March 11, 2020 • 28 mins
Do you ever find yourself making excuses for why you like to sleep? Well, apologize no more!
Or is a lack of or inability to sleep is something you struggle with? Regardless of where your Fitbit assesses you, accept our invitation today and join us as we explore sweet sweet slumber.
One of the most powerful and accessible ways we can slip into the Astral World is through sleep. It's our power move to rest, restore and recharge emotionally, mentally and physically. Dream states help us process all we absorb here in Earth School and strengthen our connection to the Spiritual Realm.
Join Brenda and Julie as they share tips and techniques to help you harness the power of sleep, guiding you toward greater clarity, focus, and healing of your mind, body, and spirit.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, y'all, I'm Julie. Hi there, I'm Brenda. Welcome to
Insider's Guide to the Other Side. Now y'all need to
know that we are obsessed with everything on the other side.
Yes we are, because once you learn to navigate the
energetic or two song the invisible world light is going
to be more fun and much more serene. Heck, yes
(00:24):
it can, because, let's be honest, Brand, earth school is hard.
In fact, you taught me that. Let's crush earth School together.
Welcome to Insider's Guide to the Other Side, a production
of I Heart Rating It. Hi Brand, Hello, Julie, you
didn't call me your own that what happens? I'm trying
(00:45):
something new, trying to be all formal at all. So
last week we talked about the astro plane, and I
actually mentioned that we're going to do a three part series.
I'm not sure I told everybody what it was about. Details, right,
silly details. But it's actually about sleep because when we
(01:06):
talked about the astro plane, we talked about the the
unconscious way that we go into that space is while
we sleep. And the thing I just want to say
about that is when we sleep, it can be a
real power move obviously for our physical body to rest
and restore and recharge, but also in the spiritual world
as well. So that's why it weaves in here. We're done,
(01:28):
were over, That's why we sleep. Goodbye. We're taking a nap.
I have to because you don't like to confess as
much as I possibly can. I've been incredibly obsessed with
sleep since my fiftieth birthday. Those didn't know I'm fifty,
and I bought myself a garment watch, and on this
(01:50):
watch it measures my sleep patterns. I didn't even honestly,
I didn't even know what they all were before I
had this watch. There's so many things that I should
be paying attention to that I don't like. Why at
fifty am I discovering that there is deep sleep, light sleep,
and rim sleep. I knew. I knew ran because of
the band the band Oh my God. And so now
(02:13):
I track my sleep and it has been the greatest
thing I think I've done. I also tracked my steps,
but we're not talking about Julie steps today. This is
about why we sleep. So Brent, you also track yours.
In fact, we send each other screenshots of our sleep
pattern from the night before and it's hilarious because just
like we're big contrast during the waking hours, weekly have
(02:38):
like contrast about how we sleep. I don't move when
I sleep. You hit like this little button and says movement,
and it looks like I'm dead. I mean, it's kind
of like I think Suzanne must take like a mirror
and put it up against my nose every morning to
see if I'm alive, because I don't think that I
move at all. But that aside, Brent, what's your take
on why we sleep? I mean, I know you said
that it's about resting our body and letting our soul explore,
(03:00):
but like, give us some more details in depth about
why we sleep. So many reasons right, because we are
multidimensional beings, so the benefits we gain from sleep are
also multidimensional. Sleeping and dreaming emotionally, energetically, mentally, we are
literally trying to work through things that we didn't get
(03:21):
to process during the day, Like we didn't get to
close things out, we didn't get to decide how we
felt about that, and sometimes we will literally create dreams
to work things out, and it can be something that
happened during the day, is something that happened ten years
ago or longer. Like, we are trying to make sense
of our world on multiple levels. So that's sleeping and dreaming. Physically,
(03:41):
we do a lot of repair in the brain. In
the blood, right, the liver gets to cleanse the blood
while we sleep. It's doing it all the time. But
the big factors are really cleansing the blood. Deliver kicks
into high gear in this way. Also, the nervous system
gets to calm to out right, we would get very
stimulated during the day and so the parasympathetic nervous system
(04:04):
can kick back in and reset. So last night I
was reading because I do this a lot, especially before
we do a show obviously, and I was studying and
let's get a little ubbed up before show, and I
was reading what you had said because over my notes
about our liver cleansing our blood. And so last night
I'm like tapping on my liver, Sid, are you doing
your jaw? Are you cleaning my blood? I didn't know
(04:27):
that's what you did, well, I said, but you better
be doing it. It's doing it all the time, and
it is just more and really helpful thing to do.
If so, remember the liver cleanses the blood, but it
also cleanses emotions, right because the blood represents the fluidity
or the water in our body, and because of that,
it cares the emotional charge. People who are really angry
(04:50):
will literally have livers that look like their alcoholics because
the toxicity that anger holds. So you really wanted to
care of that liver. So if I've been upset about something,
I will literally fall asleep with my left hand underneath
my right ribs because that's what the liver. I'm doing
that right now, and it's a it's a big organ
(05:12):
that livers a bit. There's a role I'm trying to
get proper, like I got it. Remember when you're when
you're lying down. So in this way, you know, just
give me a little extra like, oh I worked too
hard today, I'm sorry I was so upset, or you
know something like that. Give it just a little extra
boost can be helpful. It reminds me of the Hindu
(05:34):
god Lord Ganesh, where every day is a new day.
I mean, he's also the remover of obstacles, but it's
he's also representing he guards every threshold. So every day
he's guarding every day, every dawn and so it's a
new it's a new one, and so that sleep helps
us start a new right. Yes, that's the most poetic
(05:55):
you'll ever hear me on this show. That was beautiful.
Beauty is where they from. But that was weird. I
don't either, because probably because we have a like seven
foot conness in our backyard. That could be Why, yeah,
that could That's a good idea. And if you have
a seven foot connection, you're a backyard. Please send me
pictures of yours and I will send you pictures of mine.
