Awakened Sleep with Dr Sheila Patel & Dr Suhas Kshirsagar

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:27):
Take a deep breath in through your nose. Holds it.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Now, release slowly again deep in, helle.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
Hold release, repeating internally to yourself as you connect to
my voice. I am deeply well. I am deeply well.

(01:22):
I am deeply I'm Debbie Brown and this is the
Deeply Well Podcast. Welcome to Deeply Well, a soft place

(01:42):
to land on your journey, A podcast for those that
are curious, creative, and ready to expand in higher consciousness
and self care. This is where we heal, this is
where we transcend. Welcome back to the show everyone. I
am Debbie Brown.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
As always, Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining
this special little piece of the universe that we've created together.
On this episode of Deeply Well, we are diving into
one of the most universal and most misunderstood aspects of.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
Well being and wellness.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Sleep. In a world that glorifies productivity and constant motion,
so many of us struggle to find deep, restorative rest.
But what if the key to better sleep and to
feeling truly alive isn't found in another supplement or a
gummy or a sleep pack, but actually in an ancient

(02:40):
rhythm that lives within each of our bodies. Now joining
me today are two dear friends to brilliant healers and
teachers and doctors who have dedicated their lives to helping
us reconnect to that natural state of balance. To introduce
our guests today, I will start with doctor Suhas Krishagar.

(03:02):
He is one of the most prominent and academically accomplished
AERVEDA physicians in the United States, with over thirty five
years of clinical experience. He is the director of Aerveda
Healing an integrative wellness clinic in Santa Cruz, California. He's
also the author of the Hot Belly Diet and Change
Your Schedule, Change Your Life, which has been translated into

(03:24):
thirteen languages and sold nearly seventy thousand copies. As a
leading voice in aervedic medicine, doctor Suhas is a sought
after speaker at aervedic and wellness conferences both nationally and internationally.
He is an advisor and consultant at Chopra Global and
Chopra Foundation, which allows him to share the stage with

(03:46):
some of the leading global experts in the field of
integrative medicine. He has traveled around the globe popularizing Ayrveda yoga,
meditation and natural medicine. He shared and designed curriculums first
several iervatic schools. Doctor Sujas has formulated some very successful
RBAL products generating multimillion dollars in revenues, and he was

(04:09):
featured in numerous popular podcasts, radio and television shows. We
are also joined today by doctor Sheila Patel. Doctor Sheila
was formerly chief Medical Officer at Choper Global and a
board certified family physician. Doctor Shila is certified as an
instructor of Ayerveda, Yoga and meditation and served as the

(04:30):
chief medical Officer at Choper Global for thirteen years. She
joined the Institute for Integrative Nutrition as a medical Advisor,
where she continues to be a lead educator for the
Chopra Meditation and health certification programs. In addition, she serves
as the clinical Research Director for the Choper Foundation, Volunteer
Faculty at UCSD School of Family Medicine and Public Health,

(04:54):
and is a sought after keynote speaker and their book. Today,
they have come together to join forces to create this
incredible new book called Awakened Sleep, an Irvetic approach to
getting deep rest and unlocking optimal Health, which officially came
out last week, so you have to get your copy.

(05:16):
And this book, you know, it's really focusing on something
so many of us know well. Between that rush of
our daily lives and the ever increasing presence of screens,
restorative sleep is hard to come by. One in three
adults worldwide suffers from insomnia. That is an insane stat

(05:36):
and so many of us are searching for a good
night's sleep. But what does that actually mean and how
do we actually obtain it? Through five combined decades of
clinical practice and research and work with thousands of patients
and clients around the world, doctor sUAS and doctor Sheila
are here to offer a holistic solution to this wide

(05:57):
spread problem, and through this book they explore it in
so many powerful ways. Now, I know I was talking
a lot everybody, There was a lot of things to say,
but without further ado, thank you so much, and welcome
to the show. Doctor Sheila and doctor Suhas.

Speaker 5 (06:13):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 6 (06:14):
It's really just an honor to be here and to share,
you know, all the things that I've learned over the
years about ayr vida and helping people heal through RESTful sleep.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
I'm so excited to have you here. Doctor Suhas welcome.

Speaker 7 (06:30):
Thank you, Thank you, Davie. Always a joy and an
honor to be with you, because I have enjoyed our
conversations in the past, and these are conversations which are
guiding light to so many people. So very very happy
to be here and sharing our latest book, Avacant Sleep.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yes, so grateful to have you both. And you know,
just for some audience contexts, I had the pleasure of
working with both of these amazing people for many years
with Choper Global and the very first time, I mean,
and we found ourselves all working together in a really
kind of exceptional and extraordinary moment in human history where

(07:12):
we were joining in the time that we were joined
in forces, we were in the beginning and the midst
and the conclusion of a global pandemic, and you know,
our work at that time was just really to support
a world that even now, just in the last few years,
ayr Veda has become a lot more mainstream, which is incredible,

(07:34):
and yoga and meditation. But even just at the start
of the pandemic, you know, mental health was still very
cliche and taking care of yourself was still very confusing
for most people. And you know, I'm so deeply proud
of so much of the work that we accomplished in
that time, and so much that I got to learn
from both of you, and actually doctor Sheila my very

(07:57):
first meditation retreat that started me in my journey, and
people know this part of my story was through the
Choper Center. You were my medical consultant at my very
first time learning meditation. So very full circle.

Speaker 5 (08:13):
Wow, yeah that was many years ago, but you're.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Going over my doses.

