Sleep and dreams

I recently attended a workshop and devoured a new book by Dr. Rubin Naiman, Healing Night: The Science and Spirit of Sleeping, Dreaming, and Awakening, He is recognized as a world leader in integrative sleep and dream medicine and passionately helps people with sleep issues. His way of combining scientific, psychological and spiritual approaches are healing thousands of people. I wish I could give one of his books to everyone who struggles with sleep!

- BY JOANNE STEENBERG

To a large room full of workshop people, he leaned forward and said with deep concern and compassion, “We are experiencing sleep disorders diminishing the quality of waking life like never before.” A workshop member then asked, what is the number one thing to help bring sleep and dreams back? His answer, “Night.” He went on to say that modern society's erosion of night through artificial light outside and inside, are interrupting our sleep cycles in ways that we don't realize. As we prepare for sleep it is important for us to begin a nighttime process of powering down lights and disengaging from screens because then the body starts to produce melatonin which takes us to sleep. I am already seeing vast improvements.