Your Ambassador of JOY, Barry Shore, introduces you to the Dreamy Sleep Ambassador, Nancy Rothstein. Nancy is a sleep expert, the Director of Sleep Health at Resonea, and is the host of The Sleep Radio Show. She is also the author of My Daddy Snores, which has sold over 400,000 copies! Do not sleep on her talent, people! Join Nancy on her quest to help you live life fully, 24/7, all thanks to effective and restful sleep. Learn why sleep is essential and how it can impact all aspects of work, life, and well-being. Know the difference between sleeping and napping, or whether you should eat before bed or not. Discover all there is to sleeping as Barry and Nancy discuss the benefits of sleep and how deprivation can be a true KILLER.

Definitely, the Show to LISTEN. Again, SHARE.

—

Listen to the podcast here:

The SLEEP AMBASSADOR With Nancy H. Rothstein

Good day, beautiful, bountiful, beloved immortal beings and good-looking people. Remember, you’re good-looking because you’re always looking for and finding the good in abundance. In this show, we discuss the most important aspects of life and they’re all revolving around the most important person in your life and that is you.

In this show, we discuss the three fundamentals of life. By following these three fundamentals, you will be the best possible you. That’s great because when you’re the best possible you, you can build more bridges, create more harmony, joy, happiness, peace, and love in the world. The result of that is you will be happier, healthier, and wealthier. Who doesn’t want that?

We’re going to talk about the three fundamentals. I want you to be aware that you are being joined by 349,613 people around the world because they want to learn more about the joy of living and how to live in joy daily no matter the circumstance is. The way to do that is to know the three fundamentals of life. Number one is your life has a purpose. When you lead a purpose-driven life, you can go MAD. In this case, MAD is a fabulous acronym that stands for Make A Difference. If you lead a purpose-driven life, you make a difference.

The third fundamental is to unlock the power and the secrets of everyday words and terms. It’s the simplest example. This great show around the world is being carried over that magical, mystical, mythical platform called the internet. If anybody asks, “What does WWW stand for?” Invariably they’ll tell you it has something to do with the internet. Factually speaking, they’re correct.

In our world, the world of the positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant, WWW stands for What a Wonderful World. Of course, a tip of the hat and a big thank you to Louie Armstrong or Satchmo for enabling that song to go viral and touch not just tens of millions or hundreds of millions but billions of people around the planet. Whenever you hear even the opening bars of that song, “What a wonderful world,” what do you do right away? You can’t help but smile. SMILE is one of the most important words and acronyms you can internalize, utilize, and leverage in your life. SMILE stands for Seeing Miracles In Life Every day.

I have been privileged to speak to groups around the country and throughout the world because of the pandemic. We’re doing it over the webinars and such. Before the COVID struck, when I speak in person for about 5,000 people in the audience, I tell people the story of Barry Shore and I mention the word SMILE, See Miracles In Life Every day.

Invariably, people are like, “Barry Shore, I’ve been up for hours. I haven’t seen any miracles.” I ask them, “Are you here? Can you hear? Can you see? Can you walk? Can you stand still?” “I can.” “Do you have water to drink? Do you have food to eat and a place to live? Do you have family and friends? Every single one of those is a miracle.” It was the simplest proof. A million people didn’t get out of bed one morning. Why? They died. If you’re reading this, by definition, you didn’t. You’re alive. If you’re alive, you have an obligation to live exuberantly.

Speaking of that, imagine the following, standing up in the morning, hale and hearty, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and that evening, be in the hospital completely paralyzed. It was not for an automobile accident. It’s not a spinal injury. It was a rare disease that took over my body and rendered me a quadriplegic. Nothing on my body moved, 144 days in the hospital, two years in a hospital bed. In my own home, I couldn’t turn over by myself.

Four years in a wheelchair. I had braces on both my legs, my hips to my ankles, and that was progress. Thank God, I’m able to be vertical and ambulatory with the help of a seven-foot walking wand. I still can’t walk up the stairs by myself. I can’t walk up a curb by myself. I’m tripod and not a biped and I have help twelve hours a day, seven days a week but when you hear my voice positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant. It’s all because of that one word, SMILE, Seeing Miracles In Life Every day.