Speaker 6 (08:20):
Yeah, I just you know, again, doing this work for
many years through the physical space the Choper Center in California,
and then as you mentioned, transitioning to Chopra Global and
doing more online and just delivering these teachings in a
different way. It was just a really transitional time for
all of us. And I was so glad that you

(08:40):
got connected and you know, shared so many of your
meditations with us. And really I think that time, you know,
I've been a physician. I just went to my thirty
year medical school reunion last fall, and so I've been
doing this for a little while, and then also sixteen
seventeen years in diving more deeply into irvia.

Speaker 5 (09:01):
But I still see people in a primary care setting.

Speaker 6 (09:04):
And yeah, we've always talked to people as primary care
physicians about stress and mood, and I learned over time
that sleep was, you know, usually disrupted along with all
of these other issues. But we really didn't appreciate it.
When I went to medical school, we didn't learn to
ask people about sleep. And it really wasn't until.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
I weren't sleeping in medical schools, so definitely wasn't.

Speaker 6 (09:29):
So I appreciated the power of sleep as well, getting
a good night's sleep. And it wasn't until I came
to the Chopper Center and started learning about IRVIA that
you know IRVI that always recognized sleep was a biological necessity,
was one of the pillars of well being, and gave
us actual practical tools to help us get back to
our natural sleep. Because through COVID, especially when anxiety was

(09:53):
high and sleep, many people sleep became even more disrupted
to these statistics we're seeing now even more so, I
am guilty of like giving people sleep medications because that's
what we learned how to do. But over the last
decade or so, even sleep science is starting to tell
us that maybe short term that's okay, but long term,

(10:13):
all of those medications of side effects. So where do
we turn to these ancient teachings you know, to help us,
you know, learn how to use our own biology to
help us sleep.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, can we kind of anchor in that for a second,
and just for the audience that you both would give
kind of a foundational understanding of what is ayr veta
and how does it work in our lives.

Speaker 7 (10:36):
It's one of the most ancient and most comprehensive system
of healthcare that is known to humanity. It's truly a
natural medicine. And natural medicine doesn't only mean taking certain
herbs and dietary changes. It simply means live in accordance
with the laws of nature, having your lifestyle which is
in total concurrence with what is happening outside your window,

(11:02):
having an ideal daily routine, having an ideal seasonal routine,
entraining your circadian rhythms with the changing cycles of light
and darkness. So natural medicine and more importantly irrada is
a science which simply can be defined as a consciousness
based approach to health and healing. So it is your

(11:24):
individual responsibility to what you do, what you think, how
you make choices for daily living that impacts your health
or disease, asset. So there's a lot of education. There's
a lot of learning. There's a lot of training, and
the lingo and the language of IWDA is rather simple,
is the language of nature. It defines itself into the

(11:46):
structures of the elements, the five great elements of space, air, fire, water,
and Earth, which is further classified into doses, which is
your unique mind body type. So there are specific dows
and downs based upon your mind body type, which is
important for you to learn, understand and embrace so that

(12:06):
you can effectively live up to your fullest potential. And
we have given so many different quizzes in the book
pertaining to sleep because you could be maybe a lean, thin,
wiry vata type of a person, and those people have
hard time falling asleep. They have difficulty to fall asleep.
They are born warriors. Sometimes they are a little bit

(12:28):
more anxious and worried about things, and as soon as
they hit their head to the pillow, they start thinking
about everything that happened during the day, and they are
thinking and worrying about things in the past or the future.
Pitta people probably fall asleep okay, which is a little
bit more heat oriented personality, but they wake up in

(12:50):
the v hours of the morning and then they start
thinking planning, Their body gets warm, their sleep gets lighter,
and they get into more of a calculating and planning
working more in the ve hours in the morning. But
the Kafa people have no problem falling asleep, they have
problem waking up in the morning because of their heaviness

(13:11):
and the dullness that the sleep can bring. And sometimes
it will create more grogginess and probably more congestive challenges
with sleep and more difficulties and needing to reach out
to caffeine. So to summarize the sideway, that is more
of a natural medicine, understanding your unique type, learning few things,

(13:33):
applying it to your daily living in terms of your diet,
your sleep, your exercise pattern. You can create a little
unique blend which is tailor made for you. So iieway
that I like to call it as the original lifestyle medicine.

Speaker 6 (13:50):
Yeah, I also want to add, as you heard, it's
also I like to tell people the original personalized medicine,
you know, because we talk about personalizing and we're starting
to unders and how important that is because everyone's biology
is different, and it was everyone's personality is different, and
in IRV that these mind body types or doshas are
a description that's been recognized again for thousands of years,

(14:13):
that we are different, we're all unique, and so there
isn't one size it fits all. And that's one of
the things I really appreciated about IRV that when I
started learning, it started explaining, you know, all of these
scenarios and medicine that I had seen that I didn't
have explanations for, and IRV that provided that foundational understanding.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah, and it's so interesting. So with both of you
as medical doctors as well, you know, it's like, was
that ever like a conflict? Did you ever exist kind
of in a conflicted space with that, because with Western medicine,
you know, the focus very much is on like symptoms
and treatments, and then with ayrvated it very much more
is lifestyle, which means preventative, which means like getting in

(14:56):
front of things or having balance. And how does how
did your work come to bridge space for both?

Speaker 5 (15:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (15:04):
I think, you know, I started out in the western
medical model, so that's what I learned conventional medicine, and
you know, of course it's amazing right for traumas and
ER and I see you care and you know, so
many amazing things that we can do, and so it's
not about throwing all that out. It's about realizing that
those things have a place and they're necessary in certain situations.