(06:16):
Obviously it's working nicely done, thank you, because I sleep
nine to ten hours a night. Now. That's so nice.
Now did you do that before you watch? Now? Before
you for real? No? For real, though, I because I
focus on it now. It's a priority. And now I'm
sleeping like I was, like I did in college. The
only thing I'm missing is watching la Vernon surely at
(06:37):
eleven thirty every morning. That was my college curriculous. That
sounds like another episode, Okay, I have so. So we
also want to sleep so that we get dreamtime because
dream time is really critical for it and people miss
it if they don't have it. I've had more people
(06:57):
come to me after they've read my book talk because
I had talked about some dream stuff in there that
they're like, how can I dream again? I I miss it? Well,
of course they miss it. They're not sorting the ship
out right. And I would also offer that not always,
but often we don't remember our dreams. So even though
you're dreaming, you may not have conscious memory of it,
(07:18):
but you're still getting the benefit from it. And then
there are also people who are not dreaming for different reasons.
What kind of reasons do people not dream? They're not
in bed long enough, you're not sleeping long enough. You
have suffered trauma, and the system that is set up
to help you move through things is fried and you
can't get through it. Let's talk about some ways that
can help people sleep and they can get reconnected to
that essential part of being human. What are some of
(07:41):
the things that people can do to sleep better? All
kinds of things, and I've tried many of them, because
sleeping is not always been my gift. Now I was
gonna say, you are not the best sleeper I've ever met.
I have other gifts. You have so many it's not
even funny, but sleeping has totally But you have definitely
tried them all. In my arivedics aties. They have all
(08:01):
kinds of things to help reset systems, specifically for sleep
warm milk with certain spices in it. And is it
like golden milk where put like the nutmeg? And I
would I would highly encourage everyone to look up golden
milk and the recipe for it and make it. It's incredible,
and you can add it to almond milk. You cannot
add it to different went dairy drinkers. In our house
(08:24):
we use almond milk or just any nut milks are good.
Washing your feet before bed is one of the traditions
to help just literally wash away the day. And why
is that? Because what's at the bottom of our favor
and the largest pores in our body where you can
soak up the stuff? Well, I learned that from you
when you taught an Oil's class oils and in New
(08:45):
York about the pores on our feet. And I'm like,
I did not know that. Sometimes I feel like my
soul is brand new. Sometimes I feel like this is
my first visit here. How did I not know these things?
Welcome to the planet. And sometimes I feel like I've
been here forever. Both are true. So restorative yoga is
(09:07):
also something or yin yoga is also something that you
can practice and there are a lot of classes all
over or online to help reset the nervous system. Right,
So when our sympathetic nervous system or worn flight, fight
and freeze, we need want to reset it to the
parasympathetic nervous system, which is rest and digest. And you
know when you can't stop your mind or your you
(09:29):
have heartache or you're worried about something, that's when the
sympathetic nervous system is active, and we want to reset
that to the parasympathetic nervous system. And a good way
to do that is if you can they call it
legs up the wall. So basically you can double over
a yoga blanket or a pillow or a couch cushion
or something and bring the cushion or the blanket near
(09:50):
the wall and put your hips against the wall so
you're in that corner of the wall on the floor,
and put your legs up the wall and lay your
spine on the floor. Can I do that now and
then you can put your hand on your liver. I
could find it that so, and the reason you want
to lift the hips just a little bit. Is because
when your hips are above your heart, it helps the
(10:10):
nervous system calm down. I'm going to try that tonight.
It feels so good. It feels really good. If you
have tight hamstrings, you would want to slide the blanket
away from the wall, look like an inch or two
so that it's not so hard on the hamstrings. Wow,
so little credit, there was little that was amazing. Actually
credit the one that I also love that you taught
(10:31):
me because I've gone in and out of sleeping well
and not sleeping at all, and especially during grief. For me,
I don't sleep, like when my mom died and then
when Mona died, and I've had a lot of people
that my sleep is terrible, like this is a few hours,
you know. So grieving was not a good sleep time
for me, and I wish it was because then I
(10:51):
could escape. But I'm like literally laying in my grief
and you had said to me about counting backwards from
a hunt read in my head. Do you want to
tell everybody that really how to do it? Or Julie's version,
because yours is probably right now. My version, my my
version is that I started a hundred, I go backwards,
(11:12):
and all I see in my mind's eye is that number,
and every once in a while I'll have them be
puffyed like clouds. You get creative, or oh, I totally
get creative about it, or like sho it looks like sheep.
I mean like I've done all sorts of things with
what my number should look like. And between each one,
I take a breath, because it's not a race that
you said. Your job is not to get to zero.
(11:35):
Your job is to fall aslate to pass to pass out.
And so I learned to do the breathing and counting backwards,
and it works. It really works. It's like a meditation.
It is because you're giving your mind something singularly to
focus on, and anytime it floats somewhere else, you just
bring it right back to the number. Picture it, change it,
(11:57):
turn it around, and another change your numbers. Make them
plaid right exactly, make them look like trees. I can
give everybody a lot of suggestions, because I'm pretty much
have run through all of them. I had them look
like magic once one time, and it all worked, and
it all worked, and I slept absolutely absolutely, and don't
wait and one thing that I think you might have
(12:18):
told me to do, but it was too high level math.
But you were telling me to do things in threes.
So for the people who need just a little more
engagement in the mental field, is you have them count
back by threes or eights or something random, not two's,
not fives, and not something that you would be able
(12:38):
to click off pretty fast, but something that they actually
have to focus on just ever so slightly, because again,
you don't want to hyper focus the mind. You want
to softly focus the mind. Because we want to fall asleep,
So we're going to have more on our list to
help you ease into sleep land when we come back
from this break. Welcome back, continuing our list to send
(13:03):
you into sleep. Hopefully we're not sending you into sleep
during this podcast, but your voice is truly one of
the most calming effects in my world. I know you're
not going to plug this because I'm going to do
it for you. It's not your nature. But one of
the ways that I have fallen asleep and actually calmed
down is I listened to your Apple playlist or meditation,
(13:28):
your your meditation, your playlist, your meditation, your meditation playlist.