I got to tell you a quick story. My niece comes over to me and she says, “Uncle Barry, can we spell smile S-M-I-E-L?” I thought about it. It sounds the same smile, smiel. I asked her, “How come?” She says, “Then it would stand for Seeing Miracles In Everyday Life.” Out of the mouth of a baby. What she was doing was creating the world she wants to live in. CREATE is a fabulous acronym that stands for Causing, Rethinking, Enabling All To Excel.

Thank God, we have a brain. Our brain has over 100 billion brain cells and more than 120 trillion synapses connecting all those brain cells. They’re there for more than deciding what latte you want in the morning. It’s The ability to use your mind and your brain to do what we call neural-linguistic programming.

Yes, we have the choice and the ability to think about how we want to approach the world. We can learn no matter what our circumstances are. We want to learn in a positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant way. When you do that, you can live in a world that you can create that is filled with more harmony, more joy, more happiness, peace, and love.

I do want to interrupt myself and warn you in advance and our guests that I do use a lot of four-letter words. I even use the four-letter FU word. I do that because it’s fun and for the shock value. The four-letter words that we use because we live in a world of positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant are love, life, hope, grow, free, gift, swim, pray, play, and help. Four-letter words. I urge everybody to use them whenever they can. The four-letter FU word is FUNN.

The only way to satisfy a need for sleep is sleep. It's the miracle cure. Click To Tweet

Of course, people are like, “Barry Shore, fun is only three letters.” Not in our world. In the world of positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant, fun is FUNN. After the show and you see your family and your friends and you have a twinkle in your eye and a smile on your face, remember what that stands for. Point your fingers and say, “FU everybody.” Remember to add right away the capital N. They’d say, “Where’d you get that?” You say, “I listened to Barry Shore and The Joy of Living. He wants to teach the world to FUNN.”

It’s a good conversation starter to talk about the beautiful, bountiful, beloved information that you’re going to get because it is transformational. The information by itself is this data. We’re going to help you transform your being by discussing something near and dear to everybody on the planet. You’re going to meet one of the most interesting, dynamic, and energizing people, you will ever have the chance to meet.

Before we bring her on, I wanted to mention two things. Number one, everything about our fantastic guest is going to be on my website, BarryShore.com. You don’t have to write anything down and noting everything. Lean in and let the information and the transformation flow through you around you and with you. She is uplifting and helpful. She might even put you to sleep. I hope she does.

Before we bring her on, I want to urge everybody to use the two most powerful words in the English language. When you use these two words three times a day, conscious and conscientiously, for the rest of your life, it’ll be going to make a difference for you, your family, your friends, and all living beings. I guarantee that the result of this is you should be happier, healthier, wealthier, and that’s a good thing. These two words are thank you. Thank stands for To Harmonize And Network Kindness.

The Dalai Lama recorded to say and be kind whenever possible. As he said, “It’s always possible.” Imagine you could go back into the coffee shops with no mask even and order your fancy latte for $5 and you sit down. Somebody brings it to you and you say, “Thank you. Welcome to coffee shop. You order your fancy latte for $5.” A few minutes go by, nobody brings it to you. You go to the counter and they say, “I’m sorry. We forgot. We’re busy. We’ll bring it to you.” You go back and sit down. A few moments go by, somebody brings it to you and you still say, “Thank you.”

You’re walking out of the coffee shop, it’s raining out and somebody holds the door open for you, you say, “Thank you.” You’re walking out of the coffee shop, it’s raining and somebody slams the door on you, you say, “Thank you.” You’re stuck in traffic, you’re late for an appointment, and somebody cuts you off, you say, “Thank you.” You get up in the middle of the night, you stub your toe and it hurts, you say, “Thank you.” To harmonize and network kindness. KIND is a fabulous acronym that stands for Keep Inspiring Noble Deeds. I cannot think of anybody. It’s inspiring noble deeds for me and helping me in my life. Welcome the wonderful, amazing, fabulous, Nancy Rothstein.

