Lately I have felt God beginning to urge me into a radical approach to my life. This has manifested itself in a question: am I willing to pursue health and make it a priority, even if the methods may be unconventional, or inconvenient, or even downright weird? This is something I struggle with. I am highly aware of the fact that perceptions of me are in the minds of others. While I embrace and enjoy this fact in many ways (maybe sometimes I am even too amused by it... lol), there are still areas of my life I allow to be clogged with the judgements of others. But now I'm starting to ask: are my health, happiness, dreams worth being lost in that? I'm beginning to lean strongly towards "no way." But it is a process.
It's still very hard for me to describe this new turn in my thinking. It doesn't seem like anything that remarkable when I write it down, but it really is like someone has turned on a gigantic light in my brain and I'm going, WOAH, now I can see everything! I'm hoping that I can begin to collect more and more of my thoughts and build up a more concrete expression over time. Hell, I barely even know what I'm thinking yet. Every day I discover new thoughts, new perspectives, new ideas. It's wonderful. And I think I've gotten off topic...
So what is this radical approach I speak of? Well, the first thing that struck me is sleep. Sleep and I are not soul sisters. Best friends? Not even close. Acquaintances? Maybe, at best. At worst, bitter enemies. I've struggled for years with trying to force my sleeping self into a standard I decided I should have, and beating myself up whenever I slipped. Now that I've stopped blindly soldering on and taken a step back to assess, I can see how being so forceful has been damaging. I've done some research and discovered that not all human bodies fall into a neat and tidy sleep cycle. Some sleep in two segments, some are on a 25 hour cycle, etc. Mental illness can also affect (or is it effect...? I will never know) circadian rhythms. Paring this up with my yogi knowledge that encourages acceptance, intuition, living in the moment, and gentleness with the self, I began to wonder if maybe I should stop proverbially screaming at my body and try to listen to it. Let go of my tight grip for a bit and see what happens naturally. Stop being SO anal and just go with it.
I've observed that lately I have been very alert, creative, inspired, focused, and energetic between approx. 1AM and 10AM. This can vary slightly, but always VERY early in the morning. This is only after staying awake all night, however. If I try to go to bed early enough to get up between 5AM and 7AM, a) I can't really fall asleep, b) I don't feel awake when I do get up. So I've decided, why fight this? If I can get a lot accomplished around 5AM and sleep blissfully between 10AM and 6PM, why fight that? Or why fight it however it plays out? I just "know" deep down that right now, it's important to sleep, and then be active, whenever and however it naturally happens. I need healing rest, and purposeful energy much more than I need to fit into a social norm. Right?
Ok, ok, I know that seems weird. The thing is, I feel intuitively that it would not stay that way for long. If I just let it be, and actually used the INVALUABLE energy when I had it (rather than laying in bed bored because I "should" be asleep), I think a lot of emotional and physical things would balance out, and then sleep would become something more conventional. I also feel that it is an important step for me to learn how to listen to and TRUST my body. After dealing with various painful physical ailments, I am often inclined to be rather negative towards my physical body and very stern and unforgiving towards it and my internal functions. Not cool, and not conductive to health in any way. However, I feel like trusting my body to know when it needs to be asleep and when it needs to be awake could be a great exercise in learning to trust my body and establish a better relationship with it.
That being said, I actually feel like I might sleep for a while, even though it is 6:30AM and this is generally when I've been heading into a wakeful phase. But I allowed myself to nap whenever I felt like it today. So... I guess I'll just keep experimenting and accepting the flow and see what happens.
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