The Illustrated Self-Care Bible

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book offers a comprehensive guide to the physical, emotional, and social elements of self-care and acts as a bible for everything you need in order to nurture yourself and gain a healthier balance in your home, work, and social life.

The book is designed so that it can be read cover-to-cover or dipped into, allowing you to focus on the areas that are most relevant to you at any one time.

There are helpful resources, practical tips, inspiring techniques, and ideas to try, as well as foods to eat, skills to learn, and exercise routines to adopt. You can take it at your own pace and try things gradually, or dive right in and devour it all. But above all, be open to new ideas, have fun exploring the variety of options available, and enjoy developing a happier, healthier you!

PART ONE: TAKING CARE OF YOUR BODY

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Part One focuses on maintaining your body and looking after your physical wellness.

The Sleep and Rest chapter guides you through learning to relax more effectively and developing a healthier night-time routine. There are ideas for beating insomnia and meditation techniques to help you find a greater sense of calm and connection.

The Food and Drink chapter offers a comprehensive guide to improving physical wellness through diet and nutrition. There are extensive guides to different types of foods, the benefits these nutrients have, and how they can build a stronger you. Use these to be inspired to broaden your diet and experiment with new ingredients.

Finding a type of exercise that you enjoy is key to creating a regular routine, so in the Exercise chapter you’ll discover lots of ideas for beneficial exercises. Use these to try out new ways to improve your aerobic exercise, posture, balance, and toning.

You can also take care of your physical wellness through therapeutic massage, and in the Massage chapter you’ll discover lots of ways to self-massage your body and limbs. Use these ideas to treat your body, relax your muscles, and unwind.

PART TWO: TAKING CARE OF YOUR MIND

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Part Two looks at taking care of your mind and your emotional wellness needs.

In the Healing the Mind chapter, you’ll find lots of information about mental health issues, such as the effects of stress, learning forgiveness, and why emotional resilience is important. There are ideas and tips to use and apply to your life, including learning meditation and mindful breathing.

In the Self and Selflessness chapter, you can discover more about your own unique identity and how to awaken your true self. There are techniques to use to enhance and develop kindness and compassion, as well as practical ways to connect with nature. Use these ideas to boost and re-balance your emotional self-care.

PART THREE: TAKING CARE OF YOUR LIFE BALANCE

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Part Three focuses on your social wellness and how you can take steps to improve the balance in your life.

The Friends and Home chapter contains practical advice about developing healthy support systems, learning to set boundaries, improving different forms of communication, and learning when and how to ask for help. Having a safe, secure, clean, and organized home environment is crucial to your health and wellness, so there are some ideas you can put to practical use on how to improve your spatial wellness for greater calm and productivity.

In the Finances and Work chapter, you’ll find ideas and advice for working on skills such as money management, setting goals, time management, and workplace wellness. Use this information to help you become better informed and to address what’s important for your social self-care.

PART FOUR: REFERENCES AND RESOURCES

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In Part Four you’ll find some practical advice and useful tools to use to put everything you’ve learned about self-care into real and tangible action.

The checklist here highlights all the key points and goals involved in self-care so that you can remind yourself at a glance.

There are templates to use to help you set yourself goals, develop exercise routines, adopt healthy eating patterns, and learn to budget more successfully. Use these, and you’ll be well on your way to achieving all-around self-care success.

There is also a glossary of terms, a list of useful resources—such as websites and organizations you might like to contact—further reading ideas.

TAKING CARE OF YOUR BODY

PHYSICAL WELLNESS

PART ONE

SLEEP AND REST

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT IS SLEEP?

A good, undisturbed night’s sleep is one of the most enjoyable and totally natural pleasures available to us, yet for many people sleep is hard to come by. This in turn affects the quality of their waking life.

Sleep and dreams are as much a part of life as being busy and active; they unwind the body and mind, restoring our energies to face the next day. Yet how many people regularly wake feeling really refreshed? It has been estimated that at some time half the population will be affected by insomnia. And many people, while not long-term insomniacs, experience times when the quality of their sleep is not all it could be.

