Why do all animals, including human, need sleep?
What percentage of life does the average person spend asleep?
How long is it possible to go without sleep?
How many hours a night should adults sleep?
What about newborn babies?
What advice would you give to someone who has asleep problems?
Do you ever wake up at night?
What do you do if you find it difficult to go back to sleep?
Do you have specific sleeping habits?
How different are they from those of the people you live with?
In what situations does your sleep pattern change?
Do you know someone with particularly unusual sleeping habits?
INTERACTION –Segmented sleep patterns
(sleeping in two distinct four-hour chunks)
Imagine that most people have segmented sleep patterns.
What impact would it have on the way our lives are organised?
How would society need to adapt? Consider these factors:
travel and transport
entertainment and socialising
work
leisure activities
education
meal times
Plan a typical day for a student who wants to start a segmented sleep pattern.
How can they make the best use of their time?
When should they…?
eat - work - relax - learn - exercise - spend time with friends
To illustrate the topic, watch the video How do you solve hotel insomnia?
How do you solve hotel insomnia?
Welcome to the waking nightmare that is hotel insomnia. I get it, and according to credible research one in four or five people at some point suffer from regular insomnia. That figure rises massively for frequent travelers who cross more than one time zone usually for business.
When it comes to difficulty in sleep when you are travelling, then the main problem is that your body clock is out of sync, so you are on home time but when you travel you are in a different time zone but you have not retuned your own body clock just like you haven’t necessarily tuned your own clock when you are on the plane.
Of course jet lag is a major factor in hotel-related insomnia, but so, experts say, it’s the first night effect. It’s all becoming so overwhelming for the modern traveller that hotels like this one are actually offering sound sleep packages, a bespoke science-based service that looks at the causes of insomnia, then examines the body’s ability to recover. Oh, and prices start for a minimum of $1,000 a night for two.
First of all you get a scan, to compare the left and right-hand sides of your brain.
You find a lot of people when they get into bed they will start focusing on “Will I get a good night’s sleep?, What if I don’t get a good night’s sleep?’ And automatically it starts waking us up.
At that price I’d be guaranteed to have a sleepless night, but luckily, residents’ sleep coach Tej gave me a previous sample.
By measuring the body over a of 24 hour period, by measuring what we call it the automatic nervous system over the twenty-four hour period, we look at that particular individuals’ ability to not only sleep but to recover. So If we find there is any imbalance, we can look at specifically what time that’s happening, where that’s happening and what’s causing that.
Just relax your head.
By giving you this insight, that your brain activity can be calmed down by your mind, the aim of the consultation is then to give you a routine, a control over your capacity to sleep. Next you get a whole armoury of tools and techniques to conquer your insomnia like an alpha sleep pot with comforting audio frequencies and a rather comforting head massage.
We carry into our sleep all the stress of the day and the muscles of the neck are probably the worst affected and leads to a lot of discomfort in sleep.
Beats counting sheep, I’ve got to say.
It’s not cheap, is it, so if I, for instance, didn’t get a good night’s sleep after it, could I have my money back?
Sure. No.
As Tej did say he would be willing to refund a disappointed customer as long as the hotel would, but the simple fact is that up until now every one of its customers has had a good night’s sleep.
There is, of course, a whole mini-industry dedicated to tackling insomnia: from herbal cures to high tech gadgets, from meditation to yoga. But then again, what’s wrong with the good old-fashioned sleeping tablet?
In the UK the medical establishment tends to be a little bit suspicious of using sleeping tablets. In other countries, there is much more freer use. I think a very good rule is that you try other things first but actually if they do not work using short acting sleeping tablets in the lowest dose that works for you can make all the difference.
But it’s not quick fixes, but countering the pressures and strains of frequent rapid travel and a bombardment of artificial stimuli that increasingly interest sleep therapists about insomnia dealing with modern life, basically.
You´re fond of hawthorn just look at this pink one, isn’t it lovely?
If you are a therapist like Ella prescribe books.
Reading during the day particularly at lunchtime or if you can have a break during the day just for 10 minutes 20 minutes, well actually slow your brain down at a crucial point during the day, so that then when you come to go to bed you can get back into that mindset and relax yourself again.
Having dealt with 1,500 clients Ella and her colleagues are convinced: The simple act of reading encourages sleep.
If you can have the luxury of someone reading to you while you are going to sleep, that is incredibly helpful and restful because it takes you back to a time probably when you were nurtured by your parents or someone who read to you before sleep and you really associate the human voice reading to you in a gentle maybe deliberately soporific way to help you go to sleep.
Ultimately, if none of these solutions work for you or you can’t afford them, and yet you still miss the familiarity and warmth of your own bed, well, why not just pop it into a bag and bring it with you!
And just for that extra help from home touch, a cuddly friend.