I love to listen to you. I will put you
in my ears and I my ship is calm. After that,
thank you, and look her up, folks. It's just spell
her name when you search in iTunes and you'll find it.
And the name of the CD is Connections by Brenda Villa.
(13:49):
But it's so funny when I hear back from people
that they really use it is. I didn't know so
many people were nervous about flying, but it really helps them.
Like you said, just calm down, it's your voice. Yeah,
just put people out. I has a superpower. I had
to pinch myself to get myself up after that break. Again.
(14:09):
The essential part of sleep is being able to fall
into it right. And there's all kinds of things that
keep us. There's so much to do, this, so much
to engage in. We haven't had time to decompress. So
it sounds like it would be natural and easy, but
with our overstimulated lives, it's sometimes hard. At the break,
I was sharing with my elf that one of the
mantras that I came up with is stay in bed,
(14:32):
keep your eyes closed. Like I have to remind myself
because if I wake up and I've got a great
idea or I'm fully engaged, I'm ready to go. It
can be in the middle of the night and I
will get up and make notes or rips around or
you know, find things to do instead of stay in
bed keep your eyes closed. This is when you're supposed
to be sleeping. Okay, I don't know, I do? Do I?
I do notes? Yeah, I do, and they're so good.
(14:56):
I have actually had ideas and I asked my guides
while I'm half asleep, should I write this down or
will I remember it in the morning, And they have
told me for write it down. There you go. So
I have guides that don't want me to sleep, well,
they don't have to, so it's right not try. I
would take advice from them on that. It's like it's
(15:19):
like a humor. So people also who have studied breathwork
and do breath work as a practice, because remember, the
diaphragm is the organ that helps us reset from sympathetic
to parasympathetic. So all that breath work, where you're really
controlling and moving the breath in a particular way, can
strengthen your ability to reset into parasympathetic rest and digest,
(15:42):
which is what we're going for so that's a great
practice to have using essential oils. Also one of my
favorite lavender. It's just like the Queen of all oils.
But she imagine she is, I think we have. Yeah,
it's it's just and we throw it in to a bath,
use it literally in a in a bath on the
(16:04):
bottom of your feet, spraying your pillow. Oh my goodness,
I just received some oil, a spray oil of lavender
from Paris, and it's extraordinary. It's extraordinary. I noticed she
didn't bring any to share. That's because it's next to
my pillow at home and I can't go ahead. That
was not at all. Of course, tease are really good.
(16:26):
So just some basic standards that you would find anywhere.
And again it's worth reviewing because there was just a
report that came out that said sixty of the US
are sleep deprived. They are self reporting at sleep deprived.
Six claim that they are sleep deprived. Right when we
go offline. What happens when we stop sleeping is literally
our brainston't function as well. We were not as we're
(16:47):
not bringing our full game to the planet. We're cloudy,
we're not thinking straight, we make poor decisions. We have
all kinds of accidents that have happened, like global disasters
that have happened because people are sleep deprived. This is
not good. So drink your tea. Drink your tea. It'll
save the world. Get off screens, Go change your phones
to a night setting so you don't have that blue light.
(17:09):
Take a warm bath, not hot bath. Reading like read
old school books and newspapers or magazines. Reading can tire
your eyes, which is lovely for falling asleep. It's so good. Right,
And then, of course one of my go twos when
I wake up in the night is actually tapping, doing
emotional freedom technique also known as tapping to help me
fall back to sleep. Okay, we just did that before
(17:31):
we started the show because I was so congested, and
you taught me tapping. It was Julie's first time tapping,
and it was amazing, and I'm not congested, So thank you,
Wichi poo. You're welcome. Tapping his magic. And the setup
statement would be, even though I'm awake, I completely and
deeply love and respect myself. And there are videos right
for ta Yes, yes, all kinds of good. Maybe we'll
(17:52):
do a video. We'll do a tapping video. We can
do that and then we can tap dance after nicely done.
And of course meditation is a great thing to do
when you can't sleep, when you are not dropping into
that deep unconsciousness, just meditates, let it your focus soften
and connect in with your guides, your highest self, connecting
(18:14):
to the astral plane. Like just set it up consciously
to do that. It's a perfect thing to do when
you can't sleep. It's also proven scientifically studies that say
when you meditate regularly during the day hours, it sets
you up for better sleep in the evening hours. So supertol.
You know, the other thing that we haven't talked about,
(18:34):
which is so prevalent, and not just our country, but
in so many of the Western countries is sleep medication.
And you know, the one in the US that has
I think really taken off has been the CBD that
is derived from the marijuana. The roots actually is where
(18:54):
the CBD comes from, which is why it is legal
in all fifty countries. Does say country, It is legal
in all fifty states of this country, so you can
get it practically anywhere. There's one retail that's called American Shaman,
and I've seen it in more cities. You know lately
than I can count. CBD has helped me, and CBD
(19:19):
has helped me because falling asleep was not an issue,
but staying asleep was an issue, and so that has
certainly helped me with that. There's all sorts of other
things that are out there. We're not here to tell
you what to do. It's an introduction, an invitation to explore.
So yeah, you can find someplace that works for you.
Because ideally, we're not putting medicine that is created in
(19:41):
a lab in our body, like the different Thailand alls
things like that, because they're all chemicals and so that
can't possibly be good for us in the long term, right,
So we're giving a lot more holistic, natural things that
people can do and take because I have my own
issues with some of the she's laughing. You're laughing because
(20:03):
it's so insane. But I was such a one of
such people who took medication to sleep. I took ambien
for a number of years. Stop smiling. You cannot look
at me. Look away, look away while I tell the
story that my job before working at twenty century Fox
is that I ran the Hewlett Packard Media advertising business
(20:24):
in a hundred one countries. So I traveled a lot.