—

Nancy, say hello to the 353,222 people around the world.

Every one of those 352,000-plus people has something in common. They must sleep to live.

I’m going to introduce Nancy. If I started telling you her whole bio, it would take up the rest of the show. I’m going to suffice it to say two things. Number one is she’s beautiful. Number two is I am the Ambassador of Joy and she is The Sleep Ambassador. We’re not going to put you to sleep. We’re going to enable you to be at sleep when you’re ready in a better way.

In my humble opinion, and Nancy will agree, I put this in my book, The JOY of LIVING, sleep is the miracle cure. It’s not just fundamental to our lives. In nowadays’ environment, being fast-paced and filled with competing energies rob us, in essence, of the ability to be calm, aware, and therefore restful and going into a deep sleep. I’ve asked, begged, and pleaded with Nancy, and she’s agreed to share with us her amazing insights.

Nancy is not just a regular person and says, “I’m The Sleep Ambassador.” She’s an MBA. She’s an academic. She’s been in meditation for over 50 years of her life. She started when she was two. She’s giving over to us not just information because that in and of itself, you get from a book or any place. These are transformational processes that will make a difference from this moment forward in your life. Without further ado, wonderful Nancy, let’s jump right in and start talking about what I have in life called the joy of sleep.

Why in the world are many zillions, millions of people having trouble with what we were designed to do? What is it? There is joy in sleep. Once you surrender to slumber, as I like to say, you’re not thinking about it. You can’t try to sleep. You just sleep. The best sleep technology is inside of you. I’ve never said this next sentence. You are your own gadget. You don’t need an app to sleep. You’re the app, but what’s happened is our biology hasn’t changed. It won’t change for eons. Our behaviors have changed. I use the word inflicting specifically. We are inflicting behaviors on our biology like this thing. It is fabulous. We’re talking to you, 352,000-plus people, because of the technology. What happened is we can’t go to sleep because we’re wired and tired. We can’t expect to suddenly lay down and go to sleep.

Sometimes you need an external technology like some kind of a nasal device that opens your airway or you have obstructive sleep apnea, and you need a CPAP machine, which means Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. It’s a blower motor opening your airway, which is fabulous technology. The best sleep technology is inside of you. I am in awe of what we’re designed to do.

What does AWE stand for, Nancy?

My new AWE is Awareness and Wonderful Energy. Talk about needing to get good sleep, outside my window were the Blue Angels and their five planes rehearsing.

We have a worldwide audience. We have tens of thousands of people reading from China and India. To put it in context for everybody and throughout Europe and such, the Blue Angels are the most proficient pilots in the entire world.

They fly in formation.

They fly five planes, almost wings touching at supersonic speeds.

Why do I mention the awe? It’s because the juxtaposition of coming on here to talk about sleep and how we’re wired and then watching that was a miracle to talk about needing to be well-rested for reaction time. SMILE, Seeing Miracles In Life Every day, was a miracle for me. My eyes could see it. The gift of sight and sleep is another gift. By the way, during sleep, your eyes get to rest. I’m in awe about our existence. I’m in awe that we all have different stuff compiled in our brains.

Let’s talk about this crucial issue you raised, which I wasn’t thinking about. Now that you mentioned it, let’s use that as a riff. We’re a jazz duet kit. The idea of sleep is not just as a mechanism of putting the body down and getting some Z’s as we used to call it but it’s the ability to enable the physical structure to have less response time. In other words, you can think better, act better, and perform better. Every aspect of life becomes better with deep, meaningful, restful sleep. Is that correct?

That is correct. People who are sleep-deprived don’t smile a lot.

I smile. I like to sleep.

If you’re tired, you don’t notice many miracles because you’re too tired for your cognition to process them. We’re cities that never sleep inside. You may look like nothing is happening. Historically, eons ago, that was thought. Although I’m going to tell you another aspect of sleep that nobody thinks about and it’s pretty amazing. You’ve got so much going on. You are rejuvenating, restoring, repairing tissues, processing food and nutrients.