(15:27):
But we can see, but this epidemic of chronic disease,
physic chronic health issues, diabetes, you know, heart disease, brain health,
you know, pain, autoimmune diseases, like pretty much all the
chronic diseases. We're missing the boat, you know, And so
this is where we have to look to other systems

(15:48):
of medicine that we're really the primary goals.

Speaker 5 (15:51):
We're preventing disease.

Speaker 6 (15:53):
You know, I think all of us would like to
prevent disease before we get to the point where we
have to treat it.

Speaker 5 (15:58):
And although I.

Speaker 6 (15:59):
Avida as well, amazing treatments for things, but we can
still use the foundational lifestyle. And this is what I
learned to do in my practice when I see people
and you really can blend the two very well together.
It's not one or the other, right, And so I
teach people lifestyle based on Iurvitic principles and then if needed,

(16:19):
you know, ideally we don't get there, but if needed,
then we have medication, but I think we all agree
we'd love to avoid it.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
I think it's so important for people to hear that,
because I think if you're not familiar with ayreveta or
with creating any care practices for yourself, I hear so
many people often just be like, oh, well, I you know,
I go to the doctor, like you know, western medicine.
I'm like, yeah, great, you should. We need it, like
thank God for the advancements of humankind. And there is

(16:48):
personal responsibility to your life, to your body, to your brain,
you know, to your human technology. And I think sometimes
that's the part that people are really avoiding when they're
kind of scared confused about learning more about other practices.
So I'm fascinated that the two of you joined forces,

(17:09):
especially to write a book about about peace a maybe
a little bit yeah ultimately ultimately yeah, at the deepest layer,
but joining forces to write a book about sleep. What
we have come to understand about sleep in the last
handful of years is amazing, and I think shocking for

(17:30):
people because for so much of you know, so much
of popular culture, mainstream culture, drives people to see sleep
as the place that you can like meet all the
other deficits, like that's the area that you give up
to be able to do everything else. And I know,
like for myself and my generation, it was like sleep
is the cousin of death. That was like a phrase

(17:52):
that was a saying, you know, people would use or
you know.

Speaker 5 (17:56):
When you die, or you can sleep when you.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Die, And it was the bad of honor to say
how little sleepy were getting right? And I think something
I learned for myself about five years ago when I
had a personal sleep revolution, I had no idea what
I was missing when I finally learned to start sleep,
which was really through ioatic practices. And so first tell

(18:21):
me how important is sleep really?

Speaker 7 (18:25):
I think, going back to your earlier statement about the book,
it's a perfect blend of the latest science with the
ancient vedic system. The reason being, and you know this well.
I also practice something called as medical astrology. So I
do see patients every day, but when I talk to
them about their current life, their work, their profession, their relationship,

(18:49):
their finances, their challenges in their life, it opens up
a complete different can of worms in a medical setting
for them to understand their life on a spectrum scale,
to really understand why this is really pinching, what is
bugging them, what is bothering them, And then at the
cost of busyness, you sacrifice your happiness. People are becoming

(19:16):
more busy. They have a lot of time scarcity, and
especially the mean time that what they want to do
for themselves. Because you and me can have endless conversation,
do yoga, do meditation, do breathing, exercise, find time to
do oil massage, spend some time outdoors, get enough sunlight.

(19:38):
But I don't have time for any of these things
that you're telling me. Forget about cooking, stalking healthy organic
foods in my pantry, spending time to sit down to it.
We live in a culture of busyness. Is that right
where the country who's invented drive through coffee? For God's sake? Who?

(20:01):
And that business is the crux of the issue, because
then at the end of the day, you think, that
is my time, so to surf on social media, to
look at all good and bad things, to catch up
everything that you could not do because you were working,
And then you drift up to eleven past midnight, and
then that last bus that was supposed to take you

(20:23):
there to the land of sleep has already sailed, and
so you're knocking and turning, you're opening and closing the
refrigerator door, and then you go to sleep way too late,
and you wake up dull, heavy, groggy, and you will
need one or two espresso shots to get you going.
And then those unwanted amount of caffeine deregulates everything else,

(20:45):
your appetite, your hunger, your metabolic function, your energy reserves,
and then you don't know what has hit you. And
then come weekend, and then you have a license to
eat late and sleep late Friday night, Saturday night late.
Waking up Sunday morning is as if you have taken
a cross country flight and you have woken up in
a different time zone every weekend, and those three hours

(21:09):
of time zone change takes about three to four days
for you to normalize things in your body, in your physiology.
And then Thursday one more time and you start it
all over again. And millennials are literally broke with the
money and the time both at times.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Because hard for us out here. Listen, millennial life is tough.

Speaker 7 (21:34):
I mean so I respect that, but I understand that
that what are the priorities. The priorities is your health
because at the end of the day, how you feel
is going to decide everything what you attract or you
fail to attract in your life.

Speaker 6 (21:49):
Yeah, and again I think when people understand and that's
like in the book, we do talk about all the
sleep sciences telling us not only are there more issues
with a Q illness. We know that when you don't sleep,
while your immune system doesn't work as well, you know,
feel sick more more often. But also with the time change,

(22:10):
you know that we've just recently gone through when you
when you lose an hour of sleep, the percentage of
accidents goes up dramatically the next day. And you know,
our body is very trainable, and so when we lose
that hour of sleep, it's it's not insignificant. And so
not only does acute illness and acute accidents go up,

(22:31):
but chronic disease. I think that's been the biggest finding
in science anyway.

