The slogan and theme for World Sleep Day 2022 are "Quality Sleep, Sound Mind, and Happy World." This day is observed to make people realize the importance of sleep and the problems that can occur because of lack of sleep. We often tend to overlook the importance of sleep in our busy schedules. This leads to a host of ailments, stress, and other related mental and physical health problems. On World Sleep Day, the main objective is to raise public awareness regarding the requirement for good sleep, medications for sleeping disorders or insomnia, and exercise so that we can all have a good night's sleep each day and become healthy from the inside out.

There are many possible reasons for sleeplessness, including sleeping habits, lifestyle choices, and medical conditions. Some causes are minor and may improve with self-care, while others may require medical attention.
Causes of sleeplessness may include aging, too much stimulation before bedtime like overexposure to television, playing video games, or exercising, consuming too much caffeine, noise disturbances, an uncomfortable bedroom, or a feeling of excitement. Sleeping too much during the day, lack of exposure to sunlight, frequent urination, physical pain, jet lag, and some prescription medications may also lead to difficulty sleeping.
For many people, stress, worry, depression, or work schedules may also affect their sleep. For others, sleep issues are due to a sleep disorder such as insomnia, sleep apnea, and restless legs syndrome.

In the recent past, sleep apnea has become a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts. The risk factors include age and obesity. The Symptoms include snoring loudly and feeling tired even after a full night's sleep. The treatment of sleep apnea often includes lifestyle changes, such as weight loss and the use of a breathing assistance device at night, such as a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine.



Usually, we have four stages of sleep:

1)        Light sleep: During light sleep, we find our eye muscles still moving. The Alpha wave gets activated at this stage. The Alpha wave activity means that the brain is in a relaxed state, but you are still awake (8-13 Hz alpha wave).

2)        Lightly Deep Sleep - Slow eye movement and decrease in core body temperature. Activation of Theta wave (G-7) Hz.

3)        Deep Sleep - Eye muscles are nearly closed and it is very difficult to wake up. The Delta wave is active (1.3.5 Hz).

4)        REM Sleep - More deep sleep and rapid eye movement. In this, stage we do most of our dreaming.

Throughout the night, we cycle through the four stages of sleep. An adult tends to spend 20% of the time in REM sleep for infants it is close to 50%.

The University of California Berkeley found that REM sleep can help to process emotional stress.

 The usual recommendation for an adult is six hours of sleep. But with the pressure of the 21st century, sometimes it seems impossible to have complete six hours of sleep. But we have a great ancient treasure – Yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra is the yogic tranquillizer. 35 minutes of Yoga Nidra can reduce the Basal Metabolic Rate by 25% to 27%. While the deep level of six hours of sleep reduces the basal metabolic rate by 9%, hence it helps in achieving three times more rest within a span of thirty minutes.


The difference between normal sleep and Yoga Nidra is that in Yoga Nidra an intermediate platform of alpha wave predominance associated with relaxation is created between the beta wave patterns of the wakeful state and the slow delta rhythm of deep sleep. The result of this is complete relaxation of mental, emotional, and muscular tension. Lack of sleep over time can lead to an irreversible loss of brain cells. The less we sleep as we grow older the faster our brain ages.

Sleep has been identified as an extremely important performance-enhancing drug - that comes with only positive side effects and much of this is of course, about recovery for athletes. Just as athletes need more calories than most people when they're in training, they need more sleep too. The power of sleeping in the animal kingdom is exemplified by the cheetah. It's the fastest land animal on earth - able to accelerate from zero to sixty miles per hour in just three seconds - and yet it also spends up to eighteen hours a day sleeping.

Cheri Mah, of Stanford sleep disorders clinic and research laboratory, conducted a study on the basketball team - wearing sleep sensors for two weeks. She recorded their normal sleep patterns - they averaged just more than six and half hours each night, for five to seven weeks. She had then aimed for a minimum of ten hours in bed each night. The players’ sleep average went up to eight and half hours and that increased their performance dramatically. Their Sprint times became 7 seconds faster.

In the UK the Southampton soccer club has its own sleep app which players use each morning to log the previous night’s sleep. If a player's sleep quality level drops, team officials will intervene.

So, after having read about the importance of sleep and what happens to the body due to lack of sleep, we should not spend sleepless nights and compromised performances as we can resort to “Yoga Nidra”   and reap its benefits.

Posted By Subhabrata Bhattacharjee, Lifestyle Coach, Founder Director MANTRA