[Sleep is] the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
- Thomas Dekker
No one knows for certain why we need sleep. Obviously we need to rest our body and our mind, as they can't go on indefinitely without aperiod for recuperation. Or can they?
It's not certain why even that is necessary. Within each cell of our bodies is, in effect, a biological engine. It consumes fuel and expels waste, just like a mechanical engine that we might expect to be able to work endlessly (except for periods of downtime for maintenance and replacement of parts).
Why sleep and not just rest? So far as anyone knows, essentially the same types of recuperation could take place whether we rest or sleep. In fact, some people who live in considerable pain have little more than a few minutes of light sleep each day. The cause of their pain may get worse, but it doesn't seem to be as a result of not sleeping.
Dreams have always presented opportunities for people to speculate as to their meaning. Can dreams be interpreted or not? Recent research suggests that dreams consist of parts of our brain at work without connection to other parts that deal directly with reality. That is, without the active participation of the frontal lobes that keep us on track as members of a functioning society.
For that reason, dreams have no connection with morals or societal norms, because these are known to be functions of the frontal lobes. In other words, dreams must be considered to be amoral. If we had only the same parts of our brain operating when we were awake as are in gear when we dream, we could likely be considered insane.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that those who lead active intellectual lives in their waking hours, ones requiring a great deal of thinking, may have relatively mild dreams. Those who have few mental demands during their waking hours tend to have more active dreams, like adventure or horror movies. This may be more the brain getting exercise or relaxing while dreaming, as needed, rather than doing something warranting our attention as prophesy or warning.
Several kinds of animals--sharks and dophins would be two examples--have two sides to their brains, as we do, but they must continue swimming day and night or they would die (either suffocating or drawning, depending on the animal). To accommodate the necessary brain function to continue swimming, they rest one side of their brain at a time, usually for a couple of hours each side before switching off the active side and switching on the sleeping side of the brain. Some migrating birds are known to do the same in flight.
Some people believe that humans do the same thing at certain times. Have you ever tried to adjust your car radio and drive at the same time? You can be in complete control of your car as it moves along the road, but also give attention to your fiddling with the radio until you find the station you want. Then you may have trouble remembering driving but you will retain full memory of what you did with the radio.
The two sides of our brain can therefore function separately, even if they do so seldom. Do we sleep with one side of the brain awake and dreaming while the other is asleep and resting? Research says no, there is no evidence of "sidedness" when we sleep or dream.
Dreams occur as deep in the middle of our brain as we can imagine.
Compared to the full size of our brain, very little is used when we dream. At this stage of research, no one knows what the rest of the brain is doing when the few small parts are dreaming.
The brain is easily the most mysterious and complex organ of the body.
Moreover, it almost totally controls the health of the rest of our body.
Even when we sleep and are not dreaming, it continually sends messages to the other body parts that control our autonomic systems, such as breathing and blood pumping. Cells get fed 24/7.
But cells can't work 24/7. Even while they continue to eat from blood supplies, they take rest while we sleep so they can perform when we are awake. Hair and nails grow more when we sleep than when we are awake. But these are the least sentient parts of our body.
As Dekker suggests, we may not know exactly how sleep works to keep us going, but our bodies don't work well indefinitely without enough of it.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic SocialProblems, striving to make sense of some of the mysteries of life.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Showing posts with label rest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rest. Show all posts
Friday, March 09, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Boring Meetings Aren't Really Wasted Time
"A meeting moves at the speed of the slowest mind in the room. In other words, all but one participant will be bored, all but one mind underused."
- Dale Dauten
As common as meetings are in business, they tend to accomplish very little. The reason is as Dauten stated.
The tone of meetings tends to be pitched at the lowest common denominator, the one or ones who will understand everything that is happening at the slowest rate. The others usually become distracted.
I doubt that all minds but one are underused. Wandering minds tend to focus on other matters than those that are the focus of the meeting. Or they rest, which is beneficial over the long term because they are ready to do more work once the regular schedule begins again.
Tangents and distractions in meetings can be useful as well. They give people time to think about matters they would not have enough time to consider carefully during their regular work hours. A mind that is underused on the main topic of the meeting may not necessarily be wasting time.
The question that many meeting leaders have is whether ot move forward faster, thus leaving the slower thinkers behind. As with grade school classes that tend to wait for the slowest student, thus leaving the faster thinkers to become distracted and create discipline problems, most meetings move along at a pace that the slowest people can stay up with.
The solution would be to move the meeting faster, then have review meetings with the people who might have missed some of the goings on because they got lost. That kind of personal attention can itself be beneficial to an employee who has trouble keeping up with the faster thinkers but is otherwise a good worker. It boosts self esteem that the leader takes time to give personal attention. Classrooms work well that way too.
What is important is whether the objective(s) of the meeting is accomplished once everyone has had an opportunity to go over the material presented, either in the meeting or privately afterward. The goal is more important than the route each person gets there.
People who think quickly can become mentally tired faster than others. Thus they need a mental rest more often. Mettings can provide that rest because they don't have to maintain a frantic pace they may set for themselves during their regular work hours.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Dale Dauten
As common as meetings are in business, they tend to accomplish very little. The reason is as Dauten stated.