Speaker 5 (22:36):
I mean, I think I r V.

Speaker 6 (22:37):
The always recognized that you know, you can put things
off and you can think nothing's going on. We can
kind of trick ourselves that nothing's happening. But at you know,
my biological level, there's increased inflammation in the body and
increased inflammation is the root cause of all the chronic diseases.
So it's no wonder they've linked lack of quantity but

(23:00):
also quality and regularity of sleep, all of those things
are associated with an increased risk of every chronic disease
as well. And so you know, it's it's a sad
you know, sometimes we don't want to face reality. But
the reality is that, you know, we can miss some
sleep and we can try to, you know, recalibrate, but

(23:21):
if you're doing that day after day, week after week,
year after year, our biology is.

Speaker 5 (23:26):
Feeling it in our brain, you know.

Speaker 6 (23:28):
And so you know, they've even linked lack of quality
sleep to dementia and cognitive health. My god, I mean, yeah,
I mean it sounds so daunting. But the good news
is that when we can create a healthy daily lifestyle.

(23:48):
You know, and we say a irvay that the quality
of our night depends on the quality of our day,
and the quality we know the quality of our day
depends on the quality of our night. So we we do,
we can epowered that we do have the ability to
create a natural, restorative sleep, and then it not only
reduces our risk of all the chronic diseases, but that's

(24:10):
when we can also tap into our deepest creativity, our
highest potential meaning purpose.

Speaker 5 (24:16):
Our mood is better, you.

Speaker 6 (24:18):
Know, And I think so many of the things we're
looking outside of ourselves for.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Oh my gosh, I yes, you know, as someone that
lives with chronic pain and automine symptoms, like I my
whole life have been searching for answers with my body
right and came into those answers once I really changed,
like my lifestyle significantly. But sleep was one of those

(24:42):
things where I had no idea what I was missing,
because sometimes I give up sleep for absolutely no good reason,
like sometimes you know, life is overwhelming and overbearing, and
you might be in a season where you're working really
hard and don't really have other options. But when I finally,

(25:03):
like six years ago, I start taking sleep really seriously,
and now I get about nine hours of sleep at night.
The way that changed my body has been miraculous, Like
the inflammation, the pain that I feel, like, yeah, like
your ability to be present in your life. It's just

(25:23):
it's hard to even quantify, like how big and massive
of a difference, and it really does inform everything else
about your health.

Speaker 6 (25:31):
Yeah, it really does. I mean the research is just
you know, it's undeniable. You know that physical health and
also mental health. You know, when we don't sleep, we
have an increased risk of depression, anxiety, you know, we can't.

Speaker 5 (25:44):
Focus or concentrate.

Speaker 6 (25:46):
And then in the trauma world too, they've looked significantly
at the association would sleep in trauma, and you know,
it's cyclical, like when we have trauma sometimes we have
difficulty sleeping, and we talk about that. There's a whole
chapter in the book that talk about that. But then
also when we don't sleep, then we can't heal the
trauma either, and so you know, cyclical.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
I mean, that's going to be that is a revolutionary
chapter to have in the book, you know, like that
to that link, My god, my god.

Speaker 6 (26:16):
Yeah, I know, it's it's really incredible. And so again,
all of the practices are important. But you know, the
more I learned, and even as I you know, did
even further research for the book, it's just and I
had already started asking people as part of when they
come to see me as a physician, like how's your sleep?
Like every physical and even honestly, when people come in

(26:38):
with any health issue, one of the questions I repeatedly
ask every time, is how's your sleep? And one way
people can really assess themselves do you wake up feeling rested?
And so it doesn't have to be complicated. If the
answer is no, then there's something to look at there.

Speaker 4 (26:58):
Deeply.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Well, you both write about in the book how disrupted
sleep isn't just a physical imbalance, but it often can
represent like an emotional or even a spiritual imbalance. So
what are some of the deeper, more unseen factors that
you've observed that prevent people from truly resting and how

(27:21):
do we begin to tend to them?

Speaker 7 (27:23):
Well, I think this is an excellent discussion because this
combines the reality of whatever human body is. It is
a perfect tripod of body, mind, and spirit. So when
you sleep or when you don't sleep, there's an impact

(27:44):
that affects your body. We are talking about weight gain,
we are talking about even one night of sleep deprivation
can put you into a pre diabetic state, even one
night of okay, and so we're talking about type two diabetes, overweight, obcity, dyslipidemia,

(28:06):
metabolic syndrome, chronic inflammation, autoimmune condition. Because from a physical perspective,
sleep is one of the most potent anti inflammatory activity
and immunomodulatory activity one will ever do in their lifetime.
Let me people, sleep is one of the most potent

(28:29):
anti inflammatory and immunomodulatory activity one will ever do in
their lifetime. And so for us not prioritizing that where
we know in fact that our nervous system and immune
system is more or less one and the same thing.
Nowadays we call our immune system a circulating nervous system,
so they are eavesdropping on every conversation. So whatever goes

(28:53):
on into your nervous system is affecting your immune system,
and we are worried about the cascade of the autoimmune
conditions that people have nowadays. So body is important, but
mind is even more important because your thoughts, feeling, sensations, images,
experiences that you have shoved under the carpet of your

(29:14):
body all day long needs to be processed, needs to
be catalog needs to be eliminated to a certain extent,
and some of the good one needs to be cataloged
for a good memory and good cognition itself. So there's
a lot of mental and emotional work that happens in
the night. We like to call from a Vedic perspective,

(29:34):
sleep as the goddess. I love your name, Davy, because
that's what you call Nitra Devi is the goddess of sleep.
That you go back into the womb of creation one
more time where your soul is nurtured, you feel rejuvenated,
you do detoxification, do the rejuvenation in deep states of sleep.

