Power of the sun for insomnia
We often don’t think that being out in the sun could be a treatment for insomnia, but there are lots of benefits to getting a bit of sun!
I wonder if insomnia is just a modern day problem, or has it always been a human issue. Personally, I think insomnia is an epidemic in this day and age, and if it existed at all in ancient times, in comparison, I imagine it was a very low percentage! People throughout time have worshipped the sun for its power. In Vedic times there was the daily worship of the sun with a special mantra called the Gayatri Mantra. This was a sacred invocation to the Sun God, the sun being the source of life and radiance. One finds reference everywhere to sun worship, all through the ages to the modern times.
Modern sun worship, though became very different, it become a reflection of our materialistic world, the worship of the tan!!! People would smoother on the oil and face the sun for hours on end whilst they turned from white, to red, to burnt, to scraggy tan and lots of wrinkles. This is not the sort of sun worship I am talking about…The world seems to have gone mad. We have forgotten how to live, and what the sun means, it seems to have been reduced to tans and summer holidays only. We work long hours in front of computers from early morning to late in the evening, hardly stopping for air, no wonder our natural biological clock is haywire!!! Your internal body clock runs on a 24 hour cycle (circadian rhythm) and works best when you are exposed to dark and light at the right times, DAILY. That means there should be a sunrise and a sunset in your day too!
To help get you back into balance, try getting outside in the mornings for 20 minutes which will help regulate the production of melatonin and likewise in the evening dim the lights before bedtime, perhaps light a candle in the bedroom as you relax before turning the lights out completely. Use this as a kind of winding down tool to fall in to a natural sleep.
Another great reason to get some sunlight is the production of vitamin D that helps control the amount of calcium and phosphate in your body which is needed to keep your bones healthy. Natural vitamin D from the sunshine is best as your body takes what it needs naturally and de-metabolizes the excess. Taking too much vitamin D via a supplement can cause the body to over-process calcium.
“Vitamin D, long associated only with its role in bone formation, is actually active throughout the human body, powerfully influencing immune system responses and cell defences.
It can be obtained from food or manufactured by human skin exposed to sunlight. Measures of vitamin D levels show, however, that many people have too little of it circulating in their blood to protect health.”
A very good resource, worth a read!!!: http://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/physio/whitelab/papers/VitaminD-Nov07.pdf
So, get out into the fresh air daily in the morning so you get some nourishing natural light, and dim the lights in the evening before bedtime as a natural sleep remedy to help your body get back into a rhythm…..as you become more in alignment with natural rhythms…your insomnia will fade away!
Enjoy.
Love
Anandi