Your brain is encoding memories and processing what memories are you going to move from short to long-term? There are huge correlations of the functionality of your immune system to fight off disease and other pathogens that can enter your body if you’re too sleep-deprived. It is a miracle and awe-inspiring to know that this entity called our body and our brains are designed to sleep. Here’s one that most people don’t know about. We have something in our brain called the glymphatic system. What the world is that?

The best sleep technology is inside of you. You don't need an app to sleep; you're the app! Click To Tweet

It sounds like an interesting vegetable.

We know our glymphatic system cleans toxins and all this through our bodies. The brain has a cleansing system. It flushes toxins during sleep. When you don’t get sufficient sleep effectively, your brain is like a dirty kitchen and you are building a plaque. We don’t have to get into the specifics of what it is. Let’s talk about premature dementia and Alzheimer’s. Chronic sleep deprivation compromises your body to function and age properly.

I am enthused at this moment. I am joyful that you are here. It’s invigorating because we’re talking about sleep. Nancy, every single human being on the planet is touched by what you do. The hundreds of thousands that read, God willing, those people will be a million-plus. It’s not just important but it’s vital. Vital is a Latin word that means life. You cannot have vitality without sleep. It’s the yin and yang of what we’re thinking about.

In other words, people who are in their twenties, as an example, think about vitality as moving all the time. At some point, usually, it’s over 35 or 40, some people wake up and say, “A-ha.” It needs to have a yin and yang. If there’s a movement, there also needs to be a movement vertically as well as horizontally.

Let’s talk about something you mentioned, which I like. I want you to give few specifics and wow us with some stuff. By the way, WOW stands for Words Of Wisdom, which is what you’re giving to us, and Words Of Wonder. The idea is that sleep is the ability for your physical being to be the food processing plant, which by the way, is plus or minus. Especially in the United States, most people do not treat their bodies well enough vis-à-vis food to be able to utilize the digestive processes properly to enable us to get sleep. That’s one thing.

I love how you said, “I’m going to go into memory mode.” I had a great memory of something that happened. I’m skipping down the street with my grandson. How wonderful? I remember it now while I’m awake. I want to put that permanently in and have that as a reservoir that I can draw on and say, “Hello, joy.” Let’s talk a little bit more about what can people do vis-à-vis food to make sure that they’re getting the best sleep? In other words, should you not eat 2 hours or 10 minutes before sleep, etc.?

Let’s be practical here. When you sleep, your body temperature goes lower. It slows down to do other work like encoding memory and tissue repair. If you’ve got a full stomach with a steak, a glass of red wine, a baked potato, and a piece of cheesecake and you ate it at 8:00 at a restaurant, you come home and you poop because you’ve had a few drinks. You want to lay down and go to sleep.

Your digestive system says, “Timeout. Do you want me to lay horizontally and do my sleep work? Do you want me to process all this food? I can’t do both. I’m sorry but you’re going to have little indigestion.” Practically thinking about it, when you go to sleep, your body is doing other things. You can’t demand it to work on digesting at the same time that it’s doing other things. Don’t eat a big meal for a good three hours before bed.

This is good, three hours.

It depends. Don’t go to bed hungry. Have a sleep-friendly snack like a banana. It has melatonin in it believe it or not. Here’s another one about eating and it’s the same thing, liquids. Somebody told me they have a liter bottle, “I’m always thirsty. I wake up with a dry mouth.” That’s because of their mouth breathing and that’s another story. They’re drinking all this water in bed. “How many times do you get up to pee?” “I don’t know, 3 or 4.” Your bladder says, “Timeout. I cannot lay here all night with all that liquid in me. Why are you drowning me in liquid when I need to go to sleep?”

You have to listen to your body. It speaks to you. If you’re getting up to pee multiple times during the night, ask why. Am I drinking too many liquids before bed? It could be you saying, “I don’t drink enough all day and certainly not at night and I get up to pee all night.” It might be a sign that you’re at risk for sleep apnea. Those arousals that you get are from apneic events where you stop breathing and it alerts you. Your brain is going to do anything it can to get air. It’s all intertwined. You don’t want to eat too close to bed and you don’t want to drink too many liquids that keep you up having to pee.

