Festival of Sleep Day on 3rd January 2023

Lack of sleep can dumb you down. Sleep plays a critical role in our thinking and learning processes. It impairs attention, alertness, concentration, reasoning, and problem solving. This makes it more difficult to learn efficiently. Sleep helps to retain memories of the day’s experience. Meaning that with a lack of sleep, we would not remember much of the previous day’s experiences. This makes sleep incredibly important for students, from those in college to those simply trying to learn a new language on their own.

Festival of sleep day is also a celebration of the activity of sleep itself. Sleep is one of the most fascinating phenomena there is. The more researchers study it, the more unanswered questions they find. It is still unclear why we need to sleep or where we go when we dream.

Sleep touches on essential matters of metaphysics. For some, consciousness, mind, and thought are purely emergent properties of the physical brain. Our dreams are merely manifestations of neural activity. For others, sleep is evidence of the dualistic nature of reality. There’s the physical world, and then there’s the realm of subjective experience. When we dream, we experience thoughts and ideas in another universe.

In recent years, sleep has been attacked. Humans evolved to wake up with the break of day and go to sleep with the sun’s setting. Researchers have found evidence for this in the way that our sleep hormones work. The brain releases stress hormones in high quantities with the sun rising in the morning, and more relaxing chemicals as the sun goes down. Interestingly, though, this rhythm continues, even when people spend long periods underground without seeing the sun. It seems hard-wired into our bodies.

The modern world, however, isn’t kind to sleep. We no longer get the estimated seven to nine hours that our ancestors could look forward to every night. Stress and industrial working patterns mean that the bulk of humanity is experiencing shut-eye deprivation.

The Festival of Sleep Day is a way to push back against this trend. Organizers want to highlight the importance of sleep and its necessity for people’s health and productivity. Rest isn’t optional. And it is not a sign of laziness.

Celebrating Festival of Sleep Day

In order to celebrate this day in the best possible way we can, if we do not have work or errands to do during this day, then we will climb into our pyjamas, jump into bed and relax, or even take a nap. But if we are unable to relax and have errands to do, or have to work during the day, then we can always save the celebration for when we get home.

Festival of Sleep Day is also about helping to restore some normality to our biology. Evolutionarily speaking, people would have gone to bed soon after the setting sun and risen at the breaking of the day. The event is a chance for people to get back to this rhythm, bedding down soon after the sun goes down and then waking up at dawn.

The organizers hope that the day will celebrate the act of sleep and help create more positive attitudes. People taking part should do what they can to raise awareness of the importance of getting adequate sleep and how it is anything but lazy. Research suggests that our brains are highly active when we close our eyes at night. Data indicates that sleep is when we process everything we learned during the day and consolidate memories. Often people go to sleep, unable to figure out the answer to a problem and then wake up in the morning with the answer.

Celebrate the Festival of Sleep Day by switching off your phone and taking some time to sleep instead of always being on the go.

Source: Medindia