Sleep (Replenishment)

*Restoration of a stock or supply to a former level or condition

Let’s look at sleep as a form of replenishment. If you are having trouble with sleep, maybe not getting enough or not being able to sleep at all or even understanding how much you should be getting, if we can look at it as a form of replenishment it may help with the equation.

Replenishment is about restoring or restoration, correct? So right off the bat having an understanding that there are many ways in which to accomplish this could help alleviate the pressure you may be feeling about sleeping. Your situation could be that you love to work and you don’t want to waste time sleeping. Your situation could be that you love to work AND play and you do want to sleep but are having trouble. Whatever your predicament, the first thing we want to do is soothe you on the topic of sleep altogether. This way you can allow the ideas or impulses into your life while you look to improve the subject of sleep.

I’m hoping that right away when you switch the focus of sleep to replenishment, you feel some relief on the topic. If not, don’t you worry. Let’s continue and see where this article will take us.

Let’s first focus on the options of replenishment we may be able to partake in during the day. The list could be massive but for the sake of practicality I want to narrow in on options you could do anywhere, without equipment…

Meditation

Breath-work

Movement

Since the beginning of time meditation has not only been available to us but it has been used for centuries all over the world to do a whole lot more than just replenish. In as little as 15 minutes, simply sitting in a comfortable chair or a comfortable quiet place, closing your eyes, and focusing on the sounds around you, can work wonders. The reason meditation is so powerful is because it allows you to stop resistant thought. With meditation, you start to practice the process of quieting your mind. As you quiet your mind, you quiet or slow down thought. As you quiet or slow down thought you release resistance, therefore, supplying yourself with relief, which brings replenishment. You can do this as many times as you choose during the day, however, most suggest a good morning session when you first wake of 15 minutes will suffice.

I’ll leave the dosage up to you. The main point to be taken from here, and for the rest of the options in this article, is that the key to replenishment is releasing resistance, aligning yourself with who you really are. You will know you have reached this place because of how you feel before, during, and after. As the resistance lifts and relief swoops in you will feel this emotionally in a positive way and there is your knowing. The knowing that you are in alignment with who you really are, a blessed, amazing being with the power to shape your feelings and your life.

The next option is breath-work. I’m not here to give you a specific routine, but I am here to tell you that breath-work will assist in replenishment. How is this so? Well, there are many scientific articles to read about that so I’m just going to mention this one thing, focus. As you allow yourself to sit and focus on your breath, it is very difficult to focus on anything else. Much like meditation, when you stop or slow down resistant thoughts, you allow in the replenishment you have requested and the alignment with who you really are comes right back to you. When you sit and breathe in a specific manner it would be tough to get lost in anything else.

The last option we will discuss here is movement. Now even though you will not need any equipment for this one, you will need to get familiar with the type of movement option you prefer. So at first, a phone or computer may be in need. My choices here would be some type of stretching such as Yin Yoga or a meditative and flow type movement of Tai Chi or Qi Gong. This type of movement is not to get a workout in, it is purely about soothing, restoring, and replenishing. Again the focus here is to take your focus to something other than your resistant thoughts. The movement practice in this case is to simply move your body, breathe, and relax. This will allow you to focus in a way where the alignment with who you really are can return just as stated before. This is replenishment! Feeling aligned, connected, in tune with who you really are IS the replenishment state.

Let’s switch focus now to the good stuff. The real reason why I am writing this very article, alignment! Anything we ever discuss that you would like to improve upon or discover more on is about your alignment. So when we think about sleep I want to ask you what is your emotional response? When you think about sleep does it feel light, easy, soothing, eager to partake in? Or does it feel like terror, worry, tiresome? If you answered with the first response then you probably don’t even need to be reading this. But if you answered with the second response then this next portion should help out.

This is about your alignment, as stated above. The reason why this is so important is that getting yourself into or being in alignment before you decide to do anything, allows you to then use the leverage of our amazing Universe in your favor.

Remember earlier when we mentioned that feeling place you get when you start to relieve or release resistance? Take yourself to a moment in your life where you felt that. You felt the weight being lifted from your shoulders. You felt like you could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Like you could conquer the world. Well, that’s YOU leveraging the power of the Universe. That’s you being in alignment and that’s the feeling place I encourage you to be in before beginning anything at any time in your life. Now obviously that is not going to be so consistent at first, but as we practice our alignment more and more than the easier it will become. Trust me when I say you will get to a point where you will be kicking and screaming if you are feeling any other way.

Ok, so back to aligning ourselves to sleep. Let’s go through an example of an aligning process to intentionally feel better on a specific topic. It’s simple to do. You are attempting to make a starting statement of where you are now and then you start to build a bridge to where you want to go. Which hopefully is alignment with who you really are.

So here it goes. Let’s say when you think about sleep you feel discouraged. So your starting statement is:

I am discouraged about my sleep. I feel like I don’t know where to start and will never get where I am a peaceful sleeper.

I blame not being able to sleep on all the stress I have been under lately.

I’m worried this will never end.

I doubt I’ll ever find my way to a peaceful sleep.

It’s a disappointment that I haven’t figured this out yet.

I’m confused about what to do next. I just want to be able to sleep.

I get frustrated just thinking about it.

Will this ever go away, I’m just not sure. (pessimism)

I’m so tired of all this. I’m bored with it all. I just want to release this.

I have slept well before. I have even felt satisfaction in my sleep before. I remember that. That felt good.

I’m hopeful that lots of good nights of sleep are on the way. I’m hopeful I’ll come across my solution.

I’m optimistic it’s right around the corner. I’m optimistic I can rendezvous with that information very soon.

I believe in this process. I believe my feeling better about this all will help. It just feels so good to even feel better.

Man, I can’t wait for all this to come about. I can feel the excitement mounting. I’m so eager to sleep tonight. It’s going to feel so great.

And on and on we could go. There are two points I want to bring to your attention in this process.

One, is that I started slow. I didn’t try to go from discouragement to eagerness in one statement. Start slow, let the energy build, but feel that with each statement more and more relief comes to you until you worked your way to alignment with who you really are on this particular subject.

Two, is that I highlighted the emotional words on purpose. It shows you the steady climb up the proverbial emotional scale. This allows you to feel all the emotions up the scale on the way to your more positive feeling destination.

Now it’s time for action. From this feeling place, we can revisit our new perspective of replenishment. We can feel and understand that maybe we don’t have to have a ton of sleep every evening. Maybe the options earlier really help to replenish you during the day so you don’t need to make up for it at night with sleep. Maybe now you’ll be inspired to listen to that one sleep podcast you have been putting aside and it will give you just the thing you need or have been asking for. Or you will read that sleep article you saw at work in the magazine in your reception area.

What I’m getting at here is there is a myriad of things that could assist you with sleep and replenishment. Having access to those very things is largely about how you feel about that subject or how you feel about your life in general. Alignment is a very powerful thing that we can ALL benefit from. So take it easy with all this. These are simply suggestions. Do what feels best for you! Happy aligning people!