By the way, this is from an MBA who’s well-spoken around the world. I love the fact that she’s talking about pee.

That’s the reality. What am I going to call it, urinate?

Pee is great. I love speaking about dog poop. How’s that?

I’ve never had a doctor say this, but I speak with enough and work with enough scientists and physicians to know this. I came across a lot of adults, particularly older adults who take medications or people who take something for sleep, for example. Whether they need it or not, it’s another story. Don’t stop taking anything without talking to your physician, please. I’m not a medical doctor. If you take medication before bed, be it a supplement or an Rx, and you take two sips of water and then you lay down right away, that medication is probably going to sit in your esophagus. You want to drink enough water to let the medication go down and sit up for a little bit before you lay down so the medication can go down and work.

You mean you have to be practical and let your body perform its own functions.

We can throw in the way.

Let’s talk about one of my favorite subjects. You spoke about apnea. Let’s take some of those letters and call it napea. Napping is one of the most beautiful, delightful processes that anybody can get involved. We all did it as kids and we tend to do it when we’re older. You’ll know about this when you get to my age. I happen to be a lover of naps because I’m able to do something somewhere between 15 to 25 minutes and feel invigorated, I suppose to a 1-hour, 2-hour nap. I like short, powerful, wonderful naps. Please speak to us about naps.

If you had said, “I take a 1.5-hour nap every day,” that’s a short sleep. Here’s about napping. There is an art to it. A nap is not a substitute for nighttime sleep. A nap is an opportunity to boost alertness and restore you to keep going for your day.

She used these words, opportunity to restore you. In other words, you’re doing things, moving, and shaking the world, and then look upon a nap as something positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant because it’s going to restore you to be able to continue building your empire whether it’s the empire of your family, business, and meditation. Those empires come in different forms. The ability to be restored and think of life as an opportunity, and not, “I’m tired.” Thank you, Dr. Rothstein.

Nap, how do you do it? Why should you nap less than half an hour? A power nap is 10, 15 to 20 minutes. If you go over half an hour, we all know the times we’ve taken a nap, awake and groggier than we started. If you’ve entered a sleep cycle, recognize the way that you go through the stages of sleep. If you go over half an hour, you go into deeper stages of sleep and therefore you wake up groggy.

A power nap has shown research-based and everything I talk about, except one thing I want to mention as my favorite part of sleep, which isn’t enough researched-base and may never be, but that’s another story. It goes back a millennium. A nap should be short because you don’t want to enter a sleep cycle and it rejuvenates you, and it should be cool, dark, and quiet. Don’t nap on your bed. Your bed is reserved for sleep and the other S.

This is important. We’re talking about not information but transformation. This is worldwide. It doesn’t matter what country you live in or what culture you’re in. Do not nap in your bed, please.

Unless if you are ill or you’re pregnant and you need more sleep. You need to go to sleep in the afternoon for two hours or all day long because you’re sick with COVID, a disease, the flu, or a cold. Your body is speaking to you. Do not say, “I won’t sleep tonight.” When you’re ill, sleep when you need sleep. It rejuvenates. It’s healing. It’s right here. Sleep is the miracle cure on page 21. If you need a long nap, do it.

Another time, you got to drive and there’s no way around it. You are so tired and you know you’re going to knock it off. You can’t drive drowsy. It’s not fair to you or anybody on the road. You don’t want to harm anybody. If you need a long nap for that because you’re going to drive, try not to drive drowsy, but do what you need to do and do not drive drowsy. Don’t think caffeine is going to keep off because the only way to satisfy a sleep need is a sleep.

I’m going to quote you on that. I like that. These are gems. This is going to be transformational for your life. It’s going to help restore you and make you better, happier, healthier, and wealthier.

—

We’re with a two-legged being named Nancy Rothstein is the sleep ambassador and she is sharing with us not just tips and insights, but transformational ideas. Most of them are practical, but the point is you need to know them because Sleep Is Your Superpower. That’s the name of one of our courses on LinkedIn and 100,000-plus people have taken it.

