.
If you have not been able to do this then find a small exercise routine that you can do at home. Perhaps some squats, sit-ups and press-ups. Start with a little warm up, perhaps jogging on the spot and finish with a good stretch. If you are really pressed for time the stretch is probably the most important part. Touch your toes, twist at the hips, reach up high. In turn tense each muscle and then slowly let it relax. Breath deeply for a while then repeat this. If you are really pressed for time this tense and relax can be done in bed. Start at your fingertips, work up your arms to your neck then face and then down your body, then back up again.
Being outside in the open air, letting the sunlight get on your skin also helps.
Eating
Don’t eat a large meal before you go to bed, but a small sweet snack can help you feel sleepy. One dietician recommends a tablespoon of honey to help you maintain benefits of training and lose weight.
Don’t fill your body with lots of stimulants. Tea, coffee and coke are all worth cutting right down on if you are having problems sleeping.
Putting your mind to bed
Winding down before you go to bed is useful. Don’t try to go straight to bed from having done homework or having a significant conversation. Avoid using your mobile just before you go to bed Listening to a little music while you have supper, or just sitting quietly, lets you think through the day and put your thoughts to sleep so you are not going to bed with your head full of unresolved thoughts.
Praying and dealing with issues with God is good, before you go to bed or once you are there. Forgive anyone that you have things against and receive cleansing from your own sins. Place into God’s hand’s any concerns and trust Him to deal with them and give you wisdom when you need it. Give Him any temptations. Thank God for rest and ask Him to give you good sleep knowing He has promised: PS 127:2 In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat– for He grants sleep to those he loves. And He does love you.
Find the place of rest for your mind. You will have a little time before you sleep, so enjoy the quiet and warmth and find the place that your mind can rest. Perhaps it is thinking about your favourite holiday spot or the walk through the park. Get to know the set of things that you can think about that relax you and you can enjoy. There are other things like planning what you will say to a difficult person tomorrow that can make you alert and anxious. Hand them over to God if they come to mind and leave them with Him.
Learn to enjoy that time that you have; thanking God for it is a good starting point.
When to get up
Even doing all these things right can still leave you not able to get to sleep. Sometimes it is a good idea to get up and do something rather than tossing and turning in bed. First thing is not to get up unless you really need to; give it your best shot just going to sleep. But if you have, it might be time to try getting up because you don’t want to reinforce the association of bed as a place where you toss und turn uncomfortably waiting for sleep that doesn’t come. You want to train yourself to really look forward to bed as a place you enjoy. So sometimes it needs getting up and reading a book or doing something else until your sleep cycle comes round and you are ready to sleep.
If you have had problems going to sleep it may be an idea not to lie on your bed to do homework or read during the day. You need to create in your mind the association of bed as a place you go to sleep.
If you have had the experience of times of frustration at trying to get to sleep, then take that to God and ask for His cleansing from that frustration of the association of wakefulness in bed.
Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: atheism, God, philosophy, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
I asked my brother to get me “the God delusion” for Christmas. Both my brother and another good friend from primary school days are reading it and I thought it only right to show them the courtesy of reading the book before complaining about what it says. I want to take the book seriously, even though Dawkins seems not to pay the same respect to religious people. I’ve been writing so many marginal notes that I thought it would be good to put my thoughts into properly formed prose rather then scribbled notes. So I would like to make not only some general observations but also to point by point consider his arguments.
I would really appreciate your comments. I want to think clearly in what I say and express it lucidly so please don’t let me away with sloppy thinking or unjustified assumptions. Whether you’ve read the book or not please give me your thoughts.
The God Delusion Preface Comments 1
I’m only round about 20% of the way through the book so far but the biggest thing that strikes you is this guy’s anger. What has got him so upset. He seems almost incapable of speaking politely about any religion. I would really like to know what his problem is, maybe we’ll get some insight later.
I’m reading the paperback edition and its preface and most of it seems to be taken up with justifying his intemperate use of language. It isn’t so much the big statments about the nature of God that he should be considering in defending himself, but the steady drip drip of sneering, without any intelligent point.
Paragraph 1: He says it intelectuals believe in belief – his arguement against: “their zeal pumped up by ingratiating broad-mindedness.” ok so he doesn’t like it, but where is the reason. And I thought he was after a bit more broadmindedness. Perhaps not.
Paragraph 2: His argument against starting from the point “I used to be an atheist, BUT…” is its “one of the oldest tricks”. That is not a very profound response.
This might sound a bit nit picking but he keeps on like this so much it needs pointing out. But to prevent repeating myself with this sort of criticism I’ll skip paragraph 3.
Paragraph 4: He suggests that he “need consider only those theologians that take seriously the possibility that God does not exist and argue that He does.” Perhaps then as a theist I don’t need to pay any attention to Dawkins because he certainly does not do what he wishes his “opponents” would. He does not take seriously the possibility that God exists and then argue that He does not. But I will not take that attitude. He should not be surprised that most theology books start with a presumption of God’s existence, because there are a whole lot of interesting theological questions other that God’s existence. We would be a very strange religion if all we talked about is whether God exists. But Dawkins could have done himself and his readers a great service by taking some of these works more seriously, or even reading them. Later on he shows a great lask of understanding of what believers think about prayer and so makes many trite points and misses the central issues.
Paragraphs 5 to 7: Dawkins belittles his readers in trying to associate God with the emporers new clothes, flying spagetti monster and fairies. Come on lets have some serious discussion.
Paragraphs 8 & 9: He responds to the complaint that he is dealing only with the worst of religion by making the startling assertion that resonable religious people are “numerically negligible”. What evidence does he give for this? None. Religous people are almost all bin Ladens according to Dawkins. I don’t think I need say any more about the error of that.
Paragraphs 10 to 17: In trying to defend himself against claims that he uses “shrill, strident, intemperate, intolerant, ranting language” all he does is drag up some other examples of others using such language. They did it too, well does that make it right? In his para 15 arguement that blasphemy is a victimless crime he is failing to understand the quote he seems to espouse on page 50 “We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect the theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”
I must say if Dawkins came to my house and spoke about my wife’s appearance and children’s intelect in the way he speaks about my God then he would think himself lucky if all that happened was that he was rudely asked to relocate and helped in carrying that out.
In his victimless crime idea he fails to see how many people he is insulting and alientating in his intemperate language.
In para 16 he seems to think that the fact that his statements get a laugh indicates that people think they are funny. He ought to consider that many people will laugh to cover their embassament at another’s shocking bad manners, the very effect that Borrat played on.
I was trying to finish the preface, but time has gone. More another day.
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