Global travel. That's big. It's super hard on the bodies. Timing.
It was horrible actually for me. And I loved the work,
but I hated the travel. So I started taking Ambien
because there were times that I didn't sleep at all,
so like, I gotta sleep start. After that job, I
didn't quit taking it, and I was really struggling about
what to do about it. And I remember you telling me,
(20:46):
what did you tell me? You can? You can get
off this, you can? Yeah, I said, you don't need this.
You don't need this. Your body doesn't need it. No
one is born with an ambient receptors in our body
like we do. Cannib anoy receptors in our body, which
is why I think CBD works. So before I got
off of Ambien, Susanne and I went to go see
(21:07):
this movie that had to do with an RV. It
was We're the Miller's and they were smuggling drugs I
think across the Mexican Yes. So the next morning I
wake up and I look at my phone and it says, congratulations,
You've won. What's that? Oh my god, I want something
(21:28):
While I was sleeping. This is incredible, such a winner. Yeah,
it was from eBay and apparently I won an auction
for a thirty five ft nineteen eighties six Airstream RV.
You're welcome. So so there is such a thing as
ambient shopping, and that's a real thing. It's because I
(21:51):
also met this happens my good friend John Schneider, his
now wife bought a Porsche. I used poor on eBay
on ambient but that's how she told him anyhow, before
she met him. Display Susanne actually wanted to call the
air stream Ambiance, but I said no because we don't
(22:14):
need to be reminded of what a dip shit I am.
But very quickly after that, I moved away from it
and started with five HTP and melotonin is what I
started with to move myself kind of off off off
ambien because it's not good. My body was flipping out. Yes,
I remember I met you on that. I was flipping
(22:35):
out and I wasn't even sleeping on then. It was
two hours a night when I met you, Yanks. So
we're going to talk more about the importance of sleep
when we come right back. All right, we're back. So
just for clarifying, was it when you bought the air stream?
Was that when you decided I'm getting off this Yes, okay, yeah,
(22:56):
that was my trigger. And do you think that was
a good one? That's that's a good or school less?
Oh you now own a thirty five foot airstream us,
you should probably stop taking this medication. It made for
a really fabulous story, though, I have to say, oh
my gosh, you get so much joy out of it,
such a good story. Even went on Facebook and had
(23:18):
a airstream naming contest. That's how she got her name
Lola because she was a showgirl. Speaking of show girls
actually has nothing to do with what I'm about ready
to say, sleep is so crucial that people like Arianna
Huffington's quit her job so she could focus on sleep.
(23:38):
That's how it had shifted her life that she had
to quit her day job. Tell people what what her
day job was? I like, how you do that? Elf?
Tell people give them more context. Um, Well, Arianna Havingtons
was the founder of Huffington's Post, one of the largest
news aggregators I think in in the country. Then why
(24:00):
did you have me answer it? Because I thought you
knew that we'll only live in this one so Apparently
she has one of the largest news websites in the world,
says Brenda, and so she went to go explore her sleep. Well,
she had an absolute health crisis when she passed out
(24:23):
at her desk from lack of sleep and hit her
head and woke up in the pool of our own blood.
That is the same as buying an airstream when you're
on ambier. We all have our wake up calls in
different ways. Sometimes it requires buying another set of auto insurance,
(24:44):
and sometimes you need a towel to wipe up the blood. Well,
it was more of an er visit, and then she
went through it a whole slew of medical appointments and specialists,
and you know, she would have had access to everyone
at the top of their game, and they couldn't figure
out anything that was quote unquote wrong with her except
for lack of sleep. Right, So that's when that was
(25:05):
her wake up call to her new passion to educate
people how critical sleep is. And my lesson is, if
you start buying stuff Milan I, and you think you've
won something, you need to learn how to sleep better.
So the other thing about sleep, because you had mentioned
it early on, because we've hit a lot of the
physical reasons why we need to sleep, but you've talked
(25:27):
a bit about the emotional part, the mental part as well.
But I think what's so fascinating are the dream books.
There's a friend of mine who was very obsessed with
looking at his dreams because he remembers them in vivid detail, right,
vivid detail. We're gonna call him Jim. And so he
(25:49):
started looking up all these different dream books and the
one that he found that seemed to be the most
accurate was actually one that was written by I think
a Muslim cleric or something. I mean, there was. He
was a bit surprised that that was the book that
seemed to be the most right on. And then he
asked me, He said, who writes these books? And how
do they know what the symbols are? I want? Huh,
(26:12):
let me ask Brenda. So I'm asking Brenda. Well, information
can be clarified in meditation and sometimes in dreams. And
if you are someone who has that perfect recall, you
can set it up and say, Okay, you've shown me
this three times in a row. I don't know what
to do with it, or tell me more about it,
or how does it apply in these different ways, and
you can get information directly they're in dreams or meditation,
so it's in this way, so the channel it. Some
(26:34):
people would call it channeling because people who like their
dream books really like their dream books. Suzanne still has hers.
It's a thousand and one dream Interpretations. That is I
can't believe it's still paper. It hasn't disappeared yet because
she's looked at it so much and touched it so
much that it's one of those like go to for her.
Like she loves her dream book and now alleged Gim
(26:54):
also loves his dream books. And I think it's a
really fair question, where did it come from? How does
there somebody that knows all this? And of course it
makes sense to me that channeling would be the answer, right,
I hope it makes sense to everyone else that channeling
is the answer. So on our next episode, we are
going to hit our third in our series of why
(27:15):
we Sleep, and this one is going to be Afraid
to Sleep because people have night terrors about going to sleep,
so they're afraid to sleep. They get very nervous, and
this is just part of the sleeping process. So remember
Earth school can be hard, especially when you don't sleep amen, sister,
see you next time. Thanks for joining us, everyone, and
(27:42):
a special thanks to our producer Ma Cole, who guides
us while we guide. You hit us up on Instagram
at other Side Guides, or shoot us a note at
other Side Guides at iHeart radio dot com, and you
can even call us at eight three three to to
Guide to leave us a message. We want to know
what you think, we want to know what you know,
(28:03):
and we want to hear your stories and remember Earth
school is hard without the other Side. Insider's Guide to
the Other Side is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Spotify, Apple podcast, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Hi, y'all, I'm Julie. Hi there, I'm Brenda. Welcome to
Insider's Guide to the Other Side. Now y'all need to
know that we are obsessed with everything on the other side.