Every aspect of life becomes better with deep, meaningful, restful sleep. Click To Tweet

By the way, sleep is a great acronym. In my humble opinion, that stands for a Soul Locating, Energizing, Enlivening Power because that’s what we talk about, your superpower. I want to go to something that is called Sleepus Interruptus. It has to do with the idea of the title of your first book, which has sold over 400,000 copies called My Daddy Snores.

Since I’m a daddy, I can attest that it’s true. I happen to like the idea of snoring. I don’t know if I do. They told me sometimes I do. I don’t know if I believe it. To me, that sounds, “I’m deep in my sleep.” You’re going to say, “Come on, Shore. You don’t need to snore. You may be Shore but you’re not snore.” Let’s talk about snoring because it is an uncommon situation. Is that correct, Nancy?

Hundreds of millions of people snore. Barry, the cute child snoring is not a cute thing. You think it means you’re in deep sleep but snoring says that your airway is constricting. Air is the way that we breathe oxygen into our hearts, lungs, and every capillary in the body. When you snore, there’s a constriction and makes a snout. That’s why I wrote My Daddy Snores. I was falling asleep in my daughter’s kindergarten class many years ago because I was so tired of my ex-husband snoring. We get along fine, but the snoring was a problem.

I took out a piece of construction paper and I wrote My Daddy Snores, and then I started to find out that this was a big deal. Snoring was indicative of the risk of obstructive sleep apnea, obstruction of the airway. Not everybody who snores has sleep apnea and not everybody who has sleep apnea snores. If you want more information with an organization I’m involved in, be it with Harvard, it’s called MyApnea.org. You want to learn more about it. By the way, on my website, I have done a lot of work because it’s so important to me to empower people with information that matters, not TMI, Too Much Information, but ITM, Information That Matters.

Everything is on the Barry Shore website because there are 38 things you want to know about Nancy. She’s not just a sleep ambassador, but she’s transforming the world through joy, happiness, peace, love, and sleep because we all need it.

Barry, the fact that you’re snoring, you may be in deep sleep but it may be indicative of your airway being constricted and you want all the air to get to every organ that it can get to. I have mild sleep apnea. I don’t look the part, so to speak, because there’s a lot of misconceptions about what it’s like. I wear an oral appliance as opposed to a CPAP machine with a mask, which stands for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. It’s a blower motor to open your airway. It’s 100% effective. A lot of people don’t like it. I didn’t particularly need it. I wear an oral appliance from my dentist, who’s trained in sleep. It juts my jaw forward and opens the airway.

I want to tell you something because you care and you know. I am so interested in sleep because it’s part of our lives. When I was living in Los Angeles, we live in Venice Beach, California for decades, I went to UCLA to the sleep center. In the course of about a decade, I did an overnight sleep program to make sure that I didn’t have apnea sufficient and wear any machine or anything. Thank God it was good because I got some instructions.

It’s funny when you think about it. “Do I need to be taught certain things about sleeping? Isn’t that natural?” Yes, but as Nancy taught us, eating is also natural. Let’s say I want to go to sleep at 10:00. We’re going to go out to eat and we’ll have half a pizza together with pepperonis and we’ll be home by 9:30. You just had pepperoni pizza at 9:30 and you’re going to sleep at 10:00? There needs to be cognizant.

Life is life. Sometimes you’re going to do stuff that doesn’t serve you well, but you will recognize it and you will honor your body and say, “Body, I won’t do that to you tomorrow.”

Let’s talk about something called the wisdom of sleep. By the way, I don’t think people read it anymore. Remember Rip Van Winkle?

Yeah.

He went to sleep for 70 years or some large number of times and he woke up a little more wise about things because of the ability to sleep. What is the wisdom of sleep?

To me, the wisdom of sleep is the fact that we are designed to do it. It is an operating system, an operating mechanism, an operating technology within us that is wise. We make conscious choices often that disrupt something. Here’s part of the problem with the wisdom department. Come to think of it. You can have no high school degree or two PhDs and you’ve never had a course on sleep. It’s going to take up about 1/3 of your adult life. For children, it’s more than 1/3 of their life at that point. You don’t know what’s happening.