The tone of meetings tends to be pitched at the lowest common denominator, the one or ones who will understand everything that is happening at the slowest rate. The others usually become distracted.
I doubt that all minds but one are underused. Wandering minds tend to focus on other matters than those that are the focus of the meeting. Or they rest, which is beneficial over the long term because they are ready to do more work once the regular schedule begins again.
Tangents and distractions in meetings can be useful as well. They give people time to think about matters they would not have enough time to consider carefully during their regular work hours. A mind that is underused on the main topic of the meeting may not necessarily be wasting time.
The question that many meeting leaders have is whether ot move forward faster, thus leaving the slower thinkers behind. As with grade school classes that tend to wait for the slowest student, thus leaving the faster thinkers to become distracted and create discipline problems, most meetings move along at a pace that the slowest people can stay up with.
The solution would be to move the meeting faster, then have review meetings with the people who might have missed some of the goings on because they got lost. That kind of personal attention can itself be beneficial to an employee who has trouble keeping up with the faster thinkers but is otherwise a good worker. It boosts self esteem that the leader takes time to give personal attention. Classrooms work well that way too.
What is important is whether the objective(s) of the meeting is accomplished once everyone has had an opportunity to go over the material presented, either in the meeting or privately afterward. The goal is more important than the route each person gets there.
People who think quickly can become mentally tired faster than others. Thus they need a mental rest more often. Mettings can provide that rest because they don't have to maintain a frantic pace they may set for themselves during their regular work hours.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Tomorrow Can Be A New Life
"Tomorrow is another day."
- King Valdemar of Denmark, 1340-1375. Valdemar has the nickname "'Nother-Day" (Atterdag) in Danish due to this famous and healthy attitude. Valdemar reestablished a kingdom that had been ripped to pieces under his predecessors.
Sometimes setting all the problems, grudges, disagreements and confusion aside is not just the best solution, but the only practical one.
Many people have said that taking a night to "sleep on a problem" has led to its solution. Often by the following day the solution seemed "so easy, so simple."
Our lives are neither easy nor simple. No matter what may be on our minds, many other matters impinge on us, needing to be attended to. These almost always add clutter to a brain that is trying to focus on one problem at a time.
The key to waking up with a solution seems to be to go to sleep thinking about its associated problem. At some point during the night, the brain selects out that problem and focuses on it. Not in a dream, but during a different period of sleep, usually after the REM and deep sleep that refreshes the brain. So it's a fresh brain that tackles one problem.
Many of us have a habit of making immediate problems seem important, giving them undue status. If they involve other people, those people sometimes do things that we didn't expect on following days, making the route through the mess to a solution much easier.
Tomorrow is also another day in a different sense, a more philosophical one. What happened yesterday to us is no different (in effect) than what happened 500 years ago in history. Events are cast in stone in terms of their times being past, but each is available for interpretation and remodeling as we see fit. Memory can be conveniently inaccurate.
Each morning brings not just a new day, but a new life. What we do with that life does not necessarily have to depend entirely on the life we remember from yesterday. We can forgive someone today, for example, where we might not have been willing to forgive yesteday.
We can look forward to each new life/day with anticipation because we can't be certain that it will turn out exactly as we had expected. Sometimes life simply looks different the next day.
Here's to a good day for your tomorrow.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show you a better day tomorrow.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- King Valdemar of Denmark, 1340-1375. Valdemar has the nickname "'Nother-Day" (Atterdag) in Danish due to this famous and healthy attitude. Valdemar reestablished a kingdom that had been ripped to pieces under his predecessors.
Sometimes setting all the problems, grudges, disagreements and confusion aside is not just the best solution, but the only practical one.
Many people have said that taking a night to "sleep on a problem" has led to its solution. Often by the following day the solution seemed "so easy, so simple."
Our lives are neither easy nor simple. No matter what may be on our minds, many other matters impinge on us, needing to be attended to. These almost always add clutter to a brain that is trying to focus on one problem at a time.
The key to waking up with a solution seems to be to go to sleep thinking about its associated problem. At some point during the night, the brain selects out that problem and focuses on it. Not in a dream, but during a different period of sleep, usually after the REM and deep sleep that refreshes the brain. So it's a fresh brain that tackles one problem.
Many of us have a habit of making immediate problems seem important, giving them undue status. If they involve other people, those people sometimes do things that we didn't expect on following days, making the route through the mess to a solution much easier.
Tomorrow is also another day in a different sense, a more philosophical one. What happened yesterday to us is no different (in effect) than what happened 500 years ago in history. Events are cast in stone in terms of their times being past, but each is available for interpretation and remodeling as we see fit. Memory can be conveniently inaccurate.
Each morning brings not just a new day, but a new life. What we do with that life does not necessarily have to depend entirely on the life we remember from yesterday. We can forgive someone today, for example, where we might not have been willing to forgive yesteday.
We can look forward to each new life/day with anticipation because we can't be certain that it will turn out exactly as we had expected. Sometimes life simply looks different the next day.
Here's to a good day for your tomorrow.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show you a better day tomorrow.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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