Morning alarm goes off and as you fumble tiredly for the snooze button, you promise yourself that this evening will be different, and that you will get those blissful eight hours of shut-eye. Yet by 11 pm, you don’t feel that tired and continue to stretch the day a little bit more. If this sounds like a familiar scenario, it’s time to wake up to the health, beauty and feel-good benefits of sleep.

Even missing a few hours of sleep can have an effect. It accumulates over time and it is estimated that a sleep debt of ten hours or more will affect performance. But there’s no need to overdo it. Doctors discovered that sleeping for nine or more hours a night is not necessarily beneficial. Just like having that second slice of cake, or finishing the packet of biscuits, oversleeping is another manifestation of our inherent greed! Stick to the recommended 7 - 8 hours.

Sleep nourishes the body; replenishes it, energizes it. Deep sleep has a healing effect on the body. Because of good sleep, our body stays healthy. When you drop down on the bed dog-tired, nature energizes your body through sleep. Your pranamaya kosha is nourished and your capacity to breathe improves considerably. It’s this pranashakti that takes away all your fatigue and in the morning when you get up, you feel as fresh as a daisy.

If someone gets a heart attack all of a sudden, what will the doctor do? First of all, he’ll administer sleeping pills. The other medicines will follow. After heart attack or in some other serious ailment or surgery, at least for three-four days, apart from the painkillers, patient is given sleeping pills or injections for sedation. If you develop some serious problem, the doctor would immediately put you to sleep, saying, ‘Go off to sleep, child!’ Why? Because Mother Nature will give you sleep as sleep has curative effect.

The truth is that you get a heart attack only if you don’t sleep properly or remain worked up all the time; wrong kind of diet, bad eating habits as a result of which arteries get clogged. But these days, stress is one of the primary reasons. It’s stress that kills, because a tension-ridden man doesn’t get his regular dose of sleep.

When a tension-ridden man is unable to sleep, whatever restorative job, whatever blissfulness sleep was to induce, doesn’t occur. Then the body begins to rebel and say, ‘No, this won’t do! I refuse to clean up your blood. You don’t provide me with enough energy.’

So deep sleep not only enables us to stay healthy, but also bestows us genuine happiness. In that state, neither buddhi is active, nor is mana. If you are in deep sleep, do you realize where you are? Only when you get up, you stretch yourself and say, ‘Oh, today, I slept like a log. Didn’t even realize where I was.’

You may be the proud owner of a huge bungalow. It may be overflowing with all the riches of the world. You may have excess of everything in the house. You eat, drink and enjoy yourself. But ultimately, you always say, ‘Now let me sleep!’ You switch on the best of music systems, you dance yourself to distraction, and enjoy a raucous party, but finally, you always say, ‘Now stop all this!’ This body’s capacity, too, is limited. How many times can you eat? Even if you do want to enjoy all the worldly pleasures, still you must know how to lead a stress-free life. Only then you’ll be able to enjoy all the pleasures, not otherwise.

I do know of a gentleman. He is so very fond of eating and drinking. Every known form of addiction he has, including drugs. Then he had a stroke. He lost his eyesight and went blind. As he has sugar, he cannot indulge. On top of it, he has lost his eyesight. But there is no limit to self-delusion. If you think that after what all happened to him, he must have woken up, you are sadly mistaken. He still hasn’t learnt his lesson. He’s still the same.

Now what will you call him, an animal or a human being? Such people are worse than animals. Rishis have prescribed some norms for savouring the worldly pleasures. If you want to savour the world, then develop sense of detachment in your attitude.

So sleep induces good health, maintains the balance of our mind and body, and affords us unadulterated pleasure. Sleep just doesn’t take care of our fatigue; it affords us unalloyed pleasure as well. Isn’t it? If you aren’t convinced, you may try it out, first hand. When you go home, don’t sleep, just stay awake. If you find it difficult to stay awake, then you could start acting as a watchman of the house. Stay awake, and keep walking! In less than two days, you’ll start feeling miserable. Sleep is also a way of experiencing bliss.

When you are asleep, the world, and all the worldly objects, even mana, buddhi and chitta cease to function and yet sleep affords us great joy and relief. Today’s man has lost this beauty sleep due to worries, anxieties. Right food, right exercise, happy mind set helps in experiencing good night sleep. Deep sleep has a healing effect on the body. Because of good sleep, our body stays healthy.