Sleep and Meditation

Sleep might be one of those rare occasions when science needs to listen to poetry. In Macbeth sleep is extolled because it “knits up the raveled sleeve of care,” perhaps the most famous Shakespeare comment on sleep. In modern language, he is saying something familiar to everyone, that a good night’s sleep helps to calm a troubled mind. But there’s another line in the same passage that is more significant for modern science, when sleep is called “the balm of hurt mind” and the “chief nourisher in life’s feast.”

In other words, of all the factors that improve a person’s life, sleep comes first. Viewing the intricate biorhythms governed by sleep, medicine can confirm that sleep is the master biorhythm that resets the smaller ones. Since it can be asserted with a fair degree of certainty that individual cells have biorhythms measurable in thousandths of a second, evolution has provided an unimaginable gift by linking the smallest aspects of cellular processing to the larger schemes of hormones, immunity, digestion, neurotransmitters, and much more. In the ancient Indian tradition, the saying goes, “As is the great, so is the small.” This is quite fitting when it comes to sleep.

Only in the past few decades has medical research validated the poet’s poetic praise of sleep. Now we know that the central nervous system is tied into the immune system and GI tract, forming a continuous feedback loop—or rather, many such interlocked loops—making it possible to say that every cell eavesdrops on the general wellness or illness of the body. This eavesdropping influences how each system listens and responds to every other system, which at first seems to add more confusion than clarity. Analyzing what is going on would be like monitoring every telephone call in a city to judge public sentiment. The “sentiment” of the body, broadly speaking, isn’t about wellness or illness at any moment, or even in a given week, month, or year.

But how far have we really come if all we wind up with is the need for good sleep every night? This advice has been drummed into public consciousness for decades without much effect. Modern societies are rife with insomnia, poor and irregular sleep, and catch-up sleep deferred until the weekend.

What we need, in my view, is better motivation, because the failure of modern people to give high priority—perhaps the highest priority—to good sleep comes down to noncompliance. Human nature has a perverse streak, and everyone knows what it means to not do what you know is good for you.

Here the prospect of Meditation enters the picture. Decades of research have underscored that Yoga and many kinds of meditation improve sleep. Let’s accept that this basic finding is correct. There’s a deeper and more crucial point. Meditation works on the principle of mental homeostasis. Physical homeostasis is already well established; without a doubt the body returns to a state of dynamic balance as soon as stress is removed. The stress can be voluntary, like running a marathon, or involuntary, like getting stuck for two hours at the airport.  Then there is the conundrum of traveling across many time zones, which creates dyssynchronous patterns of physical, mental, and sleeping imbalance

Mental homeostasis is another matter as far as medical research goes, yet it is the foundation principle in Eastern wisdom traditions that the mind is essentially quiet, peaceful, self-organizing, and evolutionary. This is a startling claim if you believe that the mind is basically the same as brain activity. Brain activity is never quiet, peaceful, and evolutionary, although obviously it is self-organizing. The reason meditation improves sleep, once you accept the Eastern perspective, is that meditation allows a person to encounter the real mind as opposed to the storm of thoughts, feelings, and sensations that fill the mind.

The best case for mental homeostasis is the silent gap between thoughts. In this gap, awareness returns automatically to a reset point to clear the way for the next thought or sensation. If this reset didn’t occur, our minds would be a jumble of overlapping, confused impulses. As it happens, the reset point isn’t the same for each person. The silent gap brings each of us to the source of skill and knowledge we possess. A champion golfer relaxing before taking a swing does to a much deeper reset than a duffer relaxing before a swing. A surgeon poised to make the first incision is set to act from a quite different place than a home cook cutting up a chicken for dinner.

In brief, I’ve described the two insights behind meditation, first, the mind can reset to a balanced state that is the equivalent of homeostasis, and second, meditation allows the set point to reach a deeper, more relaxed state of awareness. There is, of course, much more to say about meditation, since we haven’t even glanced at the claims that meditation leads to higher state of consciousness and exalted spiritual experiences.

But we only need the two insights just mentioned to uncover the reason that sleep “knits up the raveled sleeve of care.” It does this by returning us to our deepest level of awareness, unhindered by incessant mental activity. In addition, meditation does essentially the same thing while allowing a person to remain awake. Longtime meditators can attest that a state of wakefulness can be attained in deep sleep. How is this possible? It is a natural result when the reset point is so deep while awake that it equals the reset point in sleep.

One can venture that combining the benefits of good sleep and meditation is the passkey to long-term, perhaps lifelong, well-being. This is the first time in history that lifelong well-being has become a reasonable expectation. Obstacles like Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and coronary artery disease impede progress toward lifelong well-being, but these disorders also stand on the brink of potentially major breakthroughs. The deep rest of meditation is also a powerful antidote.to ease the circadian misalignment that goes with long-haul travel. When experienced consistently, this re-setting of mental homeostasis through meditation, alleviates the stress, insomnia and fatigue that often accompanies jet lag disorder.

The last idea to consider is the first one I raised: motivation. At present the model for prevention is based on risk, and risk is psychologically linked to fear. If you have only anxious fear to motivate you, the likelihood of change is low, because fear is an extremely poor long-term motivator. But meditation brings the pleasurable experience of peace and quiet, and often there is at least a glimpse of bliss. The motivation provided by pleasurable experience is excellent over the long term.

Putting the picture together, the salient points are as follows:

• Sleep is the primary biorhythm in the body, affecting all other biorhythms down to the cellular level.
• Good sleep deserves the highest priority among positive lifestyle choices.
• Noncompliance is the major reason people don’t get good sleep every night.
• Meditation resets “mental homeostasis.” This reset is aligned with physical homeostasis. This can be valuable in many circumstances such as long-haul travel when there is mis- alignment between the physical and mental states of well-being.
• Together, meditation and good sleep are the passkey to future well-being.

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