Hello all,

I thought, I ll share something which was a very big problem for me in my life, since I started my profession as a software engineer.And I guess this is the most common problem that most of us face in our life whoever may be in any profession. The problem - The problem was that I started feeling restless, burning eyes, burnt out feeling, stress and strain and I had lost the freshness of mood:( whenever I used to ask a question to myself like what do I wanted to do? the simple answer used to be REST, and nothing more.
I was surprised, even though I used to do so many physical activities in my college life, I never used to feel this much tired and exhausted :(, I was totally confused, what has happened to me?, days went by but the problem persisted :( and more over it worsened. Now I started to feel fatigue and added problems like stomach upset, constipation and headache :(. So I decided to find a solution to this complex problem which was killing me since a long time now.
So I questioned myself too much and found a very interesting connetion between two of the body mechanisms which were the cause for most of the problems in my life. so I present these two mechanism here :).

The Solution -

The answer lied in a very complex connection between the desing of our daily life. Yes, our daily life at a high level indcludes two parts, One part is a day and the other is a night, one part is a resting period and the other one is a playing period, one as gaining of energy and the other as spending of energy.

So all in all it is a balanced cycle. you have to gain energy to spend it and spend energy to regain it :) yeah its bit confusing you might ask, I have already got the energy then why do need to spend it? It ll be clear after I explain the two important processes which effect this cycle :). So remember the words "balance" and the "cycle". If any time this balance is broken it ll ve impact on boththe rest part and also the play part :(. So the very essence of our life must be to maintain this balance.

The two Processes -

Now comes the answer to the question what are these processes or the mechanisms. Well most of you might have alredy guessed the first one :),
yes it is SLEEP. And the second one is a bit tricky one but I ll explain it, it is the BREATH. Surprised! well be so :).

Actually these are the important mechanisms which have a direct influence on our daily activities.

SLEEP -

As I mentioned about the cycle at the beginning, the sleeping activity fits into rest part. And this is the most important part.

"Sleep is the activity which helps us in rejuvenating and regenerating the spent up energy."
Have you ever wondered how amazing this sleep activity is. Your body is many years old but every single time you get up, your life seems to have started again, that fresh feeling, the ray of new hope, the enthusiasm to do things, to play games, every single time you lose your battle there is something that stands by us and says come on boy I ll give you back all the energy again and lets fight it back again. Sleep is like mother nature it nurtures us to rejuvenate our every single day.

Sleep is the most essential part of our life. Some people confuse that sleep is nothing but closing of eyes and it is only needed for brain.
But the actual fact is that sleep is the necessity of the whole body, it is not only just closing your eyes but the whole body mechanisms like the rejuvenation of the mascular enery,
the creation of the enzymes and the acid and base balance in our stomach is all dependent on sleep.

And more over the classification of the information and cleaning up of the unwanted information is also the part of sleep. Have you ever wondered what is the amount of information that we collect in our single day of life? Well in our daily life we taste things, we smell things, we look at things, we learn things and we collect many more levels of information, the amount of information is huge, some part of it is kept in the memory and other stuffs are ignored. And we might have collected some information in bits and pieces but when we sleep and get up our level of learning about that information becomes pretty clear. For example you may have read a physics or mathematics and might not be clear about something but when you take a tight nap and get up, the concept ll be quite clear :).

Some of the facts about sleep are that people gauge sleep in terms of numbers of hours they sleep, but it is not at all the matter whether you sleep 12 long hours or only 6 hrs.
The fact is that sleep should be such that when you get up you must feel fresh and you must feel it was complete. If you sleep for 12-15 longs hrs but if you get up with that tired look on your face still, it was not complete :(.
I ll take one by one all the problems we face when we get up without a sound sleep.
Fatigue -
Since rejuvenation of the muscular energy depends on sleep, when we don't get the sound sleep, the muscles are not completely fit to do the daily activity and this reflects in terms of muscle fatigue and which results in resistance to do any work :(.

We feel like rejecting even simple physical activities. Since we feel resisting each and every activity and we have so many commitments in our daily life it builds the pressure on us when we can't complete these it results in frustration. This is nothing but the feeling of stress and strain.
When you sleep well and get up, actually all your muscles are rejuvenated and are ready to do the tasks. Now you your self ll be ready to do all the activities on your own :).

Stomach problems -


Since the secretion of the enzymes and the acid-base balance of stomach depends on sleep, when you do not sleep properly even your hunger is affected. And also problems of acidity and gastric problem increases since the acid-base balance is disturbed.
And since the movement of bowels in the intestine is carried out by the contraction and relaxation of the intestinal muscles, these muscles also ll not be in proper condition due to muscle fatigue and results in constipation.
So the conclusion is that a lot of stuffs depend upon how well you sleep. If your sleep is complete and you wake up fresh, you ll not only be having none of the problems but at the same time you ll be willing to do every stuff with enthusiasm :).


OK, to summarize all, sleep is a very powerful activity and needs much higher importance. It simply cannot be rejected as it has a profound effect on our daily activities.