Yes we are, because once you learn to navigate the
energetic or two song the invisible world light is going
to be more fun and much more serene. Heck, yes
(00:24):
it can, because, let's be honest, Brand, earth school is hard.
In fact, you taught me that. Let's crush earth School together.
Welcome to Insider's Guide to the Other Side, a production
of I Heart Rating It. Hi Brand, Hello, Julie, you
didn't call me your own that what happens? I'm trying
(00:45):
something new, trying to be all formal at all. So
last week we talked about the astro plane, and I
actually mentioned that we're going to do a three part series.
I'm not sure I told everybody what it was about. Details, right,
silly details. But it's actually about sleep because when we
(01:06):
talked about the astro plane, we talked about the the
unconscious way that we go into that space is while
we sleep. And the thing I just want to say
about that is when we sleep, it can be a
real power move obviously for our physical body to rest
and restore and recharge, but also in the spiritual world
as well. So that's why it weaves in here. We're done,
(01:28):
were over, That's why we sleep. Goodbye. We're taking a nap.
I have to because you don't like to confess as
much as I possibly can. I've been incredibly obsessed with
sleep since my fiftieth birthday. Those didn't know I'm fifty,
and I bought myself a garment watch, and on this
(01:50):
watch it measures my sleep patterns. I didn't even honestly,
I didn't even know what they all were before I
had this watch. There's so many things that I should
be paying attention to that I don't like. Why at
fifty am I discovering that there is deep sleep, light sleep,
and rim sleep. I knew. I knew ran because of
the band the band Oh my God. And so now
(02:13):
I track my sleep and it has been the greatest
thing I think I've done. I also tracked my steps,
but we're not talking about Julie steps today. This is
about why we sleep. So Brent, you also track yours.
In fact, we send each other screenshots of our sleep
pattern from the night before and it's hilarious because just
like we're big contrast during the waking hours, weekly have
(02:38):
like contrast about how we sleep. I don't move when
I sleep. You hit like this little button and says movement,
and it looks like I'm dead. I mean, it's kind
of like I think Suzanne must take like a mirror
and put it up against my nose every morning to
see if I'm alive, because I don't think that I
move at all. But that aside, Brent, what's your take
on why we sleep? I mean, I know you said
that it's about resting our body and letting our soul explore,
(03:00):
but like, give us some more details in depth about
why we sleep. So many reasons right, because we are
multidimensional beings, so the benefits we gain from sleep are
also multidimensional. Sleeping and dreaming emotionally, energetically, mentally, we are
literally trying to work through things that we didn't get
(03:21):
to process during the day, Like we didn't get to
close things out, we didn't get to decide how we
felt about that, and sometimes we will literally create dreams
to work things out, and it can be something that
happened during the day, is something that happened ten years
ago or longer. Like, we are trying to make sense
of our world on multiple levels. So that's sleeping and dreaming. Physically,
(03:41):
we do a lot of repair in the brain. In
the blood, right, the liver gets to cleanse the blood
while we sleep. It's doing it all the time. But
the big factors are really cleansing the blood. Deliver kicks
into high gear in this way. Also, the nervous system
gets to calm to out right, we would get very
stimulated during the day and so the parasympathetic nervous system
(04:04):
can kick back in and reset. So last night I
was reading because I do this a lot, especially before
we do a show obviously, and I was studying and
let's get a little ubbed up before show, and I
was reading what you had said because over my notes
about our liver cleansing our blood. And so last night
I'm like tapping on my liver, Sid, are you doing
your jaw? Are you cleaning my blood? I didn't know
(04:27):
that's what you did, well, I said, but you better
be doing it. It's doing it all the time, and
it is just more and really helpful thing to do.
If so, remember the liver cleanses the blood, but it
also cleanses emotions, right because the blood represents the fluidity
or the water in our body, and because of that,
it cares the emotional charge. People who are really angry
(04:50):
will literally have livers that look like their alcoholics because
the toxicity that anger holds. So you really wanted to
care of that liver. So if I've been upset about something,
I will literally fall asleep with my left hand underneath
my right ribs because that's what the liver. I'm doing
that right now, and it's a it's a big organ
(05:12):
that livers a bit. There's a role I'm trying to
get proper, like I got it. Remember when you're when
you're lying down. So in this way, you know, just
give me a little extra like, oh I worked too
hard today, I'm sorry I was so upset, or you
know something like that. Give it just a little extra
boost can be helpful. It reminds me of the Hindu
(05:34):
god Lord Ganesh, where every day is a new day.
I mean, he's also the remover of obstacles, but it's
he's also representing he guards every threshold. So every day
he's guarding every day, every dawn and so it's a
new it's a new one, and so that sleep helps
us start a new right. Yes, that's the most poetic
(05:55):
you'll ever hear me on this show. That was beautiful.
Beauty is where they from. But that was weird. I
don't either, because probably because we have a like seven
foot conness in our backyard. That could be Why, yeah,
that could That's a good idea. And if you have
a seven foot connection, you're a backyard. Please send me
pictures of yours and I will send you pictures of mine.
(06:16):
Obviously it's working nicely done, thank you, because I sleep
nine to ten hours a night. Now. That's so nice.