Whether you suffer from long-term insomnia, full-blown insomnia, or poor sleeping patterns, this chapter is for you. It will help you to break out of poor sleep habits and bring your whole life into balance. Find out how natural medicine such as herbalism and aromatherapy can help, as well as self-help methods such as exercise, relaxation, and adopting a change of lifestyle. Use this positive, easy-to-follow guide and your sleep problems will be a thing of the past.

THE MYSTERY OF SLEEP

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It is an extraordinary fact that something that occupies up to a third of our lives is still a mystery. Of course, we all know that sleep gives us rest: without it we feel tired and irritable and don’t function as well as we’d like. Since 1952, sleep research laboratories attached to universities have been studying sleep patterns, with the help of human guinea pigs. They have made numerous investigations not just into how we sleep but why, and no one has yet come up with a complete answer.

If you are beset by insomnia, you might wonder what use such investigations are. Whatever sleep is for, you know you need it and feel rotten without it. But the results of many of these investigations can offer some reassurance to the non-sleeper. They have, for instance, blown away the myth that everyone needs eight hours a night. Some of them suggest that most of us could get by on less sleep than we have without coming to harm. And some have come up with ideas for improving sleep.

SLEEP STATES

In sleep the brain goes through four main stages, each characterized by different types of brainwave—the electrical impulses emitted by the brain.

STAGE 1

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This first stage, the lightest, is the transition from wakefulness to drowsiness; as we enter it our muscles relax, the blood pressure drops, and the heart rate and digestion slow down. The brain begins to produce hormones such as serotonin and melatonin, which are associated with sleep and sleepiness (whether they actually cause sleep is under debate). At the same time, there is an increase in alpha waves—brainwaves of 7–14 cycles per second—which are typical of relaxed wakefulness; alpha waves also appear in people who are meditating, or under hypnosis. This stage lasts between 1–10 minutes in the normal sleeper; although we return to it at intervals during the night, it usually occupies only about 5 percent of our sleep.

STAGE 2

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This stage starts quite soon after falling asleep and occupies about 45 percent of human sleep. It contains a mixture of deeper, slower brainwaves: theta brainwaves (3.5–7.5 cycles per second) typical of drowsiness and light sleep, and slow delta waves (under 3.5 cycles per second), during which we are really unconscious.

STAGE 3

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Stage 3, which occupies only about 7 percent of sleep in young adults, is another transition phase to deeper sleep; as delta wave activity increases, we are taken fairly rapidly to Stage 4.

STAGE 4

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Stage 4 is the deepest form of sleep, with delta brainwaves predominating; it makes us about 13 percent of sleep in young adults. We stay in Stage 4 for quite long periods before surfacing again to REM and Stage 1 several times during the night.

REM SLEEP

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Rapid Eye Movement sleep is so called because the sleeper’s eyes move, indicating that they are dreaming. It occurs during Stage 1 sleep, and increases in quantity later on in the night. It has now been found that we also dream during deeper stages of sleep. It used to be thought that REM sleep was the part of sleep essential to us; it was believed that these periods were needed for brain rest, and that people deprived of them would develop psychosis. This last theory has been disproved, though deprivation of REM sleep does produce irritability and difficulties in concentration, and affects the ability to retain information learned the day before. People totally deprived of REM for more than three days have started having waking dreams, in the form of hallucinations. Others have been found to become less inhibited and conscientious.

CORE SLEEP

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In his book, Why We Sleep (OUP, 1988), sleep research expert Dr. Jim Horne proposes that the really essential part of sleep consists of Stages 3 and 4, which he calls collectively Slow Wave Sleep (SWS). During these stages the brain is in what he calls an “off-line” state: it is the only time during which this hard-working organ is totally at rest. SWS occurs largely during the first three cycles, that is, during the first half of a night’s sleep.