(29:58):
So mind is something which is getting the biggest benefit.
And why does the mind get the biggest benefit because
you withdraw the senses in the night. You do the
sensory withdrawal, which is so difficult to do during the
day but happens effortlessly in the night. That's the bathing
that the mind needs in the night. And doctor Sheila

(30:19):
will talk about it where we do the glymphatic cleansing
through our brain. Our brain needs detoxification, which happens in
deep sleep. And the last one, And I love the
tagline of your show, consciousness meets the complexity of being human.
It's phenomenal because we are very complex human being. We

(30:39):
bring in a lot of karma and not to be
thrown off with this world, a lot of karmic things.
The people that we meet, the experience, we have relationship
that we cultivate jobs that we do every day is
some kind of karmic interaction and that trains that creates
our life, that creates a reality. So you need a

(31:02):
spiritual escape. You can find that in through some meditation
during the day. But twenty minutes of meditation, how far
can you go, how easily you can slip in the
gap in between the thoughts. But in deep sleep you
are able to transcend and meet that feeld because your
senses are bedrawn, your mind becomes inert and inactive, and

(31:25):
you get a glimpse of your divine reality. So in
the deep sleep, the Goddess of sleep brings you the
closest possible reality. And interestingly, you use the word death
and dying because one of the biggest fear that people
have going to sleep. We use a term in medicine
colors somniphobia, where people are fearful of going to bed

(31:50):
alone and not able to sleep. Not able to sleep,
they are fearful of their own thoughts. Because I think
when we are tuning into our own radio station, we
are very scared, and that is correlated with the darkness
and the fear of death together, So illuminating sleep creating

(32:13):
luminosity in the sleep, making sleep away from tarmacic to
a state of sotwik fere quality of and numerous meditations,
numerous techniques, sensory scanning things we have mentioned in the book.
So from the science perspective, we only know what are
the stages and what happened the electrical activity in the brain.

(32:34):
We still don't know why we sleep and where do
we go when we sleep? So in vary wisdom, there's
so much of description that we have tried to create
a perfect blend in this book to create an understanding
that not only you can get a good night's sleep,
but you can tap into your most important creative potential

(32:56):
of your life where you wake up with a heightened
state of awareness and start seeing the manifestation of everything,
of all the seed that you have planted in your
deep sleep.

Speaker 6 (33:10):
Yeah, I know, it's sleeps like again, one of the
most powerful practices we can engage in.

Speaker 5 (33:16):
And it's like so natural. I mean, it should be right.

Speaker 7 (33:19):
And so.

Speaker 6 (33:20):
When you were asking about you know what interferes with that?
It is like as doctor Suhas was mentioning, it's a
lot of it is the mind. You know, our own
thoughts are what's interfering with our sleep, and so there
needs to be some emotional regulatory work, you know, going
back and resolving any unresolved emotions or stories that we're

(33:43):
holding on to that are replaying at night. And so
the mind and our own thoughts are one of the
things that can really interfere with with our sleep. So
we also give some journaling practices or some simple things.
You know, Sometimes people it can feel a little intimidating, like, oh,
I have to sort out all my emotions, but it's really,
you know, I'm not going to fall asleep for the light,

(34:06):
you know, for the.

Speaker 5 (34:07):
Next fifty years, literally the next lifetime. But it's really
just little things and they accumulate, you know. It's just
like like like cleaning.

Speaker 6 (34:17):
You know, you dust a few things off, and every
time you go back, you know, it gets more clear
and clear and clear, and then you have this kind
of clear, aluminous sleep that doctor Suhaus was talking about.
And another whole chapter in the book we talk about
is the senses, because as he said, our senses are
constantly pulling us outward and in iervy that the senses
are the gateways to the mind, and it really is true.

(34:41):
So everything that comes into our senses needs to be digested,
as we say, and processed. It's information, and it goes
to the nervous system. And when the nervous system is
overloaded by sensory overload, guess what. We live in a
world of sensory overload, don't we. There's low, constant light,
constant noise. I mean, you can't go anywhere, even grocery

(35:01):
shopping or anything without you know, music playing and just
noise all the time. We were talking about that earlier,
but just like in every way and even you know
what we're looking at and screen time and all of that.
So you know, slowly kind of looking at your life
and asking, you know, where can I decompress my nervous

(35:22):
system a little bit? And this sensory overload that's going on,
and all that information actually goes right, Everything that comes
into the sensus goes right to the emotional part of
the brain. It's called the limbic brain, and that so
all of that has to get processed in much the
same way our emotions get processed.

Speaker 5 (35:40):
And so if your.

Speaker 6 (35:40):
Sensory overloaded and there's a lot of emotional stuff that
we're kind of stuffing down that will definitely disrupt our sleep,
whether it's coming up in dreams or not allowing us
to get into the deep sleep stages that we need
to be. Yeah, because a nervous system if and it
sometimes this is actually the case, like there's been trauma

(36:03):
and our nervous system to protect us has learned to
just be on high alert all the time. And so
the last thing you want to do is fall into
a deep sleep that doesn't feel safe, you know. And
so we have to just kind of teach our nervous
system through proper sensory input, through emotional work that it
is safe to go to sleep.

