About one third of his life, a human being spends sleeping. Per year that are about four months. Already this shows how important this often “waste of time”-titled phase is. Body, mind and soul especially need one thing for their well-being: a recreational night’s rest.
During history, there were different views of sleep: the Roman poet Ovid called sleep “reflection of the death” and also for the Germanics sleep and death were siblings. The Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu (300 b.C.) considered sleep as being the actual, real being of the human being. He wrote: “All is one; during sleep the soul is undisturbed and absorbed in this oneness; during wake, on the other hand, the soul is deflected and sees different circumstances of the world.” The view from Hildegard von Bingen, Benedictine and mystic in Middle Ages (12th century) is quoted like this: “The human being consists of two parts: alertness and sleep …”.
Paracelsus clearly got closer to the modern perspective with his explanation that sleep removes the exhaustion due to work and refreshes the human being. His recommendation neither to sleep too less nor too much but to comply with the sun, to get up at sunrise and to go to sleep at sunset, is not really practicable in our modern life but already mentions the important aspect of day-rhythm.
With the invention of the electroencephalography (EEG) it was detected that sleep is representing an own dynamic process and has special brain activities. But, so far, science has not submitted a complete and full answer to the question of the function of sleep. Of course, science and studies have shown that our immune system, our learning ability, our participation on every day life and a lot more strongly are connected with our “having slept off”.
One thing is sure: everyone who already has had bad or too less sleep for a longer period of time is able to confirm out of own experience that lack of sleep is interfering with the whole being –- physically, psychically and willingness to perfom.
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This post is also available in / Diesen Beitrag gibt es auch in: German
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