It’s hard to value things without some fundamental understanding of what’s happening. Some people say sleep is a waste of time. I would rather say the time may be a waste without sleep. It’s how you choose to spend your time. There’s such a blur between day and night because the minute Edison came along, and then Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and all this stuff, all these technology things, aside from the light bulb, we brought day into night. We’ve lost that wisdom that has been offered to us from the get-go and our need to sleep and are design to sleep. There is the wisdom. Our wisdom is honoring that. Our wisdom is making choices that support our sleep. That is for our body, mind, and spirit.

Let’s go to that point of the body, mind, and spirit and integrating them in a harmonious manner. Talk to us about the right environment for sleep. In other words, everybody has a bedroom, darkened, mirrored, not mirrored, carpets, quiet, not quiet. You want an outfit your room. I happen to use the humidifier in my room. I didn’t use it for years but I’m using it now. I do a meditation before going to sleep but leave that aside. Can you give us three important parts of everybody’s sleep environment? Let’s not call it a bedroom. What does Nancy recommend that every sleep environment have?

First, I’m going to use the term I like, sleep sanctuary. It’s such a calming word. For those people who are reading or for those you know of, sleep is not particularly equitable. There are children and adults around the world with no place to sleep. Those of us who do have a bedroom or a studio apartment with a bed is so fortunate and blessed to have a place to sleep.

Many people in the world don’t. I do want to honor that by saying that not everybody does have this environment I’m about to speak about. You want it to be cool, dark, and quiet. It’s hard to sleep if you have no air conditioner. It’s hot out. You want it to be cool. I’m not going to even say the degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius because you can Google this.

We are made to sleep. Early to bed, early to rise. Thank you to the US Benjamin Franklin for saying that. It makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, which complies with one of the attitudes you used. You want it to be dark for sleep. You want it to be quiet, uncluttered, and calming environment. Your bed is not your auxiliary entertainment center or your office. Your bed is for sleep and, as I had to say on a corporate stage, I could use it is for sex. Sleep and sex, that’s what your bed is for. It’s not to watch TV, do work, and be on your computer. It needs to be where you can transition from your busy life to sleep.

You said you meditate before sleep. One of the problems through this pandemic is we’re carrying our anxiety to bed with us. People can’t fall asleep that got so much on their minds. I don’t have time to do a breathing technique here that we could do, but gratitude. Think about what you’re grateful for as you lay down in bed. It will take your mind out of the barrage of thoughts. If you’ve had a not a great day and you don’t feel grateful for much, thank whoever you thank for your bed, your heartbeat, your pillow, and the opportunity to even sleep. You’re in a safe environment where you can sleep. You’re not out in the woods somewhere where a lion can attack you. You have a room. You have a place to sleep. Honor it.

Some people say sleep is a waste of time, but it's the other way around. Time may be a waste without sleep. Click To Tweet

If you’re having trouble falling asleep, go to gratitude, whether you journal it before you go to sleep while you’re laying there. You want to keep breathing into something you’re grateful for or use the word love, peace or joy. Think of the joy of sleep. Forgetting your brain that’s got a million things going on, think how happy your body, cells, and feet are because you’re not going to be running around or eyes because they get to rest. Think about the joy they get after sleeping.

This is something I use for my technique. In my meditation, I say, “Look how wonderful life is.” I get to have seven hours of deep, loving sleep. Maybe it’s only an hour deep. It doesn’t matter. I’m crazy because I swim a lot, so I think of things in terms of, “That’s ten miles of swimming for me. I’m going to be swimming and sleep.” It’s how I look at it. It’s the ability to be able to play the body down, the mind, and the heart and to live in a FOG, Fountain Of Gratitude.

In other words, I envision a fountain of gratitude and I live in the FOG, and that’s how I used to train that. Is there a time where people fall asleep? In other words, maybe you’re a person who puts your head on the pillow and you’re out. Do we transition from a process like a case meditation, gratitude, or whatever somebody is doing, and lay down and it takes 5, 10, 12 minutes? That’s natural, isn’t it?