Speaker 7 (36:23):
And I think it's not always that it's a huge
trauma on your nervous system or a poor childhood experience
that you had. It's just the busyness and the pace
of life which is making everything disconnected from your bodily function.
And we are clinicians and we see these people every day.

(36:44):
They because it's ironic for us to write a book
about we are biologically programmed to fall asleep and stay
a sleep eight nine hours every night, is that right?
So we are biologically programmed to be hungry at the
right time, to be thirsty at the right time. But
people are writing books about when to eat, when to exercise,

(37:09):
when to sleep, how to breathe. For God's sake, okay,
because these are all signs that we are becoming disconnected
from over poor functioning. The pace of life is so
maddening that you want to be constantly rushing to something
somewhere God knows what. And then these simple urges we

(37:30):
call it as vega in Irbia. These are urges. Okay.
We don't have to tell you when you should be
thirsty or hungry, or sleepy, or you need to cough
or sneeze. These are natural urges. These are physiological urges
of the body. And the pace of life is what
is making it even more disconnected. So if you just

(37:52):
click the word sleep on Google or Internet, you will
have our nine hundred million searches that will show up.
If you go to Apple or Google Store and click
for a sleep related app, you have about seven to
eight thousand different apps that come up which the weariable
has their own challenges at time, because many times it

(38:16):
gives people anxiety that tells you that God, you're not sleeping,
and your sleep tells your story next day that you're
not breathing properly, you're not sleeping properly, so that data
is good but can also make you even more anxious
at time. Yes, that is fine, true, fine line.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Yeah, yeah, So how you know speaking to that right,
like the fact that there are now like thousands of
apps for sleep, which like it's such a double edged sword.
I'm like grateful you exist, and like get off the apps,
like get off your phone. You know, it's like it's
just it's insane. We are in insane times. But you know,

(39:00):
considering that, how how did you choose to approach this topic?
What was it about sleep where you said, we really
need to get all of this information out and we're
going to join forces to do it.

Speaker 7 (39:15):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (39:15):
You know it started several years ago and we were
actually talking to deep Buk about you know, we were
at an event and we were just talking and sleep
came up and we were, you know, all just chatting
about how challenging people are finding sleep because again, it's
i think just gotten worse and worse over time.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (39:34):
And then he said, well you should write a book
about it. So you know when deep.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Buk said something true, deepalk fashion, right, He's like yep,
I will, I will drop everything now.

Speaker 5 (39:45):
Yeah, And he was.

Speaker 6 (39:46):
So kind to write the forward to the book as well,
because you know, obviously these teachings he's been passionate about
his whole life as well, so you know, and again
as doctor Suis and I have both mean seeing patients
for decades and have witnessed this incre in just getting
totally disconnected. And you'll see in the book we definitely
talk about sleep and specific practices for that, but so

(40:08):
much of it comes back to how is your day
to day lifestyle because that's what's going to help you
cultivate healthy sleep. It's also going to get you, you know,
healthier in all the ways you know, nutrition and movement
and all of it goes together. So we you know,
we do mention that, but you know, we really decided
we wanted to give people a perspective of sleep that's

(40:29):
you know, how important it is. Then we also wanted
people to appreciate this basic perspective of the creativity and
the consciousness and all of the different mystical aspects of sleep.
And technology definitely, yes, is there, but we I think
before we use technology, we want to connect with ourselves.
So I actually did start wearing something and I didn't

(40:52):
think I would like it, but I actually.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
Do and I noticed your ordering.

Speaker 5 (40:55):
Yes, yeah, and I didn't think I would. I enjoyed.

Speaker 6 (40:58):
Someone talked me into doing and I thought, oh, okay,
I should play around with the technology because people are
using it, but I commit to checking in with myself first,
you know, when I wake up, how do I feel?
And then then it's kind of fun to look at data.
And we are a data society, and data has been helpful,
you know. And one of the other things is it
can give insights over time. It will you know, you

(41:20):
can notice patterns of when I do X y Z, drink.

Speaker 5 (41:24):
Too late, eat too late, exercise too late.

Speaker 6 (41:27):
Oh it does actually impact my deep sleep or oh
I do actually get less rem sleep or whatever it is.
So so it's helpful, but I think we really wanted
to focus on just first and foremost, asking yourself what
you need and checking in with yourself and the signals
your body is sending you, and then you know, and
then use the data compliment you know, complimentarily.

Speaker 5 (41:50):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Yeah, wow, I am so excited about this book. This
is like I never imagine I'd be someone that was
passionate about sleep because I used to run from it, like,
oh my gosh, Well, I.

Speaker 5 (42:02):
Think the days of thinking it's just a waste of
time are over.

Speaker 7 (42:05):
You know.

Speaker 5 (42:06):
The science really keeps us from that denial.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
And actually that is I think really what the misconception
is at like a base level for people that it
is like wasted time, that that time is actually not
important in doing all these things right, nothing is going
on here.

Speaker 6 (42:24):
So I mean a lot of the science too, is
like we're realizing sleep is more active than when we're
waking at times, you know, especially reround sleep, and you know,
the brain is more active during dream sleep than it
is even when we're awake, and there's so much like
memory consolidation and emotional processing even happening during dream states.

Speaker 5 (42:41):
And you know, and.

Speaker 6 (42:42):
Then again the amount of physical healing that's going on
during deep sleep, you know, cell regeneration, repairing of tissues.
I think doctor suhas had mentioned earlier that glymphatic system
of like cleaning out the brain but also the whole
body of waste proteins and things that can create a flace.
And it's such an active process. There's so much going

(43:03):
on that we don't want to be a way to
interfere with that.