Now did you do that before you watch? Now? Before
you for real? No? For real, though, I because I
focus on it now. It's a priority. And now I'm
sleeping like I was, like I did in college. The
only thing I'm missing is watching la Vernon surely at
(06:37):
eleven thirty every morning. That was my college curriculous. That
sounds like another episode, Okay, I have so. So we
also want to sleep so that we get dreamtime because
dream time is really critical for it and people miss
it if they don't have it. I've had more people
(06:57):
come to me after they've read my book talk because
I had talked about some dream stuff in there that
they're like, how can I dream again? I I miss it? Well,
of course they miss it. They're not sorting the ship
out right. And I would also offer that not always,
but often we don't remember our dreams. So even though
you're dreaming, you may not have conscious memory of it,
(07:18):
but you're still getting the benefit from it. And then
there are also people who are not dreaming for different reasons.
What kind of reasons do people not dream? They're not
in bed long enough, you're not sleeping long enough. You
have suffered trauma, and the system that is set up
to help you move through things is fried and you
can't get through it. Let's talk about some ways that
can help people sleep and they can get reconnected to
that essential part of being human. What are some of
(07:41):
the things that people can do to sleep better? All
kinds of things, and I've tried many of them, because
sleeping is not always been my gift. Now I was
gonna say, you are not the best sleeper I've ever met.
I have other gifts. You have so many it's not
even funny, but sleeping has totally But you have definitely
tried them all. In my arivedics aties. They have all
(08:01):
kinds of things to help reset systems, specifically for sleep
warm milk with certain spices in it. And is it
like golden milk where put like the nutmeg? And I
would I would highly encourage everyone to look up golden
milk and the recipe for it and make it. It's incredible,
and you can add it to almond milk. You cannot
add it to different went dairy drinkers. In our house
(08:24):
we use almond milk or just any nut milks are good.
Washing your feet before bed is one of the traditions
to help just literally wash away the day. And why
is that? Because what's at the bottom of our favor
and the largest pores in our body where you can
soak up the stuff? Well, I learned that from you
when you taught an Oil's class oils and in New
(08:45):
York about the pores on our feet. And I'm like,
I did not know that. Sometimes I feel like my
soul is brand new. Sometimes I feel like this is
my first visit here. How did I not know these things?
Welcome to the planet. And sometimes I feel like I've
been here forever. Both are true. So restorative yoga is
(09:07):
also something or yin yoga is also something that you
can practice and there are a lot of classes all
over or online to help reset the nervous system. Right,
So when our sympathetic nervous system or worn flight, fight
and freeze, we need want to reset it to the
parasympathetic nervous system, which is rest and digest. And you
know when you can't stop your mind or your you
(09:29):
have heartache or you're worried about something, that's when the
sympathetic nervous system is active, and we want to reset
that to the parasympathetic nervous system. And a good way
to do that is if you can they call it
legs up the wall. So basically you can double over
a yoga blanket or a pillow or a couch cushion
or something and bring the cushion or the blanket near
(09:50):
the wall and put your hips against the wall so
you're in that corner of the wall on the floor,
and put your legs up the wall and lay your
spine on the floor. Can I do that now and
then you can put your hand on your liver. I
could find it that so, and the reason you want
to lift the hips just a little bit. Is because
when your hips are above your heart, it helps the
(10:10):
nervous system calm down. I'm going to try that tonight.
It feels so good. It feels really good. If you
have tight hamstrings, you would want to slide the blanket
away from the wall, look like an inch or two
so that it's not so hard on the hamstrings. Wow,
so little credit, there was little that was amazing. Actually
credit the one that I also love that you taught
(10:31):
me because I've gone in and out of sleeping well
and not sleeping at all, and especially during grief. For me,
I don't sleep, like when my mom died and then
when Mona died, and I've had a lot of people
that my sleep is terrible, like this is a few hours,
you know. So grieving was not a good sleep time
for me, and I wish it was because then I
(10:51):
could escape. But I'm like literally laying in my grief
and you had said to me about counting backwards from
a hunt read in my head. Do you want to
tell everybody that really how to do it? Or Julie's version,
because yours is probably right now. My version, my my
version is that I started a hundred, I go backwards,
(11:12):
and all I see in my mind's eye is that number,
and every once in a while I'll have them be
puffyed like clouds. You get creative, or oh, I totally
get creative about it, or like sho it looks like sheep.
I mean like I've done all sorts of things with
what my number should look like. And between each one,
I take a breath, because it's not a race that
you said. Your job is not to get to zero.
(11:35):
Your job is to fall aslate to pass to pass out.
And so I learned to do the breathing and counting backwards,
and it works. It really works. It's like a meditation.
It is because you're giving your mind something singularly to
focus on, and anytime it floats somewhere else, you just
bring it right back to the number. Picture it, change it,
(11:57):
turn it around, and another change your numbers. Make them
plaid right exactly, make them look like trees. I can
give everybody a lot of suggestions, because I'm pretty much
have run through all of them. I had them look
like magic once one time, and it all worked, and
it all worked, and I slept absolutely absolutely, and don't
wait and one thing that I think you might have
(12:18):
told me to do, but it was too high level math.
But you were telling me to do things in threes.
So for the people who need just a little more
engagement in the mental field, is you have them count
back by threes or eights or something random, not two's,
not fives, and not something that you would be able
(12:38):
to click off pretty fast, but something that they actually
have to focus on just ever so slightly, because again,
you don't want to hyper focus the mind. You want
to softly focus the mind. Because we want to fall asleep,
So we're going to have more on our list to
help you ease into sleep land when we come back
from this break. Welcome back, continuing our list to send
(13:03):
you into sleep. Hopefully we're not sending you into sleep
during this podcast, but your voice is truly one of
the most calming effects in my world. I know you're
not going to plug this because I'm going to do
it for you. It's not your nature. But one of
the ways that I have fallen asleep and actually calmed
down is I listened to your Apple playlist or meditation,
(13:28):
your your meditation, your playlist, your meditation, your meditation playlist.
I love to listen to you. I will put you
in my ears and I my ship is calm. After that,
thank you, and look her up, folks. It's just spell
her name when you search in iTunes and you'll find it.