When people are deprived of sleep by staying up all night, it has been found that they don’t need to catch up with all the sleep they’ve lost. They recover no extra light sleep, and only a fraction of REM sleep. But they do recover all the lost deep sleep, which suggests that it is the sleep that is really essential.

In people who naturally need less sleep than the average, the same pattern is followed during the first few hours as in average sleepers. Although these people sleep for fewer hours, says Dr. Horne, they are getting the essential Slow Wave Sleep: “It is as though these short sleepers have somehow done away with what seems to be the flexible non-restorative sleep—the latter hours of sleep.”

He defines Core Sleep as consisting of Slow Wave Sleep and some REM sleep. His conclusion is that so long as we get our ration of Core Sleep, the brain will recover from its waking wear and tear. The rest he calls “optional sleep,” which has no essential purpose but “fills the tedious hours of darkness until sunrise, maintaining sleep beyond the point where core sleep declines,” and it may in fact not be really necessary.

HOW MUCH SLEEP?

The amount of sleep needed, or taken, by individual people varies enormously. There’s a standard belief that eight hours is the norm, but we all know of people who need much less. Former British Prime Minister Lady Thatcher was said to thrive on four or five, and there have been a number of other famous short sleepers, including Winston Churchill and Napoleon (both of whom catnapped during the day), Voltaire, who only needed three hours, and Dostoyevsky, who wrote his books between 3 P.M. and 5 or 6 the next morning.

It’s important for couples to realize that these variations are real; a short sleeper married to a long sleeper can make their partner’s life quite difficult if they insist on banging around at six in the morning, or interpret the other’s genuine needs as laziness.

Short and long sleepers have been found by and large to have different personalities. Short sleepers tend to be hard-working, ambitious, and rather obsessive, as well as extrovert and efficient. Long sleepers worry more, are less self-assured, and value their sleep, which they may use as an escape. They are also often creative people—and creative people are said to dream more and to have more vivid and adventurous dreams than other people. Einstein was a long sleeper.

THE AGES OF SLEEP

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The amount of sleep we need also varies with age. The “average” 7.5 hours applies to adults between 16 and 50. Most small babies sleep about 16–18 hours a day, and toddlers still need a lot more sleep than adults. However, some older children may actually need less than adults, something which parents don’t always recognize. With adolescence, the picture changes: some teenagers will sleep up to 15 hours a night. They are not necessarily being lazy, and will grow out of it. However, parents should note that longer sleeping hours are also a symptom of depression, which can hit teenagers quite badly. At about the age of 16 we reach the “normal” adult pattern—that is, whatever is normal for us.

From the age of 40 in men and 50 in women, the pattern alters again. In some women the menopause temporarily disrupts sleeping patterns. But in everyone, as they grow older, night-time sleep becomes lighter and more broken, with fewer dreams. In addition, many older people take naps during the day, so needing less sleep at night. Including catnaps, the average sleep for 70-year-olds is about 6 hours in 24. It’s important to realize this, since many old people ask their doctors for help with their “insomnia” when in fact they are sleeping quite normally for their age.

YOUR BODY CLOCK CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS

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The functioning of our bodies is governed by a biological inner clock, known as the circadian rhythm (from the Latin circa diem, meaning “about a day”). This regulates the times when various organs become more or less active and when the production of various hormones peaks and tails off. The length of the circadian day is normally between 24 and 25 hours; some people have sleep problems because their body clocks are out of timing with the norm, or disturbed by things like shift work and jet lag.

The siesta, traditional in hot southern European countries such as Spain, is in decline as Mediterranean businesses come into line with the rest of Europe. Yet it could be much more natural than the worldwide norm. The circadian rhythm is set to bring on sleep twice a day, mainly at night, but also in the early afternoon, which is why many people feel sleepy after lunch.

The circadian rhythm also varies with age. Babies sleep regularly during the day, at first at around 3 hourly intervals, tailing off to a morning and an afternoon sleep; by the age of about two and a half they are sleeping in the afternoon only. In the elderly, the need for an afternoon sleep usually returns.

