.SOMETIMES RAW.

Sleep is so important for our overall wellbeing and definitely not time wasted. All my teachers at The Institute of Holistic Nutrition so far mentioned that getting enough sleep is the key to rejuvenate and be healthy. Nowadays it is so easy to make zero distinction between day and night. Nights turn into days easily. We get bombarded with artificial light, new things, limitless entertainment and new technology that disrupts our sleep when and wherever possible.

Living a hectic, stressful and busy lifestyle makes us forget pretty quickly that our body needs a sufficient amount of sleep to deal with it all. If we like it or not, our body is not a machine but has its natural rhythms to deal with and adapt to changes. We do not even need to think about it. The body just functions and does its thing. After I have taken and passed the anatomy course at my school I am even more in awe of it all. The human body is fantastic but it needs enough sleep to function properly. Did you know that according to Elizabeth Lipski “our culture is sleep deprived? Set your schedule so that you get at least seven to nine hours of sleep every night. This is where your body heals and recenters. Without adequate sleep, it is nearly impossible to heal” (Lipski, 2012, p. 174). 

The book “The Sleep Revolution” by Arianna Huffington was recommended in class and I read it in one day/night (duh!). I love science (nerd) and to get sleep information from all angles. The book provides information about the history of sleep, what happens in the body while we sleep, the role dreams play as well as all the consequences of sleep deprivation. Whenever there is a lot on my mind that keeps me up at night, I try natural remedies such as chamomile, lavender or passion-flower tea, magnesium or calcium (which relaxes the muscles and nerves), or I take the neurotransmitter/hormone Melatonin (3-5 mg) that supports sleep. Melatonin is also very helpful if you are traveling abroad and there is a time change. You take one pill when you are taking off (and doing an overnight flight) to try to help your body to sleep. Whenever I take Melatonin and arrive at my destination I am not quite as exhausted. I also downloaded a guided sleep meditation app on my phone that works really well. 

Other sleep tips that work well for me:

I do not like to sleep in a very dark room since I love to be woken up by natural light in the morning. Through adjusting my sleep rhythm (going to bed between 10-11 pm and waking up between 6-7 am) during the week, I rarely need an alarm clock. I love to stay up longer on weekend and sleep in but my body tells me at around 11 pm that I should get my ass to bed. Turning off all electronic devices at least about half an hour before I head to bed helps. I usually just read a book and relax in bed. 

Whenever I do not get enough sleep (because occasionally I watch too much South Park/Simpsons/Family Guy, eat too much dark chocolate, drink too much wine or analyze life too much), I take a power nap if I get the chance to do so during lunch break. Usually, 15 to 20 minutes is adequate for me to fill up my energy storage again. Sometimes I do not even sleep but rest, relax and let go with my eyes closed. Amazingly, our body has a way of telling us to slow down and I am listening now; a lot better than before. Reflecting on the last couple of months in 2017 it made me realize how little I prioritized sleep but things changed. For the better, and into a healthier, independent and happier me. Signing off. 

Good Night.

These days, I cringe when I hear the word love or someone tells me about the concept of “love at first sight”. Both seem to be perpetuated nauseatingly everywhere I look. Everyone seems to be in love, walking hand in hand, kissing on the street not even overly pointing out all the love movies and songs. Among my friends, I see many different versions of this magic force that depict awesome connections, insane emotions but also tons of patience and understanding. 

When I was a child, I believed in love at first sight. Sort of like, you meet someone in High School and stay together forever. “He is the one”, I told my friend Julia in grade 9. Needless to say, he was not. I started looking for another “the one”, followed by others. Recently, I analyzed this love process a bit closer. Every time I started to experience stronger feelings for someone (anything he said or did that felt really awesome and made me happy) some sort of unexplainable chemistry started to develop within me. These weird, special moments like getting lost in his brown, grey eyes or this moment when I looked at someone long enough at a museum who seemed nerdy like me and he finally walked over to ask me out for coffee (turned out to be a creep). Things like this happen in New York all the time. 

Meeting someone new always had this effect on me that when I liked something about him, that this is automatically it. In a heartbeat, it is necessary to move in together as quickly as possible because this is how you get to know the other person. However, pretty quickly, things start to bother me and I regret the decision made in a heat wave of most certainly irrational attraction. Analyzing these moments, I think that they were all pretty irrational, impulsive and evaded total comprehensions of my brain’s left hemisphere. Usually, if a relationship did not feel like a couple of shots of Black Label mixed with a private internal train crash right away, I thought something was wrong. 

So, what was this all about? Obsession? 50 shades of Grey? What I thought back then was that love is not patient, slow-moving or kind. If something feels good or okay, let’s rush into it with full force. What about romance, patience or just taking it slow? On my quest for knowledge, I stumbled upon an article by biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, Ph.D., who calls romantic love “a craving” and “an addiction”. After studying many love-st(r)uck brains, the research shows that people in love “exhibit activity in the same brain regions that become active when one is addicted to cocaine and other drugs”. Speaking from my experience, there is usually a problem trying to integrate feelings, thought and weird hormones at the same time. It all seems to end up in a strong cocktail of heated-happy-sad confusion. “Dopamine is key, ” she says. “The neurotransmitter is the central component of the brain’s reward system – the brain system that gives the lover focus, energy, motivation, and craving for the beloved.” This all so familiar feeling of we cannot get enough of each other. Constantly waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for text messages … stuff like that. “I can’t think of any bigger reward than falling in love,” Fisher says. Duh! 