And the name of the CD is Connections by Brenda Villa.
(13:49):
But it's so funny when I hear back from people
that they really use it is. I didn't know so
many people were nervous about flying, but it really helps them.
Like you said, just calm down, it's your voice. Yeah,
just put people out. I has a superpower. I had
to pinch myself to get myself up after that break. Again.
(14:09):
The essential part of sleep is being able to fall
into it right. And there's all kinds of things that
keep us. There's so much to do, this, so much
to engage in. We haven't had time to decompress. So
it sounds like it would be natural and easy, but
with our overstimulated lives, it's sometimes hard. At the break,
I was sharing with my elf that one of the
mantras that I came up with is stay in bed,
(14:32):
keep your eyes closed. Like I have to remind myself
because if I wake up and I've got a great
idea or I'm fully engaged, I'm ready to go. It
can be in the middle of the night and I
will get up and make notes or rips around or
you know, find things to do instead of stay in
bed keep your eyes closed. This is when you're supposed
to be sleeping. Okay, I don't know, I do? Do I?
I do notes? Yeah, I do, and they're so good.
(14:56):
I have actually had ideas and I asked my guides
while I'm half asleep, should I write this down or
will I remember it in the morning, And they have
told me for write it down. There you go. So
I have guides that don't want me to sleep, well,
they don't have to, so it's right not try. I
would take advice from them on that. It's like it's
(15:19):
like a humor. So people also who have studied breathwork
and do breath work as a practice, because remember, the
diaphragm is the organ that helps us reset from sympathetic
to parasympathetic. So all that breath work, where you're really
controlling and moving the breath in a particular way, can
strengthen your ability to reset into parasympathetic rest and digest,
(15:42):
which is what we're going for so that's a great
practice to have using essential oils. Also one of my
favorite lavender. It's just like the Queen of all oils.
But she imagine she is, I think we have. Yeah,
it's it's just and we throw it in to a bath,
use it literally in a in a bath on the
(16:04):
bottom of your feet, spraying your pillow. Oh my goodness,
I just received some oil, a spray oil of lavender
from Paris, and it's extraordinary. It's extraordinary. I noticed she
didn't bring any to share. That's because it's next to
my pillow at home and I can't go ahead. That
was not at all. Of course, tease are really good.
(16:26):
So just some basic standards that you would find anywhere.
And again it's worth reviewing because there was just a
report that came out that said sixty of the US
are sleep deprived. They are self reporting at sleep deprived.
Six claim that they are sleep deprived. Right when we
go offline. What happens when we stop sleeping is literally
our brainston't function as well. We were not as we're
(16:47):
not bringing our full game to the planet. We're cloudy,
we're not thinking straight, we make poor decisions. We have
all kinds of accidents that have happened, like global disasters
that have happened because people are sleep deprived. This is
not good. So drink your tea. Drink your tea. It'll
save the world. Get off screens, Go change your phones
to a night setting so you don't have that blue light.
(17:09):
Take a warm bath, not hot bath. Reading like read
old school books and newspapers or magazines. Reading can tire
your eyes, which is lovely for falling asleep. It's so good. Right,
And then, of course one of my go twos when
I wake up in the night is actually tapping, doing
emotional freedom technique also known as tapping to help me
fall back to sleep. Okay, we just did that before
(17:31):
we started the show because I was so congested, and
you taught me tapping. It was Julie's first time tapping,
and it was amazing, and I'm not congested, So thank you,
Wichi poo. You're welcome. Tapping his magic. And the setup
statement would be, even though I'm awake, I completely and
deeply love and respect myself. And there are videos right
for ta Yes, yes, all kinds of good. Maybe we'll
(17:52):
do a video. We'll do a tapping video. We can
do that and then we can tap dance after nicely done.
And of course meditation is a great thing to do
when you can't sleep, when you are not dropping into
that deep unconsciousness, just meditates, let it your focus soften
and connect in with your guides, your highest self, connecting
(18:14):
to the astral plane. Like just set it up consciously
to do that. It's a perfect thing to do when
you can't sleep. It's also proven scientifically studies that say
when you meditate regularly during the day hours, it sets
you up for better sleep in the evening hours. So supertol.
You know, the other thing that we haven't talked about,
(18:34):
which is so prevalent, and not just our country, but
in so many of the Western countries is sleep medication.
And you know, the one in the US that has
I think really taken off has been the CBD that
is derived from the marijuana. The roots actually is where
(18:54):
the CBD comes from, which is why it is legal
in all fifty countries. Does say country, It is legal
in all fifty states of this country, so you can
get it practically anywhere. There's one retail that's called American Shaman,
and I've seen it in more cities. You know lately
than I can count. CBD has helped me, and CBD
(19:19):
has helped me because falling asleep was not an issue,
but staying asleep was an issue, and so that has
certainly helped me with that. There's all sorts of other
things that are out there. We're not here to tell
you what to do. It's an introduction, an invitation to explore.
So yeah, you can find someplace that works for you.
Because ideally, we're not putting medicine that is created in
(19:41):
a lab in our body, like the different Thailand alls
things like that, because they're all chemicals and so that
can't possibly be good for us in the long term, right,
So we're giving a lot more holistic, natural things that
people can do and take because I have my own
issues with some of the she's laughing. You're laughing because
(20:03):
it's so insane. But I was such a one of
such people who took medication to sleep. I took ambien
for a number of years. Stop smiling. You cannot look
at me. Look away, look away while I tell the
story that my job before working at twenty century Fox
is that I ran the Hewlett Packard Media advertising business
(20:24):
in a hundred one countries. So I traveled a lot.
Global travel. That's big. It's super hard on the bodies. Timing.
It was horrible actually for me. And I loved the work,
but I hated the travel. So I started taking Ambien
because there were times that I didn't sleep at all,
so like, I gotta sleep start. After that job, I
didn't quit taking it, and I was really struggling about
what to do about it. And I remember you telling me,
(20:46):
what did you tell me? You can? You can get
off this, you can? Yeah, I said, you don't need this.