It’s totally normal. The problem is when your mind starts to become busy because you didn’t process a lot during the day and suddenly, it’s the first time it’s quiet. No one is around or maybe your bed partner is already asleep, hopefully not snoring keeping you up. It’s the first time you lay there, so you may have trouble with that transition. That’s why I suggest going to gratitude or a process. I like to think of it as a trilogy. It’s body awareness. Your body is always in the present. Your mind is in the past or the future. Combine your body awareness with your breath because got to breathe to live into sleep and gratitude. Gratitude is an incredible gift.

Incredible means it’s not credible. I train myself in words as you know. The body is always present. Gratitude is a credible gift that we always have as long as you’re aware of it.

Maybe it’s just gratitude is a gift or the GAG.

It’s so delightful. You’re bringing such beauty, bounty, and deliciousness to the world as the ambassador of joy and the sleep ambassador.

It’s my pattern for sleep. It came to me after doing yoga one morning. Sleep is Sustainable Life-Enhancing Essential Priority.

When two ambassadors get together, you get a bunch of ambassadorinism. Nancy, I cannot thank you enough. The hundreds of thousands of people and God willing, millions because it’s going to be shared by at least five people, your family and friends. There’s nothing more essential and life-enhancing than sleep. It’s the miracle cure. The sleep ambassador talks about the art of sleeping, the joy of sleeping, and the wisdom of sleep. Will you come back again?

Joyously.

Thank you. We’ll talk about sleep and sex or sex and sleep.

We’ll talk about the spirituality of sleep.

We’ll do that next time. That’s called SOS. People think it’s Save Our Ship. It means the spirituality of sleep. That’s true SOS. When that SOS goes out, you can become and unfold your best possible self. What I’d like to do is give you a HUG in front of over 260,000 people around the world. We’re going to do a HUG. I’ll tell you what it stands for, that will do it, then we’re going to do a recap and a blessing. HUG stands Harmonizing Unlimited Giving. Isn’t that what you feel when you hug somebody?

Thanks, everybody for reading The Joy of Living. You’ve read consciously because you care the most in the entire world about you, which is great because when you’re the best you possible, especially when you slept well, you create more harmony that will build bridges. You create more joy, happiness, peace, and love when you use the three fundamentals of life. Number one, life has a purpose. Number two, go mad and make a difference. Number three, unlock the secrets and the power of everyday words in terms like WWW, What a Wonderful World. SMILE, Seeing Miracles In Life Everyday. As my child says, seeing miracles everyday in life. As Nancy says, SLEEP stands for?

Sustainable Life-Enhancing Essential Priority.

You create the kind of world you want to live in. It caused me to rethink listening to her, enabling all to excel because you can do neuro-linguistic programming, use four-letter words when you live in the positive, purposeful, powerful world like love, life, hope, grow, free, gift, swim, pray, play, help. Tell people, “FUNN.” They’ll say, “What are you talking about?” “I hear that on Barry Shore. He wants to teach the world to FU.” The best way to FU is to use the two most powerful words in the English language three times a day, consciously and conscientiously every single day.

THANK you, To Harmonize And Network Kindness. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Therefore, be kind always, keep inspiring noble deeds, and connect the nature daily. When you do that, you will sleep the sleep of joy, happiness, peace, and love. From Nancy and Barry, we urge you, our blessing to you is to go forth, live exuberantly, spread the seeds of joy, happiness, peace, and love. Go make a difference. Thank you, wonderful Nancy. Best wishes. Bye.

Important Links:

• Nancy Rothstein
• The JOY of LIVING
• Sleep Is Your Superpower – LinkedIn
• My Daddy Snores
• MyApnea.org
• https://www.Linkedin.com/in/nancy-h-rothstein-mba-the-sleep-ambassador/
• https://www.Facebook.com/TheSleepAmbassador
• https://www.Instagram.com/thesleepambassador/
• https://Twitter.com/SleepAmbassador

About Nancy Rothstein