Is this specific awesome feeling of getting lost while looking into someone’s eyes “love” or do I need to differentiate between infatuation and love? In my opinion, love is many things at once since love is. It happens in phases over a period of time and either grows in meaning and depth or it simply does not. Fisher adds the strong drive “affects us on a more personal level”. So, the original seed of love may be intense, full of physical attraction and infatuation but I have to/should have look(ed) at the whole picture by using my brain and thought. Without using the brain, infatuation is inevitable. It happened to me that I hit it off with someone right away. This feeling that I know him forever. He is my soulmate.  This sensation usually occurred in milliseconds and I was completely absorbed in the other person. Of course, this did not mean it will automatically lead to a long-lasting relationship loaded with love. 

I believe, when something does not turn into a solid relationship it does not mean it was not love. It was some type of love, maybe not capital-L- Love. When passion and intimacy die, the feeling of closeness, connectedness, and bondness, the base starts to crumble and the relationship is over. If partners do not let this happen, love can get bigger, stronger and even may expand beyond the initial obsessive absorption. The decision and commitment to be together is usually mutual as well as a choice and both partners want to maintain that emotional connection and the treasure the chemistry of friendship. That is probably my favorite things about it all. That I can decide what love is for me and with whom I want to deepen the hormone monster of obsessive force. 

Of course, we ended up at our Sushi Restaurant since we are both addicted to eating it and it is the best place to indulge in “salmon and tuna happiness” in my hometown. We were both happy to see each other again since it has been a long time and so much happened after we last met. I looked forward to this evening, was excited to meet my friend Judith and the evening that lied ahead of us. Our enthusiasm and anticipation for hours of conversations got stronger while we walked through narrow back streets to the tiny restaurant. Since I haven’t been here in a while, I took it all in. Any unfamiliar spots that may become new landmarks or create new memories. Now, since I call this home again for this week, I am seeing my city in an entirely new light. 

We turned into another street and already slow traffic turned into a complete standstill and finally no cars at all. This peacefulness and silence. While we walk, I scan every inch of the street. I scan every façade, every name on the various shop signs, cheese stores, vintage clothing stores, restaurants and cocktail bars. Home. I observed other people walking by who interacted and went on about their lives. I listened to the noise of an ambulance that drove by but I was silent and content. We entered the restaurant and it was empty. Silence. 

While we ate and she spoke to me, I really focused on her talking to me and the background started to blur a bit when I really looked at her and her face. The reason why I was mesmerized by this seemingly ordinary moment was that I felt that it is so important to really listen to certain people with this level of attention. 

She mentioned and eventually told me more about gaslighting which is, according to Wikipedia “a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, hoping to make them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief”. 

I hung onto every single word she uttered, my jaw dropped and my eyes were wide. The world around me simply did not exist. What I was l listening to was a perfect example of a state of flow. The waitress came to bring us our food and I snapped out of it. Why am I writing all this down? Because my friend made time stand still for a brief moment; made me think and reflect. I felt like if I was the only person in the room since I was so fully absorbed and sort of morphed into my personal story itself. I simply captured a somewhat fleeting moment of unedited, pure and authentic human connection while listening to her. I felt like everything else around me fade away while I regurgitated my previous relationship but for some reason, it all felt okay since I was with her who truly listened. This tiny magical moment. She told me about focus and how we constantly feel rushed, scattered and busy to really look at the situation we are in. She mentioned her troubles at work and that without focus, there is actually little to no chance of creating anything of substance and we get nowhere. It reminded me that some people start projects here and then another one over there while in the end nothing gets accomplished. Sysiphus. However, they plan project three, four and five in their head while taking flying lessons and finishing two Master degrees online with an IQ of 164. Without focus, they also damage relationships. 

Tonight, I simply tried to focus on the present moment and time started to feel more expansive. I felt I had a clearer mind, was more fulfilled, inspired, calmer and felt less rushed. The key is to set clear boundaries how far one allows something to continue in their life. Suddenly, life became quieter which was a great feeling since I was all over the place in the last couple of weeks. I also refound magic in the mundane since I kept experiencing these pleasures in life; like tonight as well as several others moments in the last couple of weeks. I realize that those things happen when I am mindful. They happen when I actually pay real close attention to what someone says and does (like cooking shrimp) without being distracted or when I focus on the color of the sky, birds singing or the fresh morning air on my skin while jogging.  

Tonight, I really listened and gave her undivided attention and rediscovered her little quirks, the real beauty of her inside and her unique way of laughing about my comments to the waiter at the sushi restaurant. I treasure our friendship and started to love her from scratch again. Tonight I realized that whatever happened recently in her or my life, in the greater scheme of things, nothing matters more than the human moments right here and now because we cannot turn back time.

Many other things going on in my life simple need time, breathing room and space to sort them out but I know I will feel better in the long run without certain people. I have been reminded tonight that I have to make time count and create space for humans and wonders as well as for creation and gratitude.