How much sleep is enough? How much sleep do you really need?
How much sleep do you need? This question is as old as people get tired.
Transcript:
Sadhguru: The word ‘engineering’ essentially means to make something happen…
something that we want, we will make it happen
in the most efficient possible way, that’s engineering. If you are doing
it in horribly inefficient ways, that cannot be called engineering, isn’t it? We will say this is a fine piece of engineering when something that we want is happening with the least amount of friction and
with the least amount of consumption. So if you have a body, that if you use it for 12 hours, it sleeps for another 12 hours, it needs 12 hours of maintenance… Sleep is maintenance time, you know? If you had a car, that you use for 15 days, 15 days it’s in the garage, it’s better to take public transport. (Laughs)
Now you have a body which has to sleep 10 to 12 hours a day, now this is not an efficient system, it’s not being managed properly. Probably the fuel is not good, maybe your engine is leaking. So is this all physical? No.
Maybe medically you have been certified fit but still if you need to sleep eight to ten hours, which unfortunately people are saying… qualified people are saying is standard that
every human being must sleep eight to ten hours that’s a horribly inefficient perception of what a human-machine is, isn’t it? This is the most sophisticated machinery on the planet, this human mechanism. If this mechanism is made in such a way that half the time it’s in maintenance, you cannot call it the most sophisticated.
It’s very simple.
I will give you simply three things.
Just do these three things, you will see your sleep quota will come down dramatically, very simple things. Extremely simple things that you just do for 10-15 minutes a day, you will see your sleep quota
will come down dramatically. I’ll give you something else, another three things to do, very simple things. You do this, your food quota can be brought down to at least 30 to 40 % of what you are eating, still maintain your weight, maintain much more activity than you are maintaining right now, and with much less sleep.
So you engineer something
because you want to run it more efficiently. Running something inefficiently is not engineering. So ‘I am a mother, I have a job
and I have things to do,’ whatever you are, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you are, it’s important, whatever the nature of your activity, you are doing something because you think it’s important for you. If you are doing something that’s important for you if you think your work is important, the first and foremost thing that you should do
is you should work upon yourself. Inner Engineering is a systematic
way of working upon yourself, not just on the body, not just
on the mind, not just on the emotional level but all aspects. Your body,
mind, emotion, and energy, if all these things are aligned and organized properly, this machine will work so much more efficiently. So the amount of sleep that you need, the amount of food that you need, the volume of rest that the body demands can be brought down considerably, at the same time, the volume of activity can be greatly enhanced and made more efficient and more effective. Especially if you are a mother, your responsibility is not just for making your life work well, now you’ve taken the responsibility of making one or two more lives, their lives to work well. When you dare to take such a responsibility, I think, you must do Inner Engineering, there is no choice for you. If you are not a mother, you could choose maybe, but if you are a mother you have no choice, you must.
How much sleep do you need?
Let us know. We’re interested in how much do you sleep?
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