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Sleep Series: In Praise Of Darkness!

sleep series

In the beginning there was only darkness and then, light came out of darkness! Light and darkness are not two different and opposing things. Society has made a villain out of darkness. Darkness is used as a synonym of all things sinister. We are trained from childhood to look at darkness with fear.

In Hindu religion, darkness is deified – we have “Maha Kaal” and “Maha Kaali” – in religion this could either mean “darkness” or “time” – there is close relationship between them, but that is for another day. 

There is darkness everywhere – interstellar, intergalactic is just darkness.

Modern living has opted for lights of high luminescence. The poor old incandescent light of 60 watt (tungsten filament bulb) has a luminosity of 400-800 lumens whereas the modern day LED lamps can produce the same lumens at just 5 Watts. Where we had one incandescent light, now we have at least 4 LED! Which means we are consuming 5 times more light! 

Light has to be light ( Pun intended)

Since we fear darkness, we have created a social necessity (business necessity?) for bright light, whereas the number 1 villain for good sleep is LIGHT! Many of us know of the bad impact of blue light emitted from phones, laptops and tablets. Evenings are intended to be a journey to acclimatize to emerging darkness and night time is intended to be pitch-dark by nature.

So, for a good night’s sleep, the gradual reducing of lighting and luminosity is a must. Which means after 7:30pm, you should: 

  • Slowly switch off lights and send a signal of reducing light to the eyes
  • Make the bedroom pitch-dark for sleeping
  • Immediately activate “night mode” in Laptops and Phones

This could easily be the first step towards good sleep! Remember that you are meant to sleep in darkness. The sleep hormone Melatonin (more about this later) is highly impacted by luminosity. Darkness is key to sleep. Light is an inhibitor of sleep. Embrace the darkness, start falling in love with it! Darkness is the source of all light, time and space and is a good first step to a good sleep.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article so far. Stay tuned for more from the Sleep Series! To read more about sleep and sleeping techniques, check out Healthy Reads or tune in to LIVE sessions by experts on GOQii Play. 

#BeTheForce  

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