We spend 1/3rd of our life sleeping.

Yet, we know very little about it. The one thing we’ve all truly learnt about sleep over the years is the magic duration of 8hours.

Thanks to some great scientists/educators and many FitfFluencers (don’t know if that’s a term, your basic simple Google search trainers), today we’re overloaded with sleep toolboxes consisting mainly of sanitisation protocols.

While I highly appreciate some of the work these scientists/educators are doing putting out free resources, I see a severe challenge here.

Coming back to sleep first, there are 4 pillars to good sleep:
1. Duration (7-9hours)
2. Depth (The quality of your sleep)
3. Regularity (variability in Sleep/wake-up time)
4. Continuity (no. of times your sleep breaks)

The problem w sleep duration focus:
1. Lose sight of other pillars
2. Pressure to achieve 8 hours
3. Individualisation
4. Sleep Efficiency

Point number 2 & 4 specially resonate with me. The pressure for the 8 hours often leads to a stress & anxiety response in a lot of people becoming a limiting factor. There’s also a disparity between the % of time actually asleep vs time spent in bed, poor time estimation.

The challenge with sleep toolboxes is while they tell what one needs to do for a good quality sleep, most of us know what we need to do in general, the basics, whether it comes to fitness, nutrition, work, relationships or any aspect in life unless you’re completely unaware. We all know how to progress, what gets us there. The difference is always between intention and action.

The difference between intention and actions comes from behaviours. And our behaviours are an outcome of thoughts, perceptions, habits, emotions and values.

I know this post doesn’t provide a lot of information in terms of what to do but that’s because sleep coaching/any coaching is something very highly individualised as everyone is different.

So, I hope this post becomes a starting point to understand the importance of sleep, it’s impact. Awareness.