How to sleep properly as per Ayurveda?
Peaceful Time Hours Before Sleep
Spend time away from work and stressful interactions in the hours before sleep. Use the time for bonding, good relationships, enjoyment, and appreciation. Bring inner light into your environment after sunset. The Ayurvedic prescriptions for a healthy night routine involve a fruitful end of the day and preparations for the night ahead, including meals, relationships, preparation for the next day, and sleep.
Amount of Sleep
Each person needs a different amount of sleep. That amount differs slightly based on how the day’s events stressed the body. Emotional traumas, violence, and anger require more time in sleep. People with heavier bodies, or with toxins in their bodies, need more time in sleep.
Vastu and Sleep
Never sleep with the crown of the head facing north. The alignment of the chakras has its own flow and should not be in alignment with the magnetic field of the earth. When you sleep with the head facing north, your body cannot find its own true north. Educate yourself on some laws of Vastu, and move your house interiors to optimise the energy in your space. Health often changes for people as they observe the laws of Vastu.
Clean And Dark Room for Better Sleep
Sleep in a clean, well-darkened room if possible. The pineal gland in the brain generates clock-like hormones and regulates the chronobiology of your system based on clear ideas of night and dark. Sleep is the restful practice of rest and requires conscious preparations to block out all unnecessary sensory disturbances while you sleep.
Wash Feet Hands Face Before Sleep
Wash your feet, your hands, your face, and your mouth before sleep. Rid yourself of the dirt and grime of the day before entering into the sacred abode of sleep. That dirt and grime will feed unhealthy bacteria on your microbiome as you sleep so it is better not to encourage them.
Get Up Early
Go to bed early. Get up at brahma muhurta, forty-five to ninety minutes before dawn. This will regulate your brain’s hormone centers and cure many metabolic lifestyle diseases if you rise early consistently. To do this, you have to plan to get the household to bed early. Set rules for no TV, no computer after 10 p.m.
Source – Excerpts from ‘The Diseases of Modern Life and the Ayurvedic Approach
Bhaswati Bhattacharya’ Published in Prabuddha Bharata June 2015 Issue.