It appears to be the circadian rhythm which is responsible for some people being “owls,” finding it hard to wake in the morning but lively at night, while others are “larks,” leaping out of bed first thing and drooping by ten in the evening. Interestingly, these differences seem to lessen as people age.

INSOMNIA

Insomnia is defined by sleep experts as difficulty in initiating and maintaining sleep, which has continued for at least three weeks. Chronic insomnia can last for years, while intermittent insomnia can be triggered by particular anxieties or crises. People experience insomnia in different ways: for some it’s the tossing and turning for what feels like hours before they drop off; others wake up at intervals and feel they never get a good night; and others wake early in the morning, and can’t get off to sleep again.

Insomnia can’t be measured by the number of hours you sleep, since people’s needs vary so much. It’s been found in sleep laboratories that some insomniacs actually sleep longer than “normal” sleepers: if you need 10 hours and only sleep for 8, then you won’t feel as refreshed as the good sleeper who needs 7.

Different types of insomnia have traditionally been related to different states of mind; it’s often said that not being able to get off to sleep at night is a symptom of anxiety, while waking early is a sign of depression. In fact, it’s not as simple as that. Some anxious and depressed people can actually sleep more, sometimes in an effort to escape from their feelings. Some depressed people can’t get off to sleep, and some anxious people fall asleep normally, but wake in the small hours.

A number of sleep experts believe that anger and resentment are more frequent causes of insomnia than anxiety and depression. Others suggest that the overactive, churning mind may not be a cause of insomnia, but a result. In addition, there is often more than one factor involved; an overactive mind may be related to an underactive body, for example. And as you can see from the checklist opposite, the causes are not always emotional.

QUALITY VERSUS QUANTITY

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Insomnia is unpleasant. It is boring and uncomfortable in itself, and it can affect your daily activities, work, and relationships. However, it may not be quite as damaging as some insomniacs fear. Sleep research laboratories have shown that people who normally sleep for 7 to 8 hours can adapt over time to as much as 2 hours less sleep daily without impairing their mental or physical ability. And when people have been totally deprived of sleep for between eight and eleven days (the longest times so far studied) most of the body’s organs, except for the brain, continue to function remarkably well. While the brain does need rest, Dr. Horne stresses that “everything else from the neck down seems to cope very well, without sleep, provided you get regular rest and regular food.”

Nevertheless, too little sleep can and does affect us, both because of genuine fatigue, but also because we believe that shortened sleep will cause us suffering. Our beliefs about how things should be have a major effect on how we react to them.

So, how much sleep do we really need? Dr. Horne believes that around 6 hours is more than adequate for mental health; any sleep after that comes into his category of “optional sleep.” If his theory is correct, what the brain needs is Core Sleep. This should provide some reassurance to insomniacs: Core Sleep predominates during the first sleep cycles, so even if you only sleep for a few hours, you will be getting a period of this important mixture of deep and REM sleep.

Conditions in sleep laboratories, of course, where the human guinea pigs are fed and rested, and have chosen to lose sleep, are quite different from those of the person tossing and turning in the lonely small hours—even if they end up getting the same amount of sleep. EEG readings which record brain activity show that most insomniacs actually sleep much more than they claim to: quite often people who feel they have only slept an hour or two have actually slept for several. It appears that people’s perception of their insomnia can cause as much stress as the insomnia itself, and it may well be that worrying about insomnia can make you just as stressed, tetchy, and tired as not sleeping. It will also contribute to keeping you awake.

Insomnia can be debilitating, but sometimes worrying about poor sleep can make the situation worse.

So, if you are insomniac, there are three important things to remember. Firstly, you may be getting more sleep than you think. Secondly, so long as you get some sleep and can relax your body, you will not come to long-term harm. Thirdly, your attitude towards your sleep has a lot to do with the quality of the sleep you get. The first step towards beating insomnia is not to worry about it.