Speaker 7 (43:08):
Well, I think there's a much bigger picture they we hear,
and the bigger picture is is the collective consciousness. We
live in a sleep deprived culture. Is that right? You
said one in three people do not sleep well at all.
So when you don't sleep well, you have inflammation, and

(43:30):
because of inflammation, you don't get a good night's sleep.
So inflammation leads to hostile tendencies in your mind and heart.
It creates anger and depression at the same time, it
creates impatience. And then we have a country currently where
we are churning consciousness and globally, I would say, and

(43:52):
every time there's a good and bad piece of news
that you're watching right before you go to sleep, God,
it's either going to make you anger or is going
to make you worry about your future. No matter what happens,
it does an impact. So last thing, what you watch,
what you experience right before you sleep, is so impactful
for the quality of the sleep. So if you're doing

(44:15):
a self reflective journaling that we mentioned in the book,
if you're doing a sensory scan, if you are recapitulating
your entire day, if you're doing a gratitude based meditation,
if you're doing a self care ritual, imagine the impact
that you wake up as a healthy, happy individual and
it leads to happy families, leads to healthy nations, and

(44:38):
lead to the piece. It's not a mistake that you
use the word piece instead of sleep because shan shanti,
which is peace, and ahimsa, which is nonviolent, they are synonyms.
So the word nonviolence in peace is the same meaning
shanty and ahimsa is the same. So sleep is definitely

(45:02):
correlated with nonviolence and peacefulness. And just to give you
an interesting example, I don't know how have you traveled
in the Southeast Asia. You go everywhere where Buddhist culture
was so prevalent, and there are huge statues of reclining Buddhas. Fact, yes,

(45:26):
you're talking about one hundred meters long statues of sleeping
Buddha sleeping in a state of enlightenment and awakens. That's
what those statues are is something that you can be
asleep from the maya of the illusion of the life
and still be awake understanding that this doesn't bug you.

(45:48):
You are immune from this. Your thought process, your internal state,
your interroceptive awareness, should not be affected by the turbulence
that you see outside. And I think that's the very
premise of this book. Avacancy.

Speaker 4 (46:02):
Wow wow wow, yes, deeply. Well.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
I think we'll end on this note. I would love
if each of you could share one thing with the audience,
that is soul work, so way to kind of integrate
everything that they've Those listening have been kind of moving
through and hearing all of this and receiving all of
this information. And I know for many it is life changing.

(46:37):
This is it. It sounds simple, the word sleep, but
this is profound. This is a profound shift forward in
your life and your healing in your body. And doctor Sewells,
I'll tell you more about this off air. But I
wrote about you in my book. I don't know if

(46:58):
you've seen it yet, but I talked about publish.

Speaker 5 (47:03):
Yes we do.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Shout out to Nana, our editor too. I wrote about
you in the book and I thanked you in the
in the back. But I talked about my experience, my
very first time doing medical astrology with you, and it
was just I mean, and I'm an astrology girly, but
like it was life changing because specifically you were going

(47:29):
over like my physical body, like the things that were
in my chart that were representing certain afflictions. And you also, yeah,
you gave me a lot. I share a very funny
story about my divorce some information you gave me in
that session in the book. But you know, I think
back to the back to the matter at hand. I

(47:50):
would love to ask each of you to share with
the audience as they're integrating this information and really just
the endless potential in front of them right now for
working with their sleep and their health. What is one practice,
one piece of soul work that everyone can take with
them today to start today. And it could be an

(48:11):
actual practice, or it could be a quote, a thought starter,
a journalinge prompt, but anything that you think is relevant
to this conversation about sleep. And I'll start with you,
doctor Suhas.

Speaker 7 (48:23):
I think we have mentioned this clearly in the book,
and there's a lot of science to these not one,
but two simple things that I'm going to tell you.
One is your daylight exposure to sunlight. The exposure to
sunlight will literally decide the quality of sleep that you
get in the night. Wow, how much time to spend
outdoors and sleep in sunlight that will decide to quality

(48:47):
of suoslyp. And the second is time restricted feeding, what
simply means is solar nutrition. So when the sun is
waking up in the morning, you have a lighter breakfast.
When the sun is in the middle of the sky
at zenith, you have the biggest meal in the biggest
calori meal of the day in the middle of the day.
And when the sun is setting in the evening, you

(49:07):
make your meal lighter and eat three hours before you sleep.
So if you adopt these two things, I promise you
fifty percent of all your sleeping problem will go away
and the rest will be taken care by your mindfulness
based activities.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Thank you, doctor Sheila.

Speaker 6 (49:27):
Yeah, I think for me personally, and we talk about
it in the book as well as he just said that.
You know the last the other fifty percent is the mind.
And so I'll share two. I won't tell the whole story.
But I'm a Kaffa type, as doctor su has had
mentioned early on Earth and Water type, So I've never
had trouble sleep like I am. I head it's a

(49:48):
pillow and I'm like asleep. The sleep is our superpower
for all the Kafas out there, you know, all of
the different mind body types have their balconies and basements,
as we say, but our balcony is superpower of sleep.
So however, it was kind of, you know, speaking of
your divorce when I was going through mine as well,
like thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, and for the first

(50:11):
time in my life, I couldn't sleep and I was
so perplexed, and I I was just learning about journaling
at that time, and I thought, well, let me give
this a try.

Speaker 5 (50:20):
I don't know about this journaling thing. I've never you know,
I'd never done.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
It, and it's awkward to approach at first.

