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Every mortal's Eternal question, at least during mortality.
I can only speak for what's working for me now.
An injury from a 1998 car accident left me with a tendency towards a chronic stiffness in my lower back and left hip that is a blessing in disguise:
If I want to live a pain-free life, there's certain practices for me. One of them is sleep. In my case, less is more.
However much I sleep, I will try to leave the word "tired" or "sleepy" out of the words I think or utter. An old karate instructor swore "self talk" was the secret to The Sleeping Beast inside all of us. He believed that when a person talked about it or made a point of complaining about it, the lack of sleep, that, he said, was the problem. Complaints like:
"I only got 3 hours of sleep last night!"
"The dog kept me up all night!"
etc.
All maybe true, but he said talking about it is what caused the suffering. He said it was possible to stay awake and not suffer, especially just for one day. If a person is happy, he said and you're enjoying yourself, you'll be fine. I told me to try not dwell on it, from a conditioned response, and to see how it worked for me.
Experiment, he said. "You're body is your laboratory."
Complaining, he said, was the Main Drain.
He proclaimed himself a BRIEF Sleep champion and gave me list of celebrated "Brief Sleepers" who had led productive, but otherwise normal, quirky, imperfect lives. Sleep, he said, is overrated.
I've read the 8-hour sleep night is a recent invention centered around agrarian lifestyles, which, an urban living choice has removed me from, for the most part.
I ain't workin' a farm or raising kids to work one around a school schedule.
smile emoticon
No matter how much I sleep, to keep pain at bay, I eat a plant-based diet, which includes some cooked and some raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, etc.
Now, Instructor Tom might have been a champion "brief sleeper," but, at 24, he was still cruisin' on youth and hadn't yet experimented in the laboratory of his body with current diet and age and a more sedentary lifestyle to see how his pizza and burger and fries and soda foods worked in a 50-year old body that, in my case, had been hit by a van going 45 miles an hour while I sat unbuckled at a stop sign.
Each day, to curb inflammation and minimize pain, upon rising, I do some gentle stretching after I use the bathroom, then:
- Drink 1 quart of lukewarm water with two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
- An hour later, I'll drink a warm shot glass of water and teaspoon of cayenne pepper (I hold it in my mouth and let saliva work up and then C A R E F U L L Y swallow. Yes, my eyes water a little, but I continue to breathe through my nose.
I will use the singing bowls to meditate for about an hour while I let the cayenne pepper work it's magic. Google "Cayenne Pepper Tea" and read for yourself. My first client each day, I say, must be me.
- Next up is a green smoothie: 4-8 bananas, 1 apple or piece of fruit, a handful of greens or 1/4 cup of herb like cilantro, parsley, basil, a teaspoon of cinnamon and yes, a pinch of cayenne.
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