You don't need this. Your body doesn't need it. No
one is born with an ambient receptors in our body
like we do. Cannib anoy receptors in our body, which
is why I think CBD works. So before I got
off of Ambien, Susanne and I went to go see
(21:07):
this movie that had to do with an RV. It
was We're the Miller's and they were smuggling drugs I
think across the Mexican Yes. So the next morning I
wake up and I look at my phone and it says, congratulations,
You've won. What's that? Oh my god, I want something
(21:28):
While I was sleeping. This is incredible, such a winner. Yeah,
it was from eBay and apparently I won an auction
for a thirty five ft nineteen eighties six Airstream RV.
You're welcome. So so there is such a thing as
ambient shopping, and that's a real thing. It's because I
(21:51):
also met this happens my good friend John Schneider, his
now wife bought a Porsche. I used poor on eBay
on ambient but that's how she told him anyhow, before
she met him. Display Susanne actually wanted to call the
air stream Ambiance, but I said no because we don't
(22:14):
need to be reminded of what a dip shit I am.
But very quickly after that, I moved away from it
and started with five HTP and melotonin is what I
started with to move myself kind of off off off
ambien because it's not good. My body was flipping out. Yes,
I remember I met you on that. I was flipping
(22:35):
out and I wasn't even sleeping on then. It was
two hours a night when I met you, Yanks. So
we're going to talk more about the importance of sleep
when we come right back. All right, we're back. So
just for clarifying, was it when you bought the air stream?
Was that when you decided I'm getting off this Yes, okay, yeah,
(22:56):
that was my trigger. And do you think that was
a good one? That's that's a good or school less?
Oh you now own a thirty five foot airstream us,
you should probably stop taking this medication. It made for
a really fabulous story, though, I have to say, oh
my gosh, you get so much joy out of it,
such a good story. Even went on Facebook and had
(23:18):
a airstream naming contest. That's how she got her name
Lola because she was a showgirl. Speaking of show girls
actually has nothing to do with what I'm about ready
to say, sleep is so crucial that people like Arianna
Huffington's quit her job so she could focus on sleep.
(23:38):
That's how it had shifted her life that she had
to quit her day job. Tell people what what her
day job was? I like, how you do that? Elf?
Tell people give them more context. Um, Well, Arianna Havingtons
was the founder of Huffington's Post, one of the largest
news aggregators I think in in the country. Then why
(24:00):
did you have me answer it? Because I thought you
knew that we'll only live in this one so Apparently
she has one of the largest news websites in the world,
says Brenda, and so she went to go explore her sleep. Well,
she had an absolute health crisis when she passed out
(24:23):
at her desk from lack of sleep and hit her
head and woke up in the pool of our own blood.
That is the same as buying an airstream when you're
on ambier. We all have our wake up calls in
different ways. Sometimes it requires buying another set of auto insurance,
(24:44):
and sometimes you need a towel to wipe up the blood. Well,
it was more of an er visit, and then she
went through it a whole slew of medical appointments and specialists,
and you know, she would have had access to everyone
at the top of their game, and they couldn't figure
out anything that was quote unquote wrong with her except
for lack of sleep. Right, So that's when that was
(25:05):
her wake up call to her new passion to educate
people how critical sleep is. And my lesson is, if
you start buying stuff Milan I, and you think you've
won something, you need to learn how to sleep better.
So the other thing about sleep, because you had mentioned
it early on, because we've hit a lot of the
physical reasons why we need to sleep, but you've talked
(25:27):
a bit about the emotional part, the mental part as well.
But I think what's so fascinating are the dream books.
There's a friend of mine who was very obsessed with
looking at his dreams because he remembers them in vivid detail, right,
vivid detail. We're gonna call him Jim. And so he
(25:49):
started looking up all these different dream books and the
one that he found that seemed to be the most
accurate was actually one that was written by I think
a Muslim cleric or something. I mean, there was. He
was a bit surprised that that was the book that
seemed to be the most right on. And then he
asked me, He said, who writes these books? And how
do they know what the symbols are? I want? Huh,
(26:12):
let me ask Brenda. So I'm asking Brenda. Well, information
can be clarified in meditation and sometimes in dreams. And
if you are someone who has that perfect recall, you
can set it up and say, Okay, you've shown me
this three times in a row. I don't know what
to do with it, or tell me more about it,
or how does it apply in these different ways, and
you can get information directly they're in dreams or meditation,
so it's in this way, so the channel it. Some
(26:34):
people would call it channeling because people who like their
dream books really like their dream books. Suzanne still has hers.
It's a thousand and one dream Interpretations. That is I
can't believe it's still paper. It hasn't disappeared yet because
she's looked at it so much and touched it so
much that it's one of those like go to for her.
Like she loves her dream book and now alleged Gim
(26:54):
also loves his dream books. And I think it's a
really fair question, where did it come from? How does
there somebody that knows all this? And of course it
makes sense to me that channeling would be the answer, right,
I hope it makes sense to everyone else that channeling
is the answer. So on our next episode, we are
going to hit our third in our series of why
(27:15):
we Sleep, and this one is going to be Afraid
to Sleep because people have night terrors about going to sleep,
so they're afraid to sleep. They get very nervous, and
this is just part of the sleeping process. So remember
Earth school can be hard, especially when you don't sleep amen, sister,
see you next time. Thanks for joining us, everyone, and
(27:42):
a special thanks to our producer Ma Cole, who guides
us while we guide. You hit us up on Instagram
at other Side Guides, or shoot us a note at
other Side Guides at iHeart radio dot com, and you
can even call us at eight three three to to
Guide to leave us a message. We want to know
what you think, we want to know what you know,
(28:03):
and we want to hear your stories and remember Earth
school is hard without the other Side. Insider's Guide to
the Other Side is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i
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