Speaker 5 (50:25):
It is.

Speaker 6 (50:26):
Yeah, I mean, I'm like sometimes the biggest skeptic because
and that's what I would encourage people. If there's anything
you're the most skeptical about, try that because there's some
there's some reason you are and it could be leading
you toward the number one thing. So that's so I
just thought, Okay, I'm going to try this journaling thing.
And it wasn't like the deepest journaling for hours before,
but it was like literally because I couldn't sleep, I

(50:47):
just took out a notebook and I wrote on everything
that was on my mind, like dumping it all out,
and then a couple of like intentions you know that
I wanted, you know, to carry through the you know,
things that were going on, and I closed an open
and I just zonked out. And I woke up the
next morning and I thought, oh, that was a coincidence.
I'm so tired because I haven't been sleeping, but that

(51:08):
night I did the same thing, conked.

Speaker 5 (51:10):
Out and had good sleep, you know.

Speaker 6 (51:12):
And so then that started a journey for me toward
you know, doing more emotional work and realizing that connection.
So in addition, you know, to the things doctors to usaid,
I would say, try try the journalist. It's like literally
a two minute practice.

Speaker 5 (51:27):
You know. No, you know, it's not like spend twenty
minutes doing this before bed. You know. We put the
practice in the book and it takes two minutes before bed.
And I think that.

Speaker 6 (51:36):
Was pretty pretty life changing for me during a really
challenging time.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Yeah, And I want to really like highlight what you're
expressing in that and that when you're doing that journaling,
you're not also trying to find the solution right right right,
like you are getting it out so it's out of you,
so that there is space to sleep. But you're not saying,
I'm journaling this this down, you know, for the next

(52:02):
forty five minutes, and I'm going to explore every fiber
of it and then come up with it. You're like, no,
I'm just emptying what's present in my mind. So there's space.

Speaker 6 (52:11):
Yeah, and then within that space, and this is the
exact practice we have in the book. You know, you
dumb or again recapitulate your day. If there's nothing, you know,
dramatic going on, you can just write about your day
very objectively and say, no, I'm letting that go. And
you've created space, and now what do you want to
put in that space? What do you want to plant
in your thought you know, in your mind garden. Yeah,
and so very simply just write down three things, three

(52:34):
intentions or even affirmations. I did affirmations, but just three one, two, three,
And you know, because every night you get to plant
more seeds, so it's you don't have to feel like,
oh no, I only have tonight to do this, you know,
and then you close with three things you're grateful for.
You know, we talked about gratitude and as doctor Sue
has said that, you know, that's then you close it,
you put it away, you lay down, I focus on

(52:55):
my breast, you know, until you drift off to sleep.
That's the last thing that you've planned. You've fertilized your
seeds with gratitude, and that's what you're taking into sleep
with you instead of all the weeds.

Speaker 5 (53:07):
All the job.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Oh so good, so good. Everyone start there. Know that
you are approaching a whole new practice and lifestyle with
this book. So if you're not having, you know, amazing
sleep the first night you're teaching yourself, you're stretching your
capacity to really be able to get there. So their
new book, Doctor Suhas, Doctor Sheila, It is called Awakened

(53:31):
Sleep and Irvetic Approach to Getting Deep, Reast and Unlocking
Optimal Health. Beautiful cover. Everybody, go get it. There is
nothing truly more important than you can be working on
with yourself and with your body, because it's so foundational
to all the other kinds of work that you'll get
to do with yourself wherever you're at on your journey.

(53:54):
Everything for Doctor Suhas and Doctor Sheila is linked in
the notes of this show, So go to their instagram,
their website. You have an amazing newsletter out doctor Shila
that I love getting in my inbox, so be sure
to sign up for that. And thank you both, doctor Suhas,
doctor Sheila. I love you both so much. I admire
you both so much. Thank you for being on the show.

Speaker 5 (54:17):
Thank you and love back to you. Thank you for
everything you do.

Speaker 6 (54:21):
And yeah, we really hope people have RESTful nights, enlightened
lives through the book.

Speaker 5 (54:27):
And yeah, thanks for having us.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Yeah, thank you, Thank you, doctor Sue Haas, thank.

Speaker 7 (54:33):
You, Avivish you all the best. I hope you touch
a billion lives and create a cusp of collective consciousness
that you're shifting and churning the entire humanity.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Oh yes, me too. Ah Shay, everyone, we will be
back next week. Thank you so much for listening again.
And I really hope that everyone just tries to take
a little bit of this and plant in your life.
Just a first step, no matter how slowly it goes,

(55:04):
you have your whole life, So just start now. Mistay,
the content presented on Deeply Wells serves solely for educational
and informational purposes. It should not be considered a replacement
for personalized medical or mental health guidance, and does not
constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, it is advisable

(55:27):
to consult with your healthcare provider or health team for
any specific concerns or questions that you may have. Connect
with me on social at Debbie Brown. That's Twitter and Instagram,
or you can go to my website Debbie Brown dot com.
And if you're listening to the show on Apple Podcasts,
don't forget, Please rate, review, and subscribe and send this

(55:50):
episode to a friend. Deeply Well is a production of
iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Network. It's produced by Jacquess Thomas,
Samantha Timmins, and Mebbie Brown. The Beautiful Soundbath You Heard
That's by Jarrelyn Glass from Crystal Cadence. For more podcasts
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(56:12):
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Awakened Sleep with Dr Sheila Patel & Dr Suhas Kshirsagar