Breath -

As I mentioned earlier the second important process is the breath. Well its not exactly breath (though breathing is the most fundamental of the life), it is breathing rate.Any mental activity that occurs in our mind it is reflected to the physical body through the increased or the decreased rate of breath. Whenever you are too busy thinking about something that is very important and are totally involved into it ask somebody to observe your breathing rate, it simply increases and the more it increases the more your thought process increases, resulting in you being lost into your own world. But this also adds to the stress and strain. You start feeling drained out and results in frustration and it is reflected as increase in the breathing rate. If it continues for a longer period of time it results in anxiety. Breathing rate is also one of the most important parameter which has a great effect on our well being in our daily life. If you are able to control the breathing rate you ll no longer face the mental stress and strain. And the other important process which gets affected by breathing rate is sleep. When we are sleeping the breathing rate decreases and this makes the body to feel relaxed. If due to the mental tension you start thinking about something and cannot sleep properly then it ll start affecting the other parts like the muscles and the stomach etc.So controlling the breath rate just gives you so much control over yourself that you ll start enjoying the play part of your normal day activity which I ll explain below.

The Play Part -

The play part is nothing but the activities that we carry out like the work and the other stuffs in our day. It can also be defined as that part in which we spend the gained energy. This forms the other part of the balanced cycle. If the rest part was proper then this part becomes the enjoyment or else this part gets so much affected that all the above listed problems start appearing here.Since this part is where we create our results this part decides our accomplishments and if not done properly results in frustration.The only important rule that guides in this play part is that

"If you do things because you want to do and that gives satisfaction and the play becomes enjoyment. If you do things because of some external force like commitment it ll result in mental pressure and frustration."

Every moment you ask yourself what is that you want to do? the answer must be something and whatever work comes to you you must feel like doing it :). This act depends upon sleep part, so the play part is always depends upon sleep."You have sleep to play and play to sleep".Even the sleep part depends upon the play part. If your play part was not proper you cannot sleep properly. It is this interdependency that leads to the creation of the balanced cycle of Resting and Playing, each act aiding to the other one.

Balanced Cycle -

As I mentioned earlier there is a interdependency among these two acts Rest and Play part. So the balance between these two acts should be maintained, otherwise it ll have impact on our physical well being and also confused state of mind.So to maintain the balance among these two processes we must take necessary steps.

1] In our life the most important thing is the priority setting, it is the thing where you decide what is most important thing for you, for some a cricket match is so important that they are ready to give up anything for that and for some their work and commitments are very important. But what they forget is the balance :). So first thing we must do is set the priority of the sleep as very very high probably may be higher than anything, it should be only next to life threatening events. You must say when it is your sleep time nothing should stop you from doing so, you may be having cricket match, football match, commitments etc... nothing should come in the way. You must learn to nurture sleep and sleep nurtures us like mother :)

2] If the Play part is the active state of being then sleep becomes the inactive state. The active state is high level of energy and inactive state is low level of energy. So in order to sleep you must have reached low energy levels so that you gain back the energy. This is where the play part plays a important role, at least some of the daily activities must be such that you lose you energy, this can be achieved by exercising daily or some other physical activity. Yoga can be the a very helpful thing in this regard.

3] And this one is for those of us who think a lot when we try to sleep, where we discuss with ourselves a lot about things which bother us. A lot of people cannot sleep due to things that them keep coming up when we try to sleep. And our mind becomes too busy to rest. This ll affect our sleep greatly. The solution lies in two things one is that as said the priority of sleep should be very high you should say to yourself and your thoughts that wait let me gain some energy and get back, you must just wipe out the thoughts and start imagining only about sleep and sleeping people :). It ll have a relaxing effect on your mind. One more thing you can do is imagine in your thoughts you be speaking about so many people, you have to just hold a sleep inducing syringe and you start speaking to anybody just inject the sleeping drugs to them LOL but this works you ll imagine everybody you want to speak are sleeping and you also ll start to do the same :)

4] One more important process is breathing, when you are normally sleeping your breathing rate is very less and relaxed but when you start thinking too much this is reflected in the physical body through increased rate of breathing, we can use the same breathing rate to control the mental process i.e reverse action. Just reduce the breathing rate it ll realx the mind and ll induce sleep.

5] And sometimes when we cannot sleep properly we must complete the sleep just by saying its over and we should not continue it the whole day that is by trying to sleep for 10-15 mins in all uncomfortable positions. It is a very dangerous thing to sleep in uncomfortable positions, it ll ve a lot of side effects.

6] And breathing rate has a very profound impact on our daily activities when we feel stressed out you must rest and start controlling inhaling and exhaling of the breath, when your breath rate becomes normal you feel the stress ll be no more. Breathing rate is the most important and powerful way to accomplish self control. There can be times when you are feeling low and feel like doing nothing in these times you must start breathing faster, increase the breathing rate so that your energy levels ll be very high and this ll give you boost your mood :)

7] One more important thing is you should never take sleeping pills no matter whatever is the cause because dependency on sleeping pills ll kill your natural sleep.

8] For those of us who work long hours on computer the eyes ll burn and this ll ve impact on sleep. Even though we sleep long hours our eyes ll be burning when we get up.
So one solution to this problem is that before going to sleep we must keep something cold on our eyes and relax in darkness, actualy this relaxing of eyes has to be done atleast three times in a day. The duration for each session mst be atleast 15 mins. This ll reduce the pain and your sleep ll be perfect :)

Conclusion -

Sleep and breath rate are the two important mechanisms which if controlled and balanced ll make your daily life full of enjoyment so always pay importance to these two processes your life ll rock :)

Note- whenever some kind of pain is there in the body it ll greatly affect sleep which inturn spoils the daily acitivities and the mood but we often blame the pain for this and try to solve the wrong problem. Yoga is the powerful aid to help sleep anybody and especially those who have pain.

So Nuture the mother sleep she ll nurture you and gives you all the energy required :)

Live to sleep sleep to live :)