By Sadhguru – Founder, Isha Foundation

Bring natural foods in your diet

If you are sleeping eight or nine hours a day, one thing to look at is the food you eat. Consuming at least a certain amount of vegetarian material, particularly foods that can be eaten in their natural, uncooked condition is very important for your general well-being.

When you cook food, a large volume of prana or life energy is destroyed. This is one reason why lethargy can set into the body. If you eat a certain amount of fresh fruits and vegetables, there are many benefits, but one thing you will notice immediately is that your sleep quota will come down.

From stove to plate – Make it quick

In Indian culture, traditionally it is said that any cooked food should always be eaten within 1.5 to 2 hours of being cooked. Keeping cooked food in a fridge for long periods of time and then eating it can raise your sleep quota in addition to causing many other problems to the body. The same is true for canned food. There is something called “tamas” which literally means “inertia.” Food that is kept like this will have a lot of tamas, which can bring down your mental agility and alertness.

Don’t sleep right after you eat

There are quite a few people who are in such a mental state that unless they load themselves with food and make the body dull, they cannot fall asleep. You must give sufficient time for digestion to happen before you sleep.

I would say 80% of the food that you eat will go waste if you fall asleep within two hours of eating. If you are in a condition where you cannot sleep unless you have a full stomach, you need to address this issue. This is not about sleep, this is a certain mental state.

The right position for sleep

When the body is positioned horizontally, you can immediately make out that your pulse rate drops. The body makes this adjustment because if blood is pumped with the same force, too much will go into your head, causing damage.

The blood vessels which go upward are a finer arrangement compared to those going down. As they go up into the brain, they become almost hair-like, to a point that they cannot take an extra drop.

When you sleep, if you place your head towards the north and stay that way for 5 to 6 hours, the magnetic pull of the Earth will cause pressure on your brain because iron is an important ingredient in your blood. It is not that if you sleep this way you will fall dead.

But if you do this every day, you are asking for trouble. If you are beyond a certain age and your blood vessels are weak, it can result in haemorrhages and paralytic strokes. Even if your system is sturdy, you may not sleep very well because there is more circulation in the brain than there should be.

If you are in the northern hemisphere, East is the best direction to keep your head when you sleep. Northeast is okay. West is alright. South, if you must. North, no. In the southern hemisphere, don’t put your head to the South.

[Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a yogi, is a visionary, humanitarian and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet and internationally-renowned speaker, Sadhguru’s wit and piercing logic provoke and widen our perception of life. www.ishafoundation.org ]