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You Are Getting Sleepy, Very Sleepy

7 February 2019

This week’s blog centres on Bristol Wellbeing College’s ‘Sleep & Self-Care’ workshop with contributions by Wellbeing College tutor, Cynthia Nansimbi, who designed the workshop, and Diane, who came along to the session.

Hands down, sleep is one of my favourite things to do. I happily admit this. I’m better for sleep, indulge in it whenever I can, and have come to view it as a healer.

I wrote a workshop on sleep because it is something which affects every living organism on the planet and, for better or worse, it impacts significantly on our waking lives.

Many of us see sleep as a simple task to get on with; some see it as unnecessary and time consuming. Over time, it seems to have lost value to us as a society. My learning, however, has allowed me to give new value to sleep and see it as something more powerful and wholly significant to my overall health and happiness.

My sleep habits were not normal for many years and this affected not just daily life but how I saw myself, how I saw others and what my beliefs were. Prone to nightmares since childhood trauma, I’ve since learned how to soothe an anxious mind, how to talk to myself in helpful ways and generally take better care of myself. Through this journey, sleep transformed from something I avoided to something I now enjoy.

It also fuelled my drive to develop the ‘Sleep & Self-care’ workshop. By cultivating an understanding of the brain and body as one, holistic healing became integral to my recovery. Yoga, mindfulness, healthy eating, meditation, holistic health – all of these practices are gaining more traction in mainstream society and among psychological circles as we begin to recognize how the mind and body work together.

There are still many unknowns in this field, but I trust on a far deeper level than before what the universe and nature shows us all the time: Everything is connected.