Recently, I’ve come to re-realize how important sleep is. Well, there’s probably no need to mention it since most of us know how lack of sleep affects our quality of lives. I thought I understood its value well. Until I read an article written by an acupuncturist in Japan. He wrote about his wife’s rheumatism, her recovery, and how he treated it. I finally set my mind to stop whatever I am doing at 9 pm and just go to bed. (Actually I have two kids and we have bedtime routine of reading books and giving them dry skin brushing and spoon massages etc, so I have to stop whatever I am doing by 8:30.) The acupuncturist said his acupuncture treatments worked well but he believes it wouldn’t have been successful if his wife wouldn’t have changed her life style for the better. Since the time she started suffering from rheumatism, she disciplined herself and went to bed by 9 pm everyday. Her daughter also took her mother’s disease and mindset seriously and decided to go to bed by 9 pm so that she could help her mother stick to this new habit. By the time half a year had passed, her rheumatism healed. After reading this article, I felt like I learned a couple of important lessons. One of them is the power of sleep. And some of you may have known this, but not only hours of sleep, but how early (around after 7 pm) you go to bed matters. Maybe you may have experienced this: the feeling or the level of tiredness when you wake up is different between when you go to bed at midnight or 2am, even you get the same amount of sleep, let’s say 7 hours. The reason is explained in “Yin and Yang.” While you’re sleeping, you’re supposed to gain Yin, and the golden time you can gain Yin is between 10 pm to 2 am (depends on the season, though). So if you miss that time period, you can’t regain enough Yin and when you wake up you still feel tired regardless of the sleeping hours.

To be honest, it’s still hard for me to give up doing whatever I am doing at 8:30 pm. It used to be the time for me to listen to podcasts or audiobooks after putting the kids to sleep. But naturally I wake up earlier (if I feel still sleepy, I don’t push myself to wake up until the time I have to wake up because I drive my daughter to school and I need enough sleep for driving as I’m not good at driving, or I hate to drive…) so now I’m establishing my morning routine. I do some meditation still on my bed and if I wake up earlier enough, I read a book in the bath. I prefer to finishing mundane stuff first then having my own time. The thing is, my three-year-old son wakes up  just after I finish all the preparations to go out. I often end up playing with him early in the morning in my supposedly free time.