One thing I don’t talk about often any longer is my sleep issue. In part, it’s because I no longer have one. Well, actually, that’s a large part. It would be boring for me to write a thousand-plus words about how well I sleep every few months. But, a retrospective of how I got here? I’m all over that!
I had undiagnosed hyperthyroidism. In tandem, I never liked to go to bed until midnight or so, even when I was a kid. When I was six or seven, I would be put to bed at whatever time. Maybe eight or so? Way too early. I would stuff a towel or t-shirt in the crack under my door so I could read until midnight or so.
I never liked sleep and used to have night mares all the time. I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism when I was thirteen or so, and had my thyroid destroyed when I was fourteen. That swung me from hyperthyroid to hypothyroid, but it didn’t make me sleep any longer per night. When I was in college, I slept maybe four hours a night. One time, I was so tired, I could not find my portable alarm clock anywhere in my door room. When I opened my mini-fridge to grab a Diet Pepsi, there was the alarm clock. I had no memory of putting it in there.
When I’d go home for vacation, I would sleep for fifteen hours during the first night home. And I’d be sick for the whole time I was home. My body was not happy with me. At all.
when I started Taiji roughly fifteen years ago, it helped me with sleep. I slowly started bulking up the hours. Before that, I tried so many remedies, I’ve lost count. Lavender in the bath (which is how I found out I was allergic to it), St. John’s Wort, Valerian Root (which made me suicidal), warm milk, sleeping pills (I could not wake up, not even after we halved the dosage and halved it again. Asian people, especially Asian women need drastically less of a dosage than white men do), meditation, exercise, a dreamcatcher, and probably other things I’ve forgotten. The only thing that helped was sex, but sleeping with someone hurt, so that was probably a wash.
Taiji was the only thing to help. By a year ago, I had worked myself up to 6 1/2 hours a night. I tried to work on when I got that sleep as well, but that was hard, too. I have always liked sleeping later in the night. I’m able to do so because my work schedule is flexible. At my peak, I would go to bed around six in the morning and get up at noon.