Natural Therapeutic |
Scientific sleeping Sleeping plays an extremely important role in one's life time. If one wants health and longevity, he or she should adopt reasonable sleeping habits, ensure sleeping quality, restore the body from fatigue and store up energy to prevent and treat diseases, strengthen health and benefit longevity. The effects of sleeping on health and longevity manifest in the following five fields: 1. eliminating fatigue to restore strength; 2. protecting brain to conserve intelligence; 3. strengthening immunity to increase body resistance; 4.promoting infantile development and increasing body height; 5. making the skin healthy and aesthetical and excreting the waste. In the case of abnormal sleeping, the above mentioned five aspects may change for the worse, and affect the health of human body and longevity. Sleeping Time
Chinese life cultivation experts have created quite a number of beneficial and very effective sleeping methods for life cultivation which are simple and convenient and easy to practice. For instance, “Sleeping at Midnight and Noon” is one of the sleeping methods for life cultivation The method is as follows: Go to sleep at midnight (11pm. To 1am) and noon (11am to 1 pm) respectively, because at midnight and noon are the time for the alternation of Yin and Yang, the moment Yin and Yang change from excess to extreme deficiency or from extreme deficiency to excess, and qi, blood, Yin and Yang inside the body are extremely imbalanced. At this time, peaceful lying can avoid the impairment of qi and blood. It has been proved by practice that the quality and efficiency of sleeping at midnight and noon are both good. As for old people, the sleeping method can also reduce the sick rates of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. It conforms to the principle of life cultivation. Good sleeping regularity should be developed in sleeping time. The ancients summarized the regularity in sleeping as: “Man should rise early in spring and summer and late in autumn and winter, but not as early as before the cock crow in the morning or as late as after the sun rise.” Sleeping posture “Sleeping like a bow” is the requirement of sleeping posture. This is a beneficial sleeping posture for the human body. Medical experts both in the past and at present have chosen the right lateral position. The right lateral position can increase cardiac output, strengthen digestion of food, absorption of nutrients and metabolism. Besides, man himself feels more comfortable, too.
As for females, supination and pronation are not advisable, because pronation may increaser facial wrinkles, and suination is harmful to pelvic blood circulation which easily gives rise to emmeniopathy. Right lateral position is suitable for normal people while left lateral position is advisable for pregnant women, because right lateral position may constrict veins of lower abdominal cavity and affect blood return, which is harmful to fetal development and delivery. Nevertheless, left lateral position is beneficial to fetal growth and may greatly reduce complications of pregnancy. As far as infants are concerned, the posture should be constantly changed with the help of adults, because prolonged lateral position or supination and pronation easily cause asymmetrical development of skull, or deformity of five sense organs of the face. Generally, infants should be turned over once every 1 to 2 hours. Semi-lateral position or semi-sitting position is advisable for patients with heart failure and patients with attack of cough and asthma. Meanwhile, the pillow and postdorsal region are high padded. Lateral position is suitable form patients with thoracoabdominal dropsy due to pulmonary diseases. Left lateral position or prone position is not suitable for patients with heart diseases with symptoms of blood stasis. The same is true of patients with pulmonary heart disease in case cardiac load is too heavy. Lying position with low head and high feet easily results in renal diseases. It should be pointed out that though the above sleeping postures are beneficial to life cultivation and health care, keeping the postures unchanged after falling asleep is not required, for it is impossible to realize this. Ten Forbidden Points For Sleeping Our Chinese ancients had ten forbidden points for sleeping which include: 1. supination; 2. anxiety; 3. anger before bed time; 4. ingestion before bed time; 5. speaking during sleeping; 6. facing the lamplight; 7. opening the mouth during sleeping; 8. covering the head during sleeping; 9. facing the draught during sleeping; 10. facing